January 15, 2011

Dear Family,
What a crazy week!!!! I was back in the heat again!! This week went really, really well :) Yesterday, my companion and I got back from Santo Domingo and Esmeraldas. We had some really good experiences with the missionaries there. In Esmeraldas I went with a missionary that has been in the same sector for 6 months and his last companion got him really discouraged. He doesn´t have any faith anymore in that sector. We talked about it a little bit in the study that we had and in an hour we found 2 new families (15 people in total). He was really surprised and instead of learning from it he just said that they won´t progress. I feel like what I did should have helped him. I could have done better but it surprised me that he didn´t change. The sad part of it all is that he´s a Zone Leader and he´s kind of passed it on to his zone. When he asked me what I thought that he could do better, I told him to have faith that any person can get baptized. He answered "but if they have to get married?" (basically everyone has to get married but doesn´t want to in Esmeraldas) It´s tough to see a missionary like that. I just hope that whenever he gets changed he can get rid of that attitude because it´s really bringing him down.
In Santo Domingo I got to go with some missionaries to visit their investigators that had baptismal dates for today. It was a really good experience. They´re both really good missionaries but sometimes they´re going around in circles when they teach. They don´t get to the point very fast. It was a good opportunity to help them teach more effectively. It was kind of funny because in the first house of investigators they took a picture with me. It´s probably because I´m so tall ha ha. I loved being in Santo Domingo again :)
So the Taco family will get baptized on the January 22, next week. They weren´t able to go to church last week because the Dad had to work. This week they´ve already confirmed that they´re going to go. We´re going to announce everything tomorrow in Sacrament meeting and we´ll make sure to have a lot of members there with them. They are a lot more excited now. President Sloan came up with a new idea and it has really helped a lot. We were kind of pilot testing the idea and it really worked. It´s a paper that has stairs that go from the bottom left to the top right and have things that an investigator has to do to be ready for baptism (desire, believe, experiment, obey, testimony, baptism). We also have a place where the investigators can track their reading in the Book of Mormon and their prayers. The Taco family was really excited when they saw it and it has helped them to progress and to be more excited for their goal :)
Well next week I´ll be in Otavalo again :) I´m excited to go back. We´re going to go on splits again and I´ll be going to a place that I´ve never been to before. Well I love you all. Thank you so much for all that you do for me. I love this great work. It is such a privilege to be among the Lamanites here in Ecuador. I´m so grateful for the things that I have learned since I´ve been here. I love you all. Thank you for always supporting me :)






Love,
Élder Hakes