Elder David Hakes

August 8, 2011

2011-08-08T16:33:00.002-06:00

Standing on the bus for a 2 hour bus ride

Dear Family,
Well, this is the last time that I´ll be writing as a full-time missionary. I can´t believe it. It still hasn´t hit me yet :) This week went by really fast. The highlight of the week was that Marco Torres got baptized. It was a really awesome baptism and it was a special day for everyone. His uncle, Javier Palacios, has been working hard to get him to church and to get baptized and all of his hard work payed off :) Marco was so happy too. He even came to church in a white shirt and tie. We didn´t even tell him :) He is really pumped right now to keep progressing :) I´m so excited for him!!!!

On Saturday we had a really interesting lunch right before the baptism. I asked them to do it because, first off I´m kind of crazy and second of I had always heard of it and I wanted to see what it was. It´s called yagua locro. It´s basically a soup with sheep intestines, potatoes and stuff and you put sheep blood in it too :) The blood isn´t liquid it´s solid and it looks kind of like ground beef. It actually wasn´t that bad. I ate just the blood and it didn´t have too much flavor. You eat the soup with lime and avacado too. I ate 2 bowls and it was pretty good. My companion can´t really deal with stuff like that. He really syked himself out. He started off fine eating the soup. He was only eating the potatoes and nothing else until another Elder that was with us told him to look at his spoon. The other Elder told him that they were delicious intestines and blood. My companion imagined, only in his mind, that there were drops of blood falling from his spoon. My companion got up and went straight to the bathroom and started to throw up. We all started laughing because the rest of us really liked it. Luckly the family didn´t get offended or anything. They are a really cool family.
The Soup

The Blood

My comp after he threw up

Well, the next time I see you it will be in person. Thank you for your love and for your letters. I can´t believe that 2 years have gone by so fast. Thank you for everything.

Love,
Élder Hakes
Paco Asqui.... He´s a member that gives us lunch on Sunday´s

August 1, 2011

2011-08-08T15:54:00.000-06:00

Dear Family,
This week went by soooo fast and it went pretty well. I went to Guaranda twice this week. The first time for interviews and the second time to try to help some people be strengthened for their baptisms. It went fairly well. I really enjoyed being there and it felt good to be helping them out. Not everyone got baptized but I was able to learn a lot and it helped me to keep being motivated :)
This week Elena Colcha and her husband Franklin Puertas finally got baptized!!!!!! They have been investigators for almost a year and a half. It was such a special moment. The branch almost didn´t believe us when we told them that she was getting baptized. It was a really good baptism and the Spirit was so strong!!! I can´t believe that we finally were able to help her to get baptized :) I feel so blessed to be at her baptism. About 13+ missionaries taught her over the course of her time as investigator. I love this work. The Spirit is the greatest blessing that anyone could ever ask for :)
This week we have 2 people planned to get baptized. Sandra and Marco. They are investigators that we´ve taught for a while now but they´ve come to church 2 weeks in a row now and they have the desire. We have to help Sandra overcome a few things before she gets baptized but I know that we´ll be able to help them :) I´m so excited :)
Today my companion and I went to Baños. It´s a city that has some amazing waterfalls and some amazing views!!! I got some amazing pictures :)
I love this work.I don´t want it to end but my time as a full-time missionary is coming to a close. I have this week and lots of meetings next week and then I´m home. I still have things to learn and to share with other missionaries before my time ends. I´m excited to see what happens. I know that Jesus Christ suffered so I can make it back to my Heavenly Father´s presence. That´s why I live the Gospel, because I know that I can´t be saved unless I do all that Christ taught and reveals through Pres. Monson and the 12 apostles. I love this work. I love you all. Thank you for all that you do and have done. I will always be in debt to those who have served me :)

Love,
Élder Hakes

July 25, 2011

2011-08-01T08:52:00.002-06:00

Big chess pieces
Chess boards that an investigator makes
The Palacios Family that got sealed this week!!!!!!!!!
The Bellavista Arch that´s in our sector
Dear Family,
This week was so crazy and so amazing!!!! We are seeing so many blessings :) On Tuesday I went with our district leader to his sector here in Riobamba. We had a really good day. We were able to find a new family and we put baptismal dates with some people. That night we had 3 appointments in less than an hour. It was cool because all of the appointments were really spiritual and we were able to help s lot of different people that are progressing.
On Wednesday I went with Elder Stange to his sector to help with some people to get baptismal dates too! It went really well 2 families were able to accept dates and 1 of them went to church yesterday!!!! It ws good because Elder Stange wasn´t feeling too well and we were able to keep working and helping the people that really needed it.
On Thursday we had our specialized training with Pres. and Hna. Ghent and the assistants. It went really well. They talked about the importance of understanding the doctrine because the doctrine is the reason why we live the gospel. It was a really good training that really opened my eyes. We´ve taught it to the members too and they really liked it. :)
Yesterday we had some amazing experiences. We had 10 people at church!!!! We had to go to the other branch at 8 AM to have 3 people go. They had something to do this week but normally they´re good to go at 10 AM (our branches time). It was so good to have them all there. There were a lot of less actives at church too. Normally we have like 70 people at church but this week we had close to 100!!!!! Last night was so amazing. We have been teaching this lady called Helena Colcha since I got here. She´s been listening to the missionaries for about 14 months now and she knows more that a dozen missionaries that have helped teach her. She and her husband went to church yesterday and we went to visit them afterwards. We invited the husband to be baptized this weekend and he said yes!!!!!! Then we looked at Helena (she looked shocked at what her husband said) and we invited her to be baptized with her husband and she said yes!!!!! I almost couldn´t believe it :) I was so happy because I have invited her so many times over the last 4 and a half months to be baptized and she finally accepted!!!!!!! All of her kids (they are members for over a year) started cheering when she said yes :) It was such a cool moment. We just have to help her husband so he can stop drinking. He has stopped a little bit by himself but we´re going to help him even more.
Well I love you all so much. I love this great work. I can´t believe that my time is ending. I don´t want it to end. I know that I will miss Ecuador and all the people that I know so much. I don´t want to leave them, but I know that the Lord has other things planned for me. Thank you for your love and support. Don´t worry I´m excited to see you guys too :)

Love,
Élder Hakes

ME BEING A SITH :)

