September 25, 2010

Dear Family,
This week was absolutely nuts!!!!! I felt like I was out of town the whole time :) On Tuesday I went to Esmeraldas for the first time. Esmeraldas is on the coast of Ecuador it has beaches and everything. It was pretty hot there. I thought I might enjoy it and I did at first. Trying to go to sleep covered in sweat isn´t too fun though :) On the way there we had a little problem with a tire. It went flat. That was really fun that we got under the car in our church clothes to get out the spare and change it. We got our hands pretty dirty, but the shirts weren´t too bad. When we had our suits on you couldn´t see any stains or anything :) The training went really well there. I got to see a lot of missionaries that I know and my trainer is one of the zone leaders there. It was nice to see Élder Estrada again. He´s a really funny guy. That night we slept in Élder Estrada´s house and we left early the next morning to Santo Domingo. I really liked being in Santo Domingo again. It wasn´t nearly as hot as Esmeraldas. It was nice to see some of the places that I got to know when I started the mission. Santo Domingo doesn´t look weird to me anymore. It looks....normal. I remember when I first got there that I was amazed by all of the buildings and the store, but everything is just normal now :) It´s kind of funny ha ha. The training went really well in Santo Domingo as well. I felt that I was following the Spirit best in that training. I really enjoyed my time there,
Well this week we had a baptism as well. Norma Simbaña was baptized today!!!! It was a really neat experience. There were a lot of people there because she has a lot of friends in the church now. Her whole family came too!!!! The Spirit was so strong there. She told us after that she felt so good. She thought she was going to be nervous to give her testimony in front of everyone, but she wasn´t. She told us that she just felt soooo good. She also told us that she had already felt the Spirit a lot because she has been living the Gospel, but that by getting baptized she felt that she was pleasing our Heavenly Father. She is an amazing person. I don´t ever see her falling away from the church. She´s already planning on going to the temple to do baptisms and to have someone get baptized for her dad. The Gospel has changed her life, and it will continue to do so :)
I can not wait for General Conference this next weekend. I can´t believe that we´re already at another one. I fell like I was just watching it there in Los Chillos Valley. I can´t wait to be able to listen to the prophet´s voice in English!!!!! I love hearing their voices. President Sloan shared something interesting with one of the zones that I really liked. He said that as he is watching General Conference, he doesn´t take notes about what they say. He isn´t writing down the doctrine that they say. What he does is he writes the impressions that come to his mind as he´s listening. I thought that that is a really good idea. In November we´re going to have the Ensign and we can study doctrine there. I´m going to apply it this Conference and I thought I´d share it with you guys too :)
Well I love you all so much. Thank you for being so great to me. I´m so grateful for you guys, my family and friends. In my Patriarchal Blessing it says that i´m am blessed to be surrounded by good and honorable people. Thank you for being those people :)




