Serving the Lord in Quito, Ecuador: Trip to the Volcano, Investigators, Are You Married or Not? Really?

09/14/2015

I don't know what we will be doing for conference yet but I figure we will get an opportunity to watch it of course. I believe we will see all sessions but I don't know yet as it will be my first conference. Elder Goodfellow is very good as District leader and it was rather interesting as he led the district meeting. Every night he gets calls from every single companionship in his district giving a report on the work and how it went. That is rather interesting and he got this long sheet of plastic to record all the information down on for each companionship. There are two new missionaries in our district now and both actually came from Bogota. One is named Elder Niu (pronounced new) and he is from Gilbert, Arizona which is really cool. He is actually younger than me as he had to wait some time as he turned 18 during the summer right before his mission. That was interesting. He is in the sector next to ours being trained by Elder Leonard so I get to see them every day more or less as they work in the same ward as us and have the same pensionista. The other Elder is named Elder Choque and he is a Latino. I don't know too much about him other then the fact he spent 2 weeks in the MTC before coming here so he is really new.

My Spanish is coming on really well although I still probably have an accent. The problem is that I can't hear my accent well. Still I understand conversations better and also I am better at understanding some of the jokes made. I am still in training still of course but that is going well and I will be done soon. Today was really cool. We had a member offer to take us near this volcano named Santa Anna. This guy is really cool has lots of money and really likes the missionaries so it was a neat experience. We got to see the volcano Santa Anna and we also got to see Cotopaxi from were we were. It was billowing out ashes and it was really neat. It wasn't extremely close but we got a good view. Apparently the internal activity is starting to subside and the external activity is going down as well so it is highly unlikely that it will explode.

That is neat to hear about Kinebritt. Quite honestly you pick up pretty quick who is drunk who is really drunk and who is high. I kid you not. We have a menos active and well he has a serious drug problem. Another one of our investigators (well former technically as we could never contact him well) drinks a lot and you can tell by just how they speak and act.

This week was pretty cool and we have some investigators progressing well. We had one who attended church this Sunday for the 3rd time but she still needed some lessons to be ready for the baptismal interview. We taught everything she needed to know to be ready for the interview and she had the interview yesterday. One of the Zone Leaders interviewed her and he said it was the most spiritual interview he had ever had in his mission. It was because she has a strong testimony and just knows that she has to get baptized. He said everything was going fine until he hit law of chastity. She told him (in Spanish) that she couldn't lie any more and that she wasn't married. That stunk because we thought she was married. She was with her man for 24 years and had 4 kids with him. What the heck??!!!! Still she knows she has to get married and that is the only obstacle in the way of her getting baptized. I believe she will get married soon and then she can get baptized. I mean we teach people living together unmarried a lot and help them work on that but we usually know that they aren't married. So we felt a little silly. I am pretty sure she will get married soon as she looked just devastated that she couldn't be baptized this Saturday. We had another 2 investigators who aren't married but went to church for the second time and they have great potential. So yeah we did well.

There was another man who showed up who was a real shock. He is one of the eternal investigators. He has received missionaries for years but never done anything. Then yesterday he just shows up after our meetings were finished and he went to church for the first time in years I believe. He is kind of crazy but loves speaking English and he actually did something important. So we will see about him. That was some of the highlights in my week. I will try getting you some pictures of the trip we had today as it was awesome. I hope you guys have fun and I love you all,

Elder Throop

Here are some pics of the volcanos