Week 50 - A Baptism and a New Companion

I don´t know why the pictures didn´t send right last week, so I´m sending them again.

Ines got baptized and confirmed this week! She´s doing good.

So Elder Pat and I were split up. Previously we had been proselyting in all of Daule. President Dennis has sent two new missionaries here, and Elder Pat and I are now working in different areas in Daule. Which is sad because our convert is in the other sector as well as everyone we were working with.

My new companion is Elder Conde from Colombia. I still don´t know him very well. We are going to be working really hard this week to find families to help convert or be rescued. I´m not TOO familiar with the part of Daule that belongs to us, so it should be fun.

Love you all! Thanks for your letters.

Week 49

Well, this week´s been really great :)

We had our two investigators with baptismal dates show up to church on Sunday. One of them is Ines Almeida.  She goes to church every week with her mother and her brother. Her brother got baptized a year ago. Her mother has been going to church for some time now, but can´t be baptized because she isn´t married to her husband. But that´ll come much much later. Anyway, Ines is excited/a little nervous for her baptism :) AND a miracle happened! Our branch mission leader´s dad wants to be baptized! We´ve been working with him for a while now, and last
week we invited him to baptism, and he accepted gladly a baptismal date for
August 21st. :) We´re also working with his wife to reactivate her.

Last week we had an activity. It was a pot luck dinner with international
plates. A lot of people came (for the food) and we found some new
investigators and part member families :)

Elder Pat and I are doing well. I´ve sadly bought all of the blue Gatorade available in Daule, but that's okay now.  Transfers are coming next week..... I don´t like transfers.

Week 48

I promise I´ll send a letter next week :)

Week 47 - Two Photos

No letter this week

Week 46

Haven´t taken many photos recently, but I´ll try to change that this week. That´s not my companion, that´s Elder McDonald. From one of my old wards in Ivins :)

Week 45- Lots of Perks

Daule is an interesting little city. There´s a lot of perks here. We live right next to this park that has a bunch of machines to work out and a little track. We live in this HUGE apartment. So I don´t have to wait for my companion to shower in the mornings.

There´s also no taxis or buses here. There are these motorcycles with a carriage type thing that they pull. They´re called tricimotos. And they´re .50 to wherever you want to go. There´s a mall close to our apartment, and we live like 1 minute from the church. And we get our laundry washed for free.
And the members are super cool, it´s just that none of them are available until the night time.

So we´ve been opening up this sector alone. We had a three-day exchange with the zone leaders. My companion went to work in the zone leaders' area, and one of the zls showed me around the area for three days so that I could memorize all of the sectors and stuff. I´ve got it down pretty alright.
There´s also these little cities about 30 minutes away from Daule that are also part of our area. My comp and I have A LOT to do. We´ve not had one boring day. There are 50 names on our recent converts list. We´ve been going and visiting them one by one. As well as all of the members of the ward council. The ward is great, though a lot of the members seem to be spiritually inactive. I think lack of scripture study has something to do with that. Everyone has welcomed us really well, though
.
Yesterday we were invited to a TON of food. We have had rice with chicken for lunch for the past 7 days without fail. Last Monday was our pday, and we went to Carl´s Jr., but we were invited to a Family Home Evening and they gave us rice with chicken. Not complaining at all though. I´ve learned to love everything they give us.

Well, that´s all for now. Thank you guys for your emails.

Love you. Hope all´s going well.

Week 44- Transfered

Sooo this week´s been quite a twist. Vicente went to church, and he´s almost ready for his baptismal interview.

Manuel (One of our converts) gave a talk in Sacrament Meeting, and then afterwards he gave the class in Elder´s Quorum! It´s so cool to see his conversion, and how he´s progressed :)

We went to a conference in Guayaquil for an ENTIRE DAY and got to go to the temple! And, I got transferred! I´m no longer in Manta. I´m in this little town/city called Daule with Elder Pat from México (My first non-white companion). Daule´s super cool from what I´ve seen just today. I live in a house with just my companion and I, about an hour from all the other missionaries. AND, we´re both new to the area! It´s super exciting.

We´re going out with the Ward Mission Leader today so he can show us around. From what I´ve seen, Daule is like 5,000x bigger than my last area. And my last area was huge. My companion and I are stoked.

Elder Najera