Love,
Élder Hakes

September 20, 2010

Dear Family,
This week was pretty crazy. We had a lot of trainings to give. On Tuesday and Wednesday we trained all of the zones here in Quito (80 missionaries) and on Saturday we trained 3 more zones (Ambato, Riobamba, and Oriente). It went really well. I feel a lot more comfortable giving all of these trainings now. At first I was nervous and stuff but now it doesn't really matter. It's a lot more natural now. It is really beautiful on the way to Ambato. I didn't take any pictures because we were in the car with President Sloan and Elder Cabrera (of the 70). It was a pretty short trip and I really enjoyed it. That same night we came back to Quito because we had an investigator at church.
This Saturday Norma Simbana is going to get baptized. It is so interesting teaching her. She has some really great friends at church and they are teaching her pretty much everything. The last few lessons we've come and we start talking about a commandment and she tells us that she already had talked about it with her member friends. It makes our job so much easier. We just have to invite the Spirit and talk about what she's already learned from the members. She really understands her purpose now. She knows what she has to do to be able to have happiness in this life. I am almost 100% sure that she'll be in the temple 1 year from this Saturday. She has her own personal conversion already. She's more faithful than some of the members here ha ha :)
Tomorrow I'm going to go to Esmeraldas for the first time and the day after tomorrow I'll be in Santo Domingo again. I'm really excited because these 2 cities are the coast cities in our mission. It'll be really hot but I'm going to like it. I really miss the heat now. I didn't even realize it ha ha. They make really good food in these 2 cities too. I'm really excited for that :)
We were invited to eat with 2 different senior missionary couples this week. I really enjoyed that. On Friday I ate some really good burritos and last night I ate roast and mashed potatoes and gravy!!!! It was so good. It was way different but it was still really good. I'm going to get fat here in the offices :)
Well in the mission we have 2 new norms in the mission now. The first is that every companionship will baptize 2 people (minimum) every week with the focus in families. We had a really cool experience to change this norm. We weren't going to change it but we started talking about it in the Zone Leader Council last week. As the leaders of the mission we changed the norm. President Sloan was so happy to see the faith and hope that we have. It's a norm that will be really difficult for a lot of missionaries, but we now know that 2 baptisms every weekend is what the Lord expects for us in this mission. We're really seeing miracles now. We have set records the last 2 months in a row. This month probably won't be a record but it will be a good month. Well, the second new norm that we have is to make a baptismal invitation in every lesson. This norm will help us to be able to do the other norm. It's been really cool to be able to teach the missionaries why we need these norms. I think that it's helping them to be more connected to their missionary purpose. The mission is a lot different now compared to how it was when I started the mission. When I started the mission there wasn't as much faith. Everyone just kind of complained that the norms are too hard. Now we have leaders that want to raise the norm and make themselves and their stewardships better. That is why we are seeing miracles in this mission. I can now testify of the power of trusting in the Lord. I wasn't trusting him as much before. I depended on myself to find and teach people. Now I trust in the Lord and He does the rest.
Well I love you all. Thank you for everything that you've done and do for me.








Love,
Elder Hakes

September 13, 2010

Dear Family,
This week was pretty crazy. It went by sooooo fast. On Thursday we were in Otavalo. That was a really cool experience. The stake where we had a fireside at only speaks quichua (that´s a native language. It was really cool. Most of them speak spanish too so they understood us. They have a very interesting dress as well. The stake president had a blue poncho over his white shirt. The women all had the same neclace and pretty much all of them had the same shirts on too. I didn't take any pictures. I totally forgot because it was so interesting to see them all like that. Don't worry though. I'll be going back next month so I'll be seeing them again. There was a different spirit there with that people. It was really cool. I kept imagining different Book Of Mormon stories while I was looking at the scenery on the way there. It was really fun to do. I really felt like I was there. otavalo is a very sacred place to me. I liked it a lot.
As you all know I went to Coca as well. That was a really neat experience. I definitely took a ton of picture. I put a few of them on here so I hope you get them. It was really humid and hot there. I liked it a lot. I missed being in the heat. I've been in Quito for the last 8 months. It was so cool being there with that branch. When President Sloan was first starting his mission he opened that branch. At that time there were about 40-50 people that attended every week. When we went this last weekend there were 80 people there, not including the visitors. It was a really cool experience. This branch is really strong. They only meet in a house that was donated to the church. President Sloan is now talking about building a chapel there because the branch is growing so fast. It was a humbling experience to be there with those people. They don't have the church like we do. They just meet in a house, but they all have great faith and they're all living the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It was such an amazing experience that I had.
This week we also had a really cool experience in our own sector. There is a lady here that has gone to church 3 times now. She's not a member and we went to visit her for a 2nd time. The first time we had left her with a reading assignment in 3 Nephi 27, the gospel of Jesus Christ. When we got there she started explaining what she learned. She had her Book of Mormon more marked up than I do. She really analized it and she felt that it was all true. She had even written in the margin 1. Faith 2. Repentance 3. Holy Ghost (she was out of order :) ) It was amazing. We invited her to be baptized. She was so surprised and said, "I can do that in your church?" We told her yes and invited her to prepare for her baptism. She committed herself (we hadn´t asked her yet) to be prepared for September 25th. It was a really cool experience. She is more than a golden investigator. That was an amazing experience.
In the mission now we have 2 new standards. The first is that we have to invite our investigators to be baptized in every single lesson. The second is that we have to baptize at the very least 2 people every week. It´s a really high norm, but we know that we can do it. We are really starting to see miracles in our mission. We set another new record. We had 195 baptisms in the month of August. It was awesome!!! I love this work.
Well I love all of you guys so much. Thank you for everything that you do for me.