JULY 18, 2011

2011-08-01T08:48:00.003-06:00

Dear Family,
This week went by super fast. It was pretty fun too. I was going around to lots of different sectors again trying to help the other missionaries. It made everything go by even faster! I had a really amazing experience with a baptismal interview too. I went to Guaranda (2 hours away) for the interview. The person that I interviewed has had quite a few problems in her life. She has been fighting depression for years and there have been many times when she has been ready to kill herself and she was able to change her mind or someone came and stopped her. It was sad to hear about all that had happened to her in her life. I just told her that she has a lot of people that love her and care about her. I talked especially about how our Heavenly Father loves her. I told her that she should remember what I told her every time that she faces depression. 2 days after the interview I called her to tell her when her other interview with President would be and she thanked me for telling her that Heavenly Father loves her. She said that the day after the interview she had negative thoughts about herself and that when she remembered what I told her she felt better. It was way cool. During the interview she also told me that 3 days in a row she had dreamed with the missionaries that are teaching her and a 3rd really tall person :) She didn´t want "to confess" but she could trust me when we started talking. It was such a cool experience!!!!!
On Tuesday we had a really cool experience. I was with Elder Glassford, our district leader, and we found a ton of new families. We went to visit a cab driver and his family and he wasn´t there yet, but his mom invited us in and then she started inviting all of her family. We taught 10 people at the same time!!!! They were 4 different families that we found at the same time. It was a cool experience, but they were talking a ton!! They are evangelicals (I don´t know if that is spelt right). We tried to talk about the importance of the priesthood in receiving a baptism and they didn´t really understand. After we would talk one of them would talk and confuse everyone else. They all accepted to pray to know. We have to go back this week to see how their prayers went :) On the same day we talked with a family in the street and we walked back to their house with them. They let us in and they accepted a baptismal date for July 30. The only problem is that they went out of town so they weren´t able to go to church. We´ll be getting a hold of them this week too!!!
Well I love you all so much. Thank you for your support and for all that you do for me. I am so grateful for my family, for my brothers, sisters and parents. Also for my cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and great-grandparents. Thank you for all that you do!!!!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

July 11, 2011

2011-07-13T10:02:00.004-06:00

me with President and Hermana Ghent

Dear Family,
This week was a little bit crazy!!! We went to Quito on Monday and we had a ton of meetings!! They all went really well though. We got to meet President Ghent too!!! He´s almost as tall as I am. I can´t believe it :) He´s a really nice guy and he´s trying to get caught up on everything that we do here in the mission. His motto is "If it aint broke don´t fix it" so he wants to see what we´re doing as a mission now before he starts changing anything. He and his wife are very good people. He´s different from President Sloan but he´ll carry this mission to new limits!!! It will be fun to watch :)
This week we had a really cool presentation that we planned in a park here in Riobamba. We had a projector and a big screen and we projected Mormon Messages that a member downloaded from lds.org!! It went really well. We got to know a lot of new people and we had fun doing it. We passed out free popcorn and we made a big Book of Mormon out of a TV box that we found. It was a really fun presentation and a lot of people came to see why there was a big screen in the park :)
people watching

the big screen

me contacting at the copies Book of Mormon in different languages display

me and Elder Arriaga contacting in the presentation

all the missionaries at the presentation

This week the Cuji family (6 people) got baptized in the Joya Branch!!!! It was a really cool experience. I got to baptized 2 of them too (José Luis and Rocío) :) We were really excited to help this family take this step in their lives. We went a few times to help this family and it was really amazing. Everyone in white

the Cuji family

On Saturday José Luis Rodríguez is going to get baptized in our sector. We´re excited for him to take this big step in his life. Carlos Quigla had to go to Puyo (3 hours from here) and he has to go again this week. We´re still working with him and his parents to get them progressing more. This week we had all of our new converts in church even though we didn´t visit them because of the meetings and presentation. It was so good to see them exercise their own faith and be there :) :)
Well I love you all so much. Thank you for everything!!!!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

July 4, 2011

2011-07-13T09:53:00.003-06:00

Me at an interesting house

Me knocking on a door :)

A service project with the Palacios family

The baptism (Mari and Cristian)

Dear Family,
This week was kind of crazy. On Saturday Mari Paredes and Cristian got baptized!!!!! It was a sweet baptismal service. Mari actually invited a friend to the baptism and he has a baptismal date for the 16th!!!! His name is José Luis. He felt the Spirit so strongly and he is so receptive to everything. Mari (grandma who´s 42 yrs. old) and Cristian (grandson who´s 8 yrs. old) are so happy now. She told me how she was so happy to have the Holy Ghost and that she can go to the temple to do baptisms for the dead on July 22. We´re so excited for the progress that they have had up till now and that they will continue having!!
This week we got permission to have a special presentation in a park in Riobamba. We´re going to have a big screen, a projector, free popcorn and a giant Book of Mormon!!! It will be a really fun presentation. The members are really helping us out now too!! We´ve already passed out like 1,000 invitations too.
This week Carlos Quigla is going to get baptized!!!! He´s doing really well too!!!! He came to church with his dad this week. Victor (the dad) is progressing a lot too! The mom is being the problem now. The rest of the family only likes that we visit them, they´re not really keeping the commitments so they´re not progressing. We´re still trying to help them out. Going to church seems to be the diggest challenge for them right now.
This week was a little tough too. In Guaranda (part of our zone) we were going to have 13 baptisms but they only had 1. It was really hard to see that. A lot of investigators didn´t pass their interview and there were a lot of challenges. In Riobamba as a district we were going to have 3 but 1 fell through too. Our baptisms almost fell through too but we were able to help them ovecome their challenges before their baptism. Cristian was really sick and pale but he got better right before the baptism. I think that the Lord is trying our faith and our humility a little bit. We are about to explode as a zone right now. We were looking at the potential of the zone in our leader´s meeting and we could have up to 56 baptisms in 3 weeks if we help the people that we already have to get baptized. That´s not including new families that we can find!!!!! We have lots of work to do so we can help these people to progress and get baptized.
I´m so grateful for missionary work. I have changed so much during this time. I recognize my faults and errors easier now and I´ve been able to change a lot of them. I still have a ways to go though :) I love my Savior. Because of Him I can have peace in my life. I can change and repent. I can have the Gift of the Holy Ghost, which is the constant companionship of a member of the Godhead. Sometimes we don´t realize how blessed we are. Sometimes we want to see angels of maybe even Christ Himself but we forget that we already have the Holy Ghost. We are so blessed. We must all be worthy for the companionship of the Holy Ghost. It´s the guide that everyone in this world is looking for. We must take advantage of this gift that our Heavenly Father has given us. I love you all so much. Thank you for you love and support. I´m sad that my mission will end soon but I´m glad that I´ll be able to see you all soon. I have so much to do in so little time. Thank you for everything :)

Love,
Élder Hakes

June 27, 2011

2011-07-13T09:26:00.004-06:00

All the members at the baptism

Baptism with those in white

Baptism with the whole family

The cake with the Quigla family

B-day with the Quigla family

Dear Family,

This week was so awesome!!!!!! We had 4 baptisms on Saturday!!!! Part of the family Quigla got baptized and the service was amazing!!! There were about 50-60 people there for the family. It was a really spiritual experience. We didn´t have to worry about anything. Our branch mission leader filled up the font and had the agenda ready, we just had to bring the clothes. It was so amazing. The Spirit was so strong and the rest of the Quigla family was there to feel it. It really motivated them to be baptized. The rest of the family is preparing for July 9th.
This week Mari Paredes and her grandson are getting baptized this Saturday. Carlos Quigla is going to get baptized with them too!!! They have progressed so much and it has been so amazing to teach them.
I turned 21 on Thursday!!! I can´t believe it. I feel old now ha ha ha :) The members were really nice to me. I ate and had cake with 3 member families and the family Quigla had a cake for me too. It really touched me when the Quigla family had the cake and dinner for me. They don´t have hardly anything but they were willing to sacrifice for me. It was a touching moment for me. I hope that they keep progressing and that they can all be baptized.

