February 12, 2011

Us in front of another catholic church



Us in front of some catholic church


Vomocil, Di Natale and I in front of the Panecillo


Presidential House


Me in front of a sweet Quito Billboard

Dear Family,
Well, this week has been really fun. We had 2 zone conferences and they both went amazingly. At the zone conferences we always eat lunch and we had 2 different people cook for us. They were both Cubans. The food that they cooked was amazing!!! During the zone conferences we also make s´mores for dessert (I might have already mentioned that, oh well) :) It has been really fun to be able to train these missionaries and to be able to help them.
We had a very interesting lesson this week. I got a hold of an old investigator and we went to visit her for the first time. She has had some crazy experiences in her life. Especially with the missionaries. 2 days before the missionaries knocked on her door, she had a dream that 2 young, handsome men came to share the truth with her. When they knocked on the door those missionaries were the 2 young, handsome men that she had dreamed about. She said that it scared her, but she pretended like she was just listening and invited them in. Apparently she was going to get baptized and she had an interview with someone in the mission presidency. She didn´t pass so she stopped going to church and she stopped listening. Now, she is going to get married to her long-distance boyfriend that lives in Washington D.C. (he visits every 6-8 months). She says that she is interested and that she´s going to start reading the Book of Mormon again. She actually has her own triple combination. It was a crazy but really good experience :)
Well this morning we cleaned out the apartment really, really good. We just threw away everything that we don´t use and that no one wanted. We scrubbed down everything. It took like 2-3 hours but we finished it and the apartment looks amazing now. The spirit was there a lot stronger after we cleaned. It was a good thing that we finally did a deep clean :)
Today we went to Historical Downtown Quito. According to President Sloan, Quito has the biggest historical downtown in all of South America. We took some sweet pictures. We saw the "White House" of Ecuador (the Presidential house with the big Ecuadorian flag on top). We also saw a few plazas and the Panecillo form below. It was really cool. We got some fun pictures and we got to see some cool sites.
Well, President Sloan told me that I´ll be going back into the field on March 1st. I´m really excited but sad at the same time. I´m excited to get back to the field and be with the missionaries more, but I´m sad that I won´t be with President as much and I won´t train as much. President told me that I´ll love the place where I´m going so I´m excited to find out where :)
I love you all so much. Thank you for the good examples that you have all been to me. I am so grateful to have known each of you. In my patriarchal blessing it says that I am blessed in my opportunities to meet good and honorable people. You are those people. I love you all so much.










Love,
Élder Hakes