In the Mission Home
Dear Family,
So this week was pretty crazy. I didn´t go to our sector once. It´s kind of sad. I really miss my investigators. So all the new missionaries arrived on Tuesday. It was....interesting ha ha. So in our mission, before Tuesday, we had 3 north American sisters and they are all good, hard workers. On Tuesday 5 north American sisters showed up and they were like the stereotypical sister missionary in the states. We asked them to bring what they needed for 1 night because we took their luggage to the church where we had the new missionary meeting. I saw more make-up and blow dryers then than I have seen in over a year :) It was pretty crazy!!!! Maybe I´m being too hard on them but I haven´t seen that in forever. We talked a lot about our missionary purpose and hard work. It turned out to be really good. President had us bear our testimonies again and it went way good. I felt the Spirit so strong again :) They were all touched and they are really excited about being here. It was really fun.
So President Sloan has been kind of sick this week. He has pneumonia and that is what caused him so many problems last year and that´s what started his really bad sickness. He decided to rest a lot this week. On Tuesday before the new missionaries arrived we had a meeting without President because he decided not to go. He did go to the airport on Tuesday and he interviewed each of them. On Thursday we traveled to Ambato alone, by bus, and we had a specialized training with 3 zones without President. It was a little bit weird but it turned out to be alright. He´s still sick so we´ll see what he wants to do these next few weeks.
So last Sunday our old Ward mission leader had his farwell. He´s going to the Peru Trujillo Mission. He´s in the MTC now!!! He always went and did visits with us and it was awesome. It was sad to see him leave but he´s doing what´s right. His name is Jorge Pillajo and he´s a convert of 4 years now. He´ll be an amazing missionary!!
Tomorrow in all of Ecuador they are having a cesus and we all have to stay in our houses. We have to be there until 5 PM minimum. Someone will come and will ask us questions and stuff. We heard that each questionaire could take up to 30 minutes so that´ll be fun tomorrow :) We aren´t going to have church either and we can´t have any confirmations either. Tomorrow wil be really interesting :)
So today my companion and one of the secretaries, Elder Duarte, went to one of their old sectors to visit some of their converts and Elder Vomocil, the other secretary, and I couldn´t decide what we wanted to do. We finally decided to go visit some of Elder Vomocil´s converts and investigators in Santa Ana, close to Valle de Los Chillos. It went really well. One of his old investigators that didn´t get baptized had been praying that Elder Vomocil would go back to visit them. We showed up today and he prayed for that yesterday. It was way sweet because they were so excited to see him. After that we decided to call my old bishop in Salvador Celi. He said that he was buying lunch for the missionaries that are there and he invited us to come too. We said ok and we went to the mall in Los Chillos. We show up and he takes us to TGI Friday´s. We were way surprised but he was really excited to see me ha ha :) We had a really fun time and we took a picture :) Their son has changed so much in the last 3 months. He´s talking a little bit and his hair is really dark now. It was awesome to be able to see them again. They are one of my favorite families here in Ecuador. Today was an amazing p-day :)
I had a pretty cool experience helping one of the new missionaries on Thursday. We were in Ambato and one of the new missionaries, one that came on Tuesday, was there and he was kind of nervous. I don´t know why but the zone leaders that were giving the training decided to call on his companionship to do the practice. The new missionary didn´t say a word because he was so nervous. It turned out being alright but I could still see that he was nervous. When we got to our part of the training we had a lot of practices in groups of 2 companionships. When the new missionary´s companionship were being investigators I took him aside. I just asked him how he was doing. He told me that he was nervous and he felt unsure. I told him to just take a couple of breaths and to calm down a little bit. I told him that we´re here to learn from him too and that he´s a good missionary. He felt better and he started to participate more. I felt good for him. Afterwards he thanked me and said that he´ll keep doing better. It was a really special experience for me because I´ve never had anyone thank me for being a leader that I can remember. I felt like I was actually doing my job right now :) It was a really cool experience.
Well, I love you all so much. Thank you for everything that you have done, do, and will do for me. Keep strong in the faith and be ever aware of our Heavenly Father in our lives.
Love,
Élder Hakes
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