My birthday cake with the other Palacios family (Javier and Mayra)

Us eating pizza with the branch president

Me and Diego Yumisaca (branch mission leader) having our birthday cake at the branch president´s house (Pres. Erick and Norma Suarez)

Presents that the Palacios family (our landlords) got me (a tie and chile from Mexico)

Another b-day cake

Thank you for all that you´ve done for me. I love you all so much. Stay strong doing the little things. Read the scriptures with real intent everyday and say your prayers morning and night and in your hearts during the whole day. Remember the Lord and He will remember you. I love you all so much. Thank you for all those who wrote me for my birthday!!!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

June 20, 2011

2011-06-20T17:35:00.004-06:00

Half of the Quigla family at the activity

The other half of the Quigla family

Victor Quigla preparing for the 3 legged race with Rosa his daughter-in-law (Segundo´s wife)
Victor Quigla (Jr.) winning the sack hop race at the Father´s Day activity

Segundo Quigla (in orange) in the sack race

Victor Quigla (Jr.) with his wife Angela dancing and balancing a tomato
Me with a member who sang at the activity and the Relief Society President

José Luis Quigla and his sister-in-law Rosa (Segundo´s wife) dancing and balancing a tomato

Dear Family,
This week was so crazy!!!! It went by so fast to. On Tuesday we had the last training with President and Sister Sloan. That was really weird. I can´t believe that they are leaving. Where has the time gone. It was kind of sad at the training because they have changed the lives of so many of us. They surprised us and President hugged all the Hermanas and Hermana Sloan hugged all the Elders. That was kind of weird. They end their mission on June 30. President Ghent will be here on the 30th too. It´ll be interesting being with another President for a month and a half, but I´m excited to get to know him. Supossedly he´s taller than I am. We´ll see :)
This week I basically went from sector to sector here in the zone. I was helping other missionaries the whole week. On Wednesday I was in Los Alamos with Elder Barrera, Thursday in La Joya with Elder Stange, Friday in Guaranda (2 hrs. from Riobamba) with Elder Cruz, and Saturday in La Joya with Elder Montalvo. It was a crazy week but I learned a lot and I felt that I was helping the zone out. We got a lot done and we´re seeing a lot of progress now in the zone.
My companion did amazing in our sector this week too. We found another 4 new families and 3 of them have baptismal dates and went to church this week!!!!!!! We had 15 people at church this week and we´re going to have 4 baptisms this weekend!!!! Finally!! :) Next week, July 2, we have planned 10 baptisms and they have all gone to church and are really excited!!!!! I am so amazed at all the blessings that our Heavenly Father is giving to us now. In the zone (6 companionships) we have 22 people planned to be baptized on July 2. It is almost unbelievable for me but I know that we can do it now. We just have to follow-up well with them.
Well, I got some crazy news this week. They changed my release date. I´ll be coming home August 12th instead of the 19th. Now I´ll have at least a week before I have to take off to school again :) I have a lot to do before I go home too. I have a lot more to learn and to teach before my time will end. I am so grateful for this great work. My time as a missionary has been and is the best time of my life up till now. I have learned so much and I have received so much. If we don´t want to share the Gospel with others we don´t understand the Atonement personally in our lives. Of course we will all have a little bit of fear at first but when we share we are blessed and we feel more love for our Savior and Redeemer. Share the Gospel with everyone!!!! We all need it so much and it is just selfish to keep it to ourselves. I love you all so much. Thank you so much for all that you have done for me in my life. I have learned so much and I am who I am because of each of you. Read the Book of Mormon everyday and pray with all your heart at all times. Partake of the Sacrament with real intent and remember the covenants that we make at baptism. I love you all!!!!!!!!!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

June 13, 2011

2011-06-20T17:01:00.005-06:00

Investigators that moved to Guayaquil

Me droping a tomatoe in a game we had in the branch family night against Pres. Luna (1st counselor in the District Presidency)

My companion and I making burritos in an Elder´s quorum activity

Us studying with other missionaries

A light pole in the middle of the street

Investigators that moved to Guayaquil

Dear Family,
This week was amazing!!!!!! The Lord has blessed us so much. I have seen more miracles this week than in my whole time here in Riobamba. We started working really hard and we are already seeing the blessings. This week we found 4 new families. They are all so amazing. On Tuesday we found a family of 10, the parents and 8 kids (they have another kid but he lives in another city). Their name is the Quigla family and 7 of the 10 are in baptismal age. They live a little bit outside of the city but it´s not too far away. They are very humble. All of them live in 2 bedrooms and a kitchen. They have been so kind to us because they feel blessed to have people there at their house sharing the gospel with them. The thing is that we feel so blessed to be able to know and to share with them too. We have a lot of love for each other. They have been making sacrifices to be able to live the Gospel. This week they couldn´t all go to church because they had to work and some other things that they had already planned before they met us, but they have already told their boss that they won´t be working next Sunday so they can all go to church. They are such an amazing family!!!
On Wednesday we contacted a reference that other Elders gave us. We went and his whole family was there. There are 5 people in the family, mom, dad, and 3 girls (2 of the girls are in baptismal age). Their name is the Parra Rodríguez family. This week they couldn´t go to church either because they had already planned to visit their family, but they already have made plans to go to church next week. They are such a great family.
On Wednesday we also got to know the wife and 2 kids of the second oldest son in the family Quigla. His wife is amazing. On Thursday, Saturday and Sunday she went with all the little kids to the Branch Family Night, the Primary activity, and Sacrament meeting. She is really excited and her husband is progressing too!!! I love this family!!!!!!!!!!!
On Sunday morning before we went to church, we contacted a reference from other missionaries. It was a family of 5, the Pilco Pintag family. The dad had an accident about a year ago. He fell of a cliff that was about 4 stories tall. The doctors don´t understand how he lived. He is in a wheelchair now because he´s paralyzed from the waist down. On Sunday he had enough faith to get out of bed and let us help him get into his wheelchair and go to church with his 2 sons (9 and 11 yrs. old). He went for 2 hours of church and he told us that a lot of his pain went away and that he felt a lot of peace that he hasn´t felt in a long time. He has plates and screws in his back so he had to go home after the 2nd hour to rest but he really enjoyed it. His sons did too. His daughter and wife went to their land that they have outside of the city and couldn´t go this week but she was surprised with her husband so she´s going to go next week with the whole family!!!!
We are seeing so many blessings here in Riobamba now. The missionaries are more excited now and we are working harder than ever. It is such a blessing to be a servant of the Lord. He blesses us so much. I am grateful for the power of the Atonement in my life. I need it everyday. I love this work. I love being a missionary. I have such little time left to do so much. I need to keep working like I did this week. I love you all so much!!!!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