Love,
Élder Hakes








P.S.
This Saturday I´m going to be in Ambato so I´ll probably write you next Monday again :)

September 4, 2010

Dear Family,
Well this week was absolutely nuts for me. I have to get used to being the President´s new assistant. I´m really surprised that he gave me this assignment so early iin my mission. I think I´m the "youngest" (in mission time) assistant that he´s called. I only have 10 months in Ecuador. I´m really excited to learn though. On Tuesday we went to the airport to pick up the new missionaries. It was pretty sweet to be able to see them and get to know them. All the North Americans get to go to the Peru MTC after 3 weeks in Provo so they come here speaking a lot better than what I did when I got here. They all pretty much understand and can speak a little bit.
Oh yeah, on Monday night we ate dinner in the president´s house. It was the "Last Supper" for all the missionaries that went home this week. We ate fajitas. I´m trying to control myself a little bit with the food because a lot of American food makes me sick now. It´s kind of the opposite of what you´d think, ha ha. This week was really weird. Every morning we have to go to the offices to fill out reports and make things for President Sloan. I didn´t even go into my sector for the first time until Thursday. We don´t have hardly anyone that´s progressing because we´re hardly here. It´s really weird. I don´t like it that much. I´m sick of sitting around on my butt all day long.
On Wednesday we had the training for the new missionaries. It went really well. I think my companion thought that I would be really nervous but I wasn´t hardly at all. President really liked it too. That training was the first time that I felt like I was a reall missionary as an assistant. My companion says that I just have to get used to it but I don´t want too. I want to keep that desire in my heart. It´s what keeps me moving.
Well I don´t know what else to say. We haven´t been doing real missionary work very much so I don´t have any cool experiences. I have one that wasn´t so cool. We were contacting this one street and no one let us in. It wasn´t that they just said, "No thank you, we´re not interested". They just shut the door or just said no before we even said one word. I know that in other parts of the world that that´s normal but here in Ecuador there are only a few like that. It looks like they all live on the same street too :) It was kind of funny for us actually. I´m not sure why.
I haven´t really gotten to know my companion very well yet. When we´re in the offices we´re on computers and when we´re in the house he´s talking more with the secretaries (all 4 of us live in the same house). It´s been kind of weird. I just feel kind of awkward when I´m with him. I just need to talk with him more I guess.
Well I love you guys all so much. Thank you for all that you do for me :)




Love,
Élder Hakes


P.S.
Next week I´m going to go to Otavalo on Thursday. That is where the closest decendents to Father Lehi in the whole world live, acording to President Spencer W. Kimball. Ask Nancy about them. I´m really excited to go. Also, on Saturday, in 7 days, I´ll be in a small city in the middle of the Amazon Jungle. It´s called Coca. When Pres. Sloan opened that sector about a year ago there were only about 30-40 people in the branch. Now there are 70-80 people. I´m really excited to go. Right next to this city is a river called the Napo River. It´s one of the main rivers that leads into the Amazon River. I can´t wait to go!!!!

Because I´m going to Coca next week I don´t know when I´m going to write you. It might be on Friday or it might be on Sunday or Monday. I don´t really know. Love you all. Congrats to Brent. I got an adreniline rush just reading his letter love you guys :)