December 11, 2010

Dear Family,
This week was crazy!!! We have been so busy ha ha :) On Tuesday we had ZL Council all day long. It went really well. We were able to come up with a lot of good ideas for some Open Houses that we are going to have next month. The Spirit was guiding that conversation. On Wednesday and Thursday we had specialized trainings for 6 different zones. For part of the training we go to a huge park here and start talking with everyone. My companion and I split up with other missionaries to help them apply what we had just taught them. It has gone really well with all of them. It´s weird to me how surprised they are to see us having a conversation with someone instead of coming up and saying, "Hello, we´re missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and we´re here to share about how the Gospel was restored to the Earth again. When can we come and share this message with you?" every single time. The theme that we decided to talk about was truly inspired because so many missionaries are shocked about what we teach even though we have taught it before and it´s in Preach My Gospel. It´s just like President has said, repetition is the key.
On Friday we had a meeting with a comittee that President formed during ZL Council. President wasn´t there. He asked us to run it and solve the problem and that we´ll all present it to him in a week. The problem is that when we set baptismal goals we set them for 2-6 weeks in the future. We have the norm of baptizing every week so planning 6 weeks in the future is almost pointless. Also, the missionaries are still focusing on baptizing every month instead of every week. In the comittee we came to the conclusion that we will set baptismal goals every other Thursday during weekly planning session. On those days we will set goals for the next 3 weeks. We will implement this new process and retrain everyone on the purpose of setting goals with names. We need to retake the right vision on this. The meeting was amazing. It was literally a council where everyone was commenting, bringing up doubts, sharing ideas, etc. The Spirit was guiding our conversation in that meeting too. It was an amazing experience.
So, this week we had an amazing p-day activity. Today was the last p-day for my companion, Elder Morales, and for Elder Duarte. We decided to go to the highest active volcano in Ecuador, it´s called Cotopaxi. I´ve sent tons of pictures of this volcano to you already because you can see it on a clear day from my old sector (I attached an old picture in this e-mail too). I never thought that I would touch snow while I was a missionary :) We had a lot of fun. The van that we took up didn´t have 4 wheel drive so it took us a while to get up. Today the snow was lower than any other day that our guide had ever seen. When we got to the highest point that we could in the van we had already been in snow for a long time. We made a snowman and had a snowball fight. It was way fun. We were all freezing our butts off because we didn´t have anything that could keep us really warm, but it was still so fun. I´ve wanted to visit Cotopaxi since the day that I saw it. We finally went!!!!!!
Well I love you all. Thank you so much for all that you do. I hope that everyone has a very merry Christmas. Always remember the true meaning of this time of year, Christ was born to bring us all back into the presence of God!!!



Love,
Élder Hakes

December 4, 2010

The giant Christmas tree is in front of a mall here

Dear Family,
This was a pretty amazing week!! We didn´t have a lot of trainings or anything because we are having them all here in Quito for Christmas. We went on exchanges with 2 sets of Zone Leaders. Both of the exchanges went really well. We haven´t done very many as assistants because we´re so busy but we have some time now so we´re going to be having them every week. With all of the exchanges that I´ve had before I never had one of my missionaries tell me that I had helped them in some way. Honestly, I didn´t have very effective exchanges, but this week was different. On Tuesday we went to northern Quito to the Calderón Zone. We were with them from 8AM-6PM so we could study with them and then apply what we learned. We helped them more than anything with talking with everyone because they hadn´t been doing it. It went really well. The missionary that I was with has been in that sector for almost 6 months so he "couldn´t find anyone". We just started talking with people in the street. He started by knocking on doors but then I saw a family so I said lets go talk with them. It went really well. Yesterday in the specialized training that we had he and his zone was there. His topic that he spoke on was on a question "How do we talk with everyone everyday without fear and by the power of the Spirit?" He shared what he had learned in the exchange. It made me feel better about my teaching skills because I had never heard that from someone before.
On Wednesday we had exchanges planned with other zone leaders in central Quito in Santa Ana, but President asked us to have a meeting with him. We studied with the Zone Leaders and then we went to the meeting and afterwards we went back with the Zone Leaders. The meeting went really well. President wanted to talk about what the mission needs and what are we going to share in the specialized trainings this month. The Spirit was so strong in that meeting!!! We all knew and felt exactly what the mission needs right now. Well, after the meeting we only had an hour and a half with the Santa Ana Zone Leaders. We went and my comp with one zone leader had all the appointments and the other zone leader and I had nothing, just contacting. We started going and we saw someone loading up a truck so we went and started helping them. We barely asked before we took the stuff out of their hands :) We got a little bit dirty but we were there for about 5-10 minutes and we found a new family. They wanted to pay us for helping but we didn´t let them of course. They had an appointment last night but I don´t know how it went. The missionary that I was with kept saying the same thing in every contact so I talked with him about it. We kept talking with people in the street and they had scheduled about 4 appointments. The missionary thanked me and told me that what I had taught him helped him to understand what his zone is missing and what they need. Again, I had never had a missionary tell me that I helped them. It surprised me, but I´m grateful that he said it because I feel better now :)


So, this week I took a lot of Christmas pictures because there are a lot of trees and lights up now. For the specialized training we are doing something special for Christmas. President invited everyone to have lunch in the mission home after the training. In the mission home we eat lunch, sing all of the Christmas songs, drink hot chocolate, and listen to President and Sister Sloan. Also, the secretaries of the mission, they live with us, dressed up as Santa Clause and Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer. It was hilarious!!! All of the missionaries were dying of laughter. They had everyone that has a birthday in December come up front and we sang to them. They also gave out the presents that President and Sister Sloan got for us (a study journal with our name on it and a box of 10 Bon Ice, Bon Ice is basically otter pops). It has been really fun and we get to do it 6 times this month :)

Élder Duarte is Santa and Élder Vomocil is Rudolf



Well I love you all. Thank you so much for everything that you do for me. Thank you for your prayers and your support. I love each and every one of you.




Love,
Élder Hakes