June 6, 2011

2011-06-20T16:58:00.001-06:00

Dear Family,
Well this week went by way too fast. We went to Quito on Monday for ZL Council and we came back on Wednesday. Elder Alcívar went to Quito yesterday and he´s going home tomorrow morning. He got really trunky at the end. On Saturday we had our mini-zone conference. It went really well. We weren´t very sure what we should talk about because there are quite a few challenges that we are going through right now. We decided just to focus on one thing and it turned out really well. The Spirit was so strong during the whole conference. Everyone, including us, had a duh moment. It was really good. The spirit was so strong.
This week I had a really specially fast too. I think it was the first time that I had real intent when I went into the fast. I was so worried about the zone and the missionaries and I felt a little bit lost. I didn´t know exactly what I needed to do. I decided to focus on the zone during the fast and I was praying for them during the whole thing. I received so much revelation about what we need to do and what I need to change in myself so the zone can progress. I´m excited for my new companion, Elder Albino from Uruguay, and the work that we´re going to do. I love this work so much. I have learned so many things and I continue to learn new things everyday. Thank you for your good examples and for the advice that you have given and give me. I learned that I need to trust in the Lord with all my heart and not lean unto my own understanding so the Lord can direct my paths (Prov. 3:5-6).

Love,
Élder Hakes

PS My companion's name is Elder Albino and he´s from Uruguay. He was in the 1st group that I received as an assistant ha ha :) President nicknamed him the energizer bunny so I´m excited to work with him. He´ll get here to Riobamba in about an hour. He came from Santo Domingo from heat to cold. Hopefully he doesn´t get sick :)

May 30, 2011

2011-06-02T15:06:00.000-06:00

Dear Family,
Well this week was pretty crazy. We had some exchanges and we went to Quito to listen to Elder Walter Gonzalez of the presidency of the 70. It was pretty sweet. The entire mission was there in the chapel for that conference. We had a really good time but we got home really late afterwards. I think it was about 1 AM when we got to bed :) This week we found an awesome family. It´s the Naboa Zurita family. In the family they´re a mom, dad, and 4 kids (3 in baptismal age). On Wednesday we knocked on their door and they let us in to teach them. We had a really awesome lesson with them and they accepted our invitation to be baptized. They live really close to the branch president so on Friday we visited them again and we went with the branch president´s wife. We had another excellent lesson. It was even better because we had a member there with us. The Spirit was really strong.
On Friday night we went with the branch president and his wife to visit a reference from them. We visited a widow who´s husband died about 6 months ago. He died pretty young so it really affected her. We went and she just started to tell us about all of her problems and all of the things that she´s going through. She has gone to psyciatrists and other things but she hasn´t been able to change too much. She feels really empty. We talked about the Atonement and how Christ knows exactly what she´s going through. The Spirit was so strong when we were there and she told us that she feels that what we share will help her. The branch president and his wife gave powerful testimonies about how our families can be sealed for time and all eternity and that she is going to see her husband again. It was such a spiritual experience that we had. I felt so much love for the people that we taught and the Spirit was there. I love the spirit!!!!
I love you all so much. Thank you for everything. You all have been good influences and blessings in my life.

Love,
Élder Hakes

May 23, 2011

2011-06-02T15:03:00.002-06:00

Dear Family,
This week was so crazy!!!!! We had District Conference here in Riobamba. We were in so many meetings. On Friday we had Zone Conference with President and Hermana Sloan adn later that night President invited us to go to his "farewell" dance that the district did for him. It was way cool and I got some awesome videos of them dancing. President and Hermana Sloan got up and danced too ha ha :) It was pretty fun. On Saturday we went in some intercambios and we had district leadership meeting and then the Priesthood meeting. On Sunday we had the general session at 10:30 AM and afterwards we had some baptisms here in the zone.
We actually had some really cool experiences this weekend. On Saturday morning, my companion and I were talking about what we need to do to have baptisms here in the zone. We made a list of all the people that can get baptized this month and it was a list of about 20 people. We chose a few of them and we went to work with our missionaries. We were in divisions all day on Saturday in all of the elders sectors here in Riobamba. We had planned only 1 baptism for this weekend but we ended with 3. It´s not a ton more but I´m happy that we we´re able to help out and get people interviewed and baptized. It was a really cool experience.
Well my companion only has 2 weeks left. It´s so wierd that I have another companion leaving. He´s still working hard though and we want to help the zone out a ton. We´re trying to get better each day and we´re waiting for the results. I´m learning a lot of patience right now :) I´m also learning to be more humble. The Lord wants to se my faith before He gives the blessings. I can´t wait for next month :) It will be record breaking for all of us!!!!
Well this week Elder Walter Gonzalez of the Presidency of the Quorum of the Seventy is going to have a devotional with us!!!! It was going to be Elder Richard G. Scott but he can´t come anymore. I´m still excited though because the Area President Elder Marcus B. Nash will be there too. It will be a powerful and spiritual conference. I´m excited :)
Well the offices called me this week and as of right now my official date to come home will be Friday, August 19. I´ll have a very short time at home before going off to school again. I guess you´ll all have to come visit me in Thatcher ha ha :) I love you all so very much. I have learned so much during this time as a missionary and I have so much more to learn. Thank you for your love and support. Stay strong in the Gospel and always be worthy to have a temple recommend. I miss the temple so much. I think we all take it for granted that we have a temple so close and so easy to access. I love you all so much!!!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

May 16, 2011

2011-06-02T14:47:00.004-06:00

Dear Family,
Well this week went really well. We had some really amazing experiences and we´re starting to see some more progrss here. This week we found a new family called the Aulla family. It was so cool when we found them. We were on our way to an appointment and it was raining really hard. We were going pretty fast so we could go inside. When we came to the corner where we needed to turn I noticed that the light was on and I just thought warmth. It was kind of weird so I decided to knock on the door. The family let us in and we shared with them. It was a really cool experience. I´m glad that we followed the Spirit and that we were able to find that new family.
Last night we had an even better experience. We went to visit Helena Colcha and her family. She has 5 daughters (4 of the 5 are members) and her husband (non-member). She has been listening to the missionaries for a year now and she hasn´t gotten baptized. The last few times that we´ve gone we´ve talked about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is faith, repentance, baptism, receive the gift of the Holy Ghost, and endure to the end. The last time we visited her we also invited her to start reading the Book of Mormon more frecuently. She did it and she´s changed a lot. In the last visits she told us, jokingly, that she would get baptized next year. This time I asked her if she´d get baptized before I go home and she said yes. She told us that she made a promise with the Lord. She didn´t tell what she promised but she said that she will be baptized very soon. It was such a cool experience because she has changed so much. The Lord is softening her heart through the Book of Mormon. I love the Spirit.
Well yesterday I had an interesting lunch (look at the pictures). In Spanish it´s called caldo de pata or in English foot soup. In the caldo de pata that they gave us it had a big foot in it. It wasn´t as bad as I thought but it was pretty weird. The soup was good but the foot was weird.

I´ve eaten some weird stuff these last few weeks. I killed and ate the cuy (guinea pig) that is in the pictures too : ) On Saturday we had the branch Mother´s Day party. They went big. They hired a band and a Mariachi (it´s basically like the Mexican music that they have in Mexican restaurants). The picture of the rice is one of the huge pots that they had of rice for everyone. There´s also a picture of us with the Mariachi. It was a fun party and we had like 7 investigators at the party but none went to church.

I love you all so much. Thank you for your support and for everything that you do for me. I love you all!!!!!!!!!

My comp´s name is Elder Alcívar and he´s from Guayaquil, Ecuador. He has 23 months in the mission and he´s with me in the Mariachi picture that I sent in the family letter. He goes home June 7th.

Love,
Élder Hakes

May 2, 2011

2011-05-04T23:01:00.003-06:00

The volcano Tungurahua is kind of active right now :) There is a lot of ash falling here in Riobamba
Dear Family,
This week went really well. We were able to find some really good new people and we had a family come to church this week!!!!! On Thursday we found the Castelo Family and we taught them for the first time on Saturday. We invited them to church and they came yesterday. It was such a blessing for us to see them there and to be able to help them.This week we also found another person that is going through a lot of problems. She´s a single mother of 2 kids and she lives with her parents. She´s 25 and lives off of her parent´s income. She doesn´t feel that she can receive repentance of her sins so we helped her out :) It was such a blessing to find her. She didn´t go to church because she was sick.
Well right now we have to go to Quito to Zone Leader´s Council and on Wednesday we have the all leaders meeting. We´ll be in Quito till Wednesday night. This week is my companion´s last week in the mission. On Sunday I´ll be in Quito again to drop him off.
I am so grateful for the Gospel. I am grateful for the Atonement and for the power that it has in my life. The Lord has made some big changes in my life and I have learned so much during this time here in the mission. I love you all so much!!!!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

PS - - When we read information online about the volcano, the city at the base of it was evacuated. The volcano was throwing boulders the size of a small truck. On Google maps, you could see the clouds of ash over the area. So I guess that goes with "kinda active." Silly boy!

April 25, 2011

2011-05-04T22:53:00.001-06:00

Dear Family,
Well the weeks are going by faster. I can´t really believe it. Elder Estrada is on his second to last week. This week was pretty crazy. On Tuesday we went to another companionships sector for a service project and we helped make dough and filling for 600 mini-pies -they´re like those pies you can buy in the gas station- for a new convert and her family. We were there for a long time helping them but we had a good time. This week was crazy here because of Holy Week and Independence of Riobamba Day. Everyone was going nuts. There were so many people that came and that were visiting the city. Downtown was really packed but in our sector there wasn´t a soul in sight. This week we visited a lot of less-actives because they were home and willing to listen.
This week we put a baptismal date with the Inca Family and they accepted. It was a really cool experience because the previous lessons that we had were a little uncomfortable and we didn´t know why. We talked about it and this time we went in with more love for them and we shared things that they really needed and we invited them to follow Christ. It was an amazing experience because I felt like they couldn´t say no. We didn´t manipulate our convince them or anything. The Spirit was there and everything that we said had an impact on them. Unfortunately they didn´t come to church on Sunday. We should have gone by for them but they told us that they were coming so we didn´t go by. Their baptismal date fell through because they didn´t go to church so we´ll have to put a new date with them.
Well Happy Easter to everyone. I know that it´s a little late but there you go. I´m so grateful for the Atonement of Jesus Christ and that we can repent of our sins. It is the only thing that can give us true hope in this world. I hope that all of us can remember that and that we can receive the blessings of the Atonement through our diligence. I love you all so much. Thank you for your great support.

Love,
Élder Hakes

April 18, 2011

2011-04-20T17:44:00.005-06:00

Me in a very small house
Dear Family,
This was a crazy week. We had a lot of service projects with the people in our branch. This week we helped fix a car with a mechanic in our ward (he´s less active) and he went to church this week with his family. He´s also preparing to receive the Melchizedek priesthood next month!!!!! It was pretty fun helping him too. On Saturday we went to one of our member´s garden. We helped her pull tons of weeds :) I can´t believe how many there were. Another member that was there was surprised that I could just keep going and going with the tool I was using (it was like a hoe but it was bigger and it´s used like a pick axe). For him the hoe/pick axe is half his size, but for me it´s just another tool :) It was pretty funny :) The member that we helped are less-actives as well and they also went to church this week :)

A very small lady. She´s the mechanic´s aunt or something :)

Us pulling weeds

Saturday was a really special day. In the zone we had 9 baptisms and we had them all in the same building. My companion and I know basically all of them because we interviewed 8 of the 9. One of them asked me to baptize them too! We actually had to convince one family (of 5) to come. The morning of the baptism the parents had gotten into a fight (only the mom got baptized, the missionaries never taught the dad) and it effected the whole family. The mom yelled at one of her daughters and all of the kids that got baptized got mad. When we arrived at their house to pick them up they didn´t come out, only the mom and one of the kids. We went in and talked to all of them and we finally were able to help them. We talked about how the convenant is with God and not with anyone else. They came and it was an amazing baptismal service. There were like 30-40 members present from the 2 branches. There were so many people in white!!!!! It was an amazing night :)

Pictures of the baptisms Fam. Herrera Orozco and Fam. Tenelema and Karen Jimenez

Today we had a fun activity :) We went to Ecuador´s highest volcano, Chimborazo. We went up to the 2nd refuge which is at 5000 meters or 16,400 feet!!! There was still a lot more to climb but we didn´t have time nor the energy to do it :) According to a sign there, the top of Chimborazo is the highest distance from the center of the earth. I´m not sure if that´s true but that is a cool fact :)

Well family, I love you all so much. Thank you for your support and thank you for your words of comfort and strength. It helps me so much to keep working and serving the Lord. Keep strong to the Gospel and remember our Savior this Easter season. To receive the blessings of the Atonement we have to follow Christ in all things :)

Love,
Élder Hakes

April 11, 2011

2011-04-20T17:34:00.003-06:00

Pictures:
a cuy (hamster) foot that I found in my desk this week

Me cleaning an underground water tank

Dear Family,
This week was so crazy. We were in so many exchanges with our missionaries. I was in Guaranda (2 hrs. from Riobamba. We have 4 missionaries from our zone there) for a day and a half trying to help an investigator there but we never got a hold of her. It was a good exchange though. On Friday we went with some other missionaries here in Riobamba for another day. It all went really well though. We feel that we were able to help them a lot.
On Friday I had a good experience with Elder Stange (from California) while we were in exchanges. Basically the whole day it was raining and really, really cold. We were knocking on doors because no one was home yet. We weren´t havingmuch success though. We found some people that they just kind of listened and were only half-way interested. Finally it was getting later so more people were getting home from work. We went to an investigators house but they weren´t home yet. It was a little bit frustratig for us but we decided to talk with the lady that lives in front of our investigators house. We started talking and she didn´t seem that interested until I asked her "Why is your barber shop named Antoni?" She told me that it´s named after her son who died 4 years ago. We started talking to her about the plan of salvation with her and about the Gospel of Jesus Christ (she also told us that she was divorced from her husband 4 years ago too). She changed. She became very interested and we taught her a lesson. She accepted a baptismal date and said that she was going to go to church (unfortunately she didn´t because she was visiting relatives). It was a really amazing experience for us. We were so grateful to get out of the rain and to help her and her children feel the Spirit.
Well, my companionn only has 29 days left. He´s a little bit trunky, well let´s be honest, he´s really trunky :) He´s pretty excited to see his family again. His sisters are inactive and he wants to help them to get back on track. He also misses the food a lot :) He says that it´s more flavorful in Colombia :)
Well I´m so grateful for all of you. Thank you for your love and support. I know I say it every week but it´s true. I have had so many great people around me during my whole life and it is such a blessing for me :) I love you all.

Love,
Élder Hakes

April 4, 2011

2011-04-20T17:26:00.004-06:00

Eating more cake

Elder Stange cutting my hair today (I cut his hair too)

Dear Family,
Wasn´t conference great this year!!!!! I loved every session. So many of the talks were for me and were the exact words that I needed to hear. It was such a great experience :) Priesthood Session was the best. I think every speaker said something that I needed to hear. The spoke so boldly and directly and I loved it!!!! This tie I payed special attantion to President Monson. I watched everything that he did. His expressions, what he said, how he said it, when he said it, etc. I know that he´s not perfect but I know that he is the prophet. He says what needs to be said. He tells us what we need and he doesn´t go around in circles when he tells us. I know that he´s a prophet :)
Well, this week we had ZL Council again!!! It was just as spiritual as General Conference. There were so many things said that I needed to hear. It motivated me to get to work and to focus more on this great work :) I received a lot of revelation for me and for my companionship and for the zone. I love the Spirit!!!!!
So this week we ate another cake :) We didn´t know about it either ha ha :) There´s a recent convert that turned 18 on Thursday and they barely made the cake last night. After a visit with her Mom and sister (investigators) we ate cake :) It was pretty sweet.
I love you all so much. Thank you for your examples. I´m so grateful that we have a living prophrt today and 12 apostles that lead and guide us. It is such a blessing to listen to them and to do as they say. I love each and every one of you!!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

PS --- Riobamba, weather wise, is very similar to Quito. It´s at about the same height and about the same temperature. Here is a lot smaller than Quito though. It´s very rural. There are a lot of natives and a lot of little towns right outside of the city. There aren´t any rivers that I know of. The road coming here to Riobamba from Quito is called Volcano Alley. I can see 2 volcanos and Ecuador´s biggest mountain (Chimborazo) from where I´m at :) The temperature always changes drastically here. This morning we played basketball and soccer and it was really hot. THere was a ton of sun but right now it´s cold and rainy :) It´s kind of annoying that it changes so much but it´s really nice weather here :) I would say that it´s always between 50-75º all the time.

Pictures:

March 28, 2011

2011-03-28T21:05:00.001-06:00

Dear Family,
This week went by really fast. We had a pretty successful week. We finally got people to go to church!!! We had a new couple that we found this week and the dad of the Peralta family at church :) The new family is way good. When we taught them the dad basically was saying that he`s been looking for the true church for a long time and that he`s willing to do what it takes to find it. He has all the desires in the world so we are just going to have to help him to do the little things to feel the Spirit. They´ve already gone to church so they´re progressing!!!
This week was my companion´s birthday. We ate a ton of food :) On Friday the mamita gave us a cake after we ate and we sang Happy Birthday, in English. It was kind of weird because they knew the words and sang it pretty well :) The funny part is that it wasn´t his actual birthday. His birthday was on Saturday. On Saturday we had our last appointment with the Branch President so they could give us pizza and another cake to eat :) After that appointment we went back home and our dueño (our renter), who lives right in front of us and are members, got taco stuff and had me cook it for my comps b-day as well :) It was pretty fun for both of us. But the birthday fun didn`t end on Saturday. When we went to visit some investigators on Sunday they had a cake ready for him. We ate cake and dinner with them too. We didn´t even know about it :) It was a fun weekend :)
Well, this week we have Zone Leader Council again. I can`t believe time is going by so fast!! Tomorrow we´ll be going to Quito again. Elder Estrada only has 6 weeks left now so he´s pretty trunky now. We´re still working but I´ve got to push a little bit sometimes. I´m pretty excited for this month though. General Conference is this week and we`re working hard in the zone now.
Well I love you all so much. Thanks for everything that you do.

Love,
Élder Hakes

March 14, 2011

2011-03-28T20:56:00.007-06:00

Dear Family,
Well, this week went by a lot faster than I thought it would. It was an up and down week for us. The Lasso Family didn`t get baptized because they had to go visit their grandpa for his birthday. It was kind of a last minute thing where she told us Friday night so we`re kind of sad about that. We invited a ton of people to church this week too but no one went. It was a rough week :)
Yesterday we had a really good experience though!!! We went and visited a person that we had contacted on Saturday and she and her family was home so we visited them. We had a really good visit and they have a lot of desires for their lives. They accepted a baptismal date for April 2 :) They will have to get married but they want to do it so it shouldn`t be too hard :)
Well on Tuesday I got pretty wet a couple of times. Luckily they didn`t throw ink this time, just water. Everyone here was throwing water at everyone. It was pretty crazy!!! It`s an interesting holiday that they celebrate here :)
Well I`m not sure what else to write about. I bought a hamburger that had bacon on it this week. It wasn`t as good as I thought it would be :) We are working hard on getting people to go to church. It has been a challenge for us in our sector and in the zone. The people here in Riobamba love to eat potatos. It`s too much for me sometimes :) I think I`ve eaten potatos everyday since I`ve been here :) I tried 2 other crazy things this week. The first thing is something called tripa mishka or intestines. It didn`t taste too bad but it took FOREVER to chew :) The second thing I tried was something called Ceviche de chochos. It`s kind of like a soup that is made with onion, tomato, cilantro, pig skin and a bean type thing called chocho. I don`t like pig skin very much. It doesn`t have any taste but it`s just nasty :)
Well I love you all so much. Thank you for your love and your support. I`m so grateful for each of you in my life.

Love,
Èlder Hakes

March 21, 2011

2011-03-28T20:56:00.006-06:00

a rabbit head and Sunday dinner (we didn`t eat the head) :)

A Mtn. View Toro and a Westwood Warrior (E` Wright is in my zone)

Dear Family,
This week went by so fast again :) I can`t believe it!!! This week went really well for us. We found some new people and we got a hold of some people that we`ve been looking for, for a long time. We have a new family of 5 that we`re teaching!!!! It`s the Peralta Family. They`re doing really well. On Thursday they went to the Ward Family Night that we have every week. They seemed to have a good time. We were in charge of the game so we gave everyone a straw and divided them up into teams. Each team had to move parts of a puzzle (made with regular paper) from one table to another. When they moved all the pieces they had to put the puzzle together and do what it said. Each team had to make a human pyramid. It was pretty fun!!! The Peralta family couldn`t make it to church on Sunday because they had to visit their sick grandma that lives far away from here. We have an appointment with them tonight to teach them and see how they`re doing. On wednesday we are going to have a family night at the Peralta family`s house with the branch council. We`re excited about that too!!!!
I really like our branch here. They`re working hard and they are helping us out a lot. Our branch basically is one family. The Yumisaca family. There are like 4-5 kids that are all married and all have kids. It`s pretty crazy. The family is really supportive though and they`ve helped us out a lot.
Last Tuesday we had our specialized training. It was kind of weird to listen more and talk less. I`m so used to teaching the whole time, but it was nice. I learned a lot and it helped me out :) It was nice to see President again after not seeing him in so long :) Hermana Sloan was excited to see me again. I think she liked talking in English more in the car ha ha :)
Well I love you guys so much!!!! Thank you for all of your love and support. I`m so blessed to have you in my life. Be faithful to the covenants that you have made.

Love,
Èlder Hakes

Pictures:

March 7,2011

2011-03-09T20:59:00.003-06:00

Looking a bit like a UCLA Bruin

The newest suit

A kid that reminds me of Brent..... a LOT

Dear Family!!!!!!!
This week was amazing!!!!! I`m so happy to be back in the field again :) :) We had so many spiritual experiences this week. On Thursday I went to a place called Guaranda. It`s 2 hours from where we`re at right now, but it`s part of our zone. We went to their district meeting and afterwards we went in divisions with the 2 companionships there. It was a fun trip. On the way there we had to pass by Chimborazo, the biggest volcano in Ecuador (it`s inactive though). I got some sweet pictures that I attached here in the e-mail ;)
On Friday we had a really awesome experience with a part-member family here. The mom and the daughter aren`t baptized and the dad is a recent convert. The mom hadn`t accepted a baptismal date because she is having some opposition with her family. We had an amazing lesson with her. We helped her see that there is an opposition in all things and that it`s part of the process. She had a change in her during the lesson and she and her daughter accepted a baptismal date for this weekend (March 12)!!!!!
Last night we had another amazing experience. We were teaching a family that has been listening and attending church for a long time. It`s another part-member family where 2 of the daughters are recent converts. We were working on putting a date with the mom because she is the one that goes to church every week (the dad is an alcoholic but was present in the lesson and not drunk). My companion started off being very direct with her because he has been teaching her for so long. In my opinion he was being to direct, it was a little bit offensive. When I started talking I just asked her some questions and she just said that she wants to be sure of her desicion when she makes it. Later on I asked why she kept going to church and she said that she feels good there and that her week goes better when she goes to church. I asked her if she felt safe and secure and church. She told me yes. I asked her how she knew that and she sat quietly for a minute and the Spirit entered in the room very very strongly. She didn`t answer but I knew what she was thinking so I asked her if she would be prepared to be baptized on March 19. She said yes and that she would keep praying to know and keep reading to feel more sure about her desicion. As we were about to say the prayer, the dad asked, "What would I have to do to be baptized?" It surprised all of us when he said that. We told him that he`d have to go to church and that he`d have to stop drinking. He said that he would talk with his wife and that he would have an answer for us today (we have an appointment with them tonight). The Spirit was so strong that he had a change within him and he felt the need to be baptized. It was an amazing experience!!!!! I love teaching by the Spirit :) :) :)
Well, today and tomorrow are are holidays for Ecuador. It`s called Carnaval. They all started since last week just for the fun of it. Basically everyone drinks a lot and everyone is throwing water, flour, eggs, ink, something that looks like colored shaving cream, etc. They keep getting me because I`m white and tall and I guess I`m a good target for them. They`ve only thrown water except for one time they threw purple ink at me (picture attached) so it hasn`t been too bad. I actually caught a water balloon and threw back at the people that threw it at me once. That`s right when they hit me with an ink filled balloon :)
I love you all so much. I`m so grateful for your letters and for your support during this time. I love serving the Lord. I am closer to Him now than I ever was before and I love it!!!

Love,
Èlder Hakes

February 26, 2011

2011-02-27T17:27:00.000-06:00

Dear Family,
Well this week was super busy again. We went to Otavalo and Ambato again this week. We went 2 days back to back so it was really tiring. On Monday we went to Ambato and we stayed the night there. In the morning we had Zone Conference with them and afterwards we traveled back to Quito. We got to Quito at about 8:30 PM. The next morning at 8 AM we left President´s house to Otavalo and had the zone conference at 10 AM. We stayed the night in Otavalo and then we came back the next morning. It was pretty crazy but I really enjoyed it :)
When we were in Ambato on Monday we went on divisions with the zone leaders. We had a really good experience. Most of the time we were just talking with people in the street and knocking on doors. We finally talked to someone in their store and she was pretty interested. She called her husband and we shared some time with them. They were both really young. He was 22 and she was 21 and they had a 4 year old daughter. Right off the bat they started sharing so many things that they´re going through and they asked for help. They have a lot of mistrust in their relationship and they want to get over it. We talked about family prayer and scripture study and they loved it. They said that they think that´s what they need in their lives right now. It was a really spiritual experience :)
Well, President hasn´t told me where I´m going, nor who my replacement is. He´s really busy this weekend because the Area President, Elder Nash, is here and President is accompanying him to a stake conference. Next week I´ll still have a lot of meetings. We´ll have ZL Council and Leaders training next week. I´m excited. It´ll be weird to have to listen and not give the training :) I´m excited for it though. I have a lot of ideas now for being a zone leader and how to help a zone. I´ve learned a lot during this time as assistant and I want to put it to practice now.
Well I love you all. Thank you for all that you do and for your support. I love each of you so much.

Love,
Élder Hakes

February 19, 2011

2011-02-20T17:22:00.001-06:00

Dear Family,
This week has been pretty crazy :) We had 6 new missionaries come and everything went really well. It´s been amazing for me to see how many good missionaries have been coming to this mission. This group has a lot of future leaders in it. Most of them had already been leaders in the church at home. One was an Elders quorum president for a year before coming here to the mission. That surprised me a lot. I´m excited to see there progress!!!
On Wednesday we had the last zone conference here in Quito. We had a ton of people there. Because of the changes, we had to invite a lot of missionaries from their new zones because they hadn´t been to a zone conference yet. There were 50 missionaries at the conference. That´s 1/4 of the mission!!! It was a really good conference too.
On Thursday we got to go help another zone with baptismal interviews. They´re supposed to have 15 baptisms today!!! I had a really amazing experience in one of the interviews that really strengthened my testimony. During the interview, the only doubt or problem that she had was about President Monson being a prophet of God. When I first found out I kind of let it aside and kept going through the interview questions because I thought that there might be something else. When I finished all of the questions I asked her if she wanted to be baptized. She told me yes, but she wants to know if President Monson is a prophet first. I asked her how she could know that he´s a prophet. She answered by saying that she had to pray. I told her ok then lets kneel down and you can ask Heavenly Father if Pres. Monson is a prophet of God. We knelt down and she said the prayer. I was praying in my heart that she would recognize the spirit during her prayer. Towards the end of the prayer she began to stutter a little bit and she ended saying amen. She sat down and was looking down into her lap crying. The first thing she said was, "I can´t believe that He would answer me so fast. I feel exactly how I felt when I prayed about Joseph Smith." It was such a special experience for me. Heavenly Father answered both of our prayers. After she told me about what she felt she told me that she has to get baptized on Saturday. I am so grateful that I was able to have that experience. It strengthened my testimony of President Monson and of prayer. He will always help his children when they sincerely ask for it.
Well, this week I´ve been working hard on leaving everything ready and prepared for my replacement. He´ll have to learn everything in 4 weeks because my companion is ending his mission then. It´s kind of weird to think that I won´t be here in a week and a half. I´m excited to go back to the field again. It´ll be fun to get back to the real work :)
Well I love you all. Thank you for all that you do. I´m grateful for each of you.

Love,
Élder Hakes

February 12, 2011

2011-02-20T17:08:00.003-06:00

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

February 5, 2011

2011-02-06T21:55:00.004-06:00

Dear Family,
This was such a crazy week!!!! I´m so exahusted :) Zone Leader´s Council went really well. We played basketball instead of soccer and a lot of the latins got kind of mad. It was really fun to play though. They were just being stubborn ha ha ha :) On Wednesday we left for Esmeraldas. I can´t believe that we were back in the coast again. It seems like we were just there yesterday. Time is flying!!!! On Wednesday night we went on divisions with the zone leaders in Esmeraldas (there are 4 ZLs). We had a really good exchange. We were walking in the street and we contacted this guy. He was really interested and he invited us in to his house. It was way good :) We talked with him and his wife. Well, they aren´t married yet (that´s very common on the coast) but they want to. They said that they´re going to go to church so we were pretty excited!!!
So this time around we have Zone Conferences again. They´re every 3 months and I feel like we just barely had the last one. For zone conferences we always have lunch so we get to eat food from all over the country. The food on the coast is so good. It´s way better than anything in Quito :) For the training that we give during the zone conference we have to teach with the zone leaders. It makes things kind of complicated. We have to have time before to plan everything out with them. The first 2 conferences have gone really good so we really have enjoyed it. Our training´s theme is "Teach People, Not Lessons" for this month. We start off the training with a bad example. My companion is standing up in front of everyone and he just says lets go to page 169 and he just reads it. He doesn´t make hardly any comments. He´ll ask a question every now and then, but he won´t let anyone answer it. He answers it himself and just keeps going on reading. After reading most of the section he says, "Well, now we want to leave a commitment with you" and he looks at me. The whole time while he is reading I sit down and am playing with our cell phone. Sometimes I´ll answer a call or make a call while my companion is reading. When he looks at me I´m not paying attention at all so he nudges and then I just say, "Oh, well, will you speak with everyone?" After that we just tell them that it´s the Zone Leaders turn. We just show them what it feels like when we don´t focus in them. It´s a really fun bad example that we do :)
Today we went to a place called Teleferico. It´s basically a ski lift that takes you up on top of a mountain. It was pretty amazing. We were able to see all of Quito and we got some amazing pictures. The lift took us up to 4,100 meters or 13,451.4 feet. It was pretty hard to breath up there! Elder Falconi is still with us and he has a panoramic camera so we got some really sweet pictures :) It was a fun p-day. I really need some time to relax. It´s been a while since I´ve done that :)
Well I love you all. Thank you so much for all that you do for me. I love this great work. I feel as Alma the younger (Alma 36:24). This is a wonderful work that blesses so many people.

Love,
Élder Hakes

January 29, 2011

2011-02-06T21:41:00.003-06:00

Dear Family,
This week was way too crazy!!!! We had a lot of trainings and 2 nights we had to take a missionary to the hospital past midnight. So about 2 weeks ago a missionary had to have his appendix removed and he has been staying with the secretaries and us until he is well enough to go back to work. So this week we had to go to the hospital 2 times, both for the same reason. On Tuesday I was with Elder Falconi (the one that had surgery) teaching a lesson. On the way back he told me that his stomach was hurting a little bit more and when we were right outside of the house he stopped because he had a blood/pus/infection stain on his shirt. We took him straight to the hospital and waited. They had to open the incision a little bit to get the infection out because there was a lot of it. The same thing happened on Thursday night. They had to clean him out again. On Tuesday night/Wednesday morning we got home at 2:30AM and on Thursday night/Friday morning we got home at 1:30AM. I´ve never been so tired. He´s doing fine now but he has to go to the hospital everyday to get the infection drained. What a crazy week!!!!!
Well on Wednesday, right after being in the hospital, we had another training with 2 other zones and the same thing yesterday, Friday, morning. This time around we´ve been teaching about the importance of following-up with our investigators. President Sloan, Elder Arellano, and I came up with a paper that we leave with the investigators so they can see their own progress and so they can be better prepared. We´ve been teaching that and we´ve had a fun little activity that we do with them. We give each of them a piece of paper and then we tell them to just watch us. We then teach them how to make a swan. During the whole time we tell them that we´ll be there to help them and that we´ll show them how to do it. After we finish showing them, we leave the room and say that we´ll be right back. After about 3-4 minutes we come back and we start teaching about another thing, that isn´t the oragami. Almost everyone has been really confused at that part. After teaching for another 5 minutes we ask them. How many of you were excited to make a swan? (almost everyone raises their hand). Then we ask, "How did you feel after we left you to do it on your own?". We have gotten a lot of different answers. The typicals are lost, needing help, wanting to finish, they did something that wasn´t a swan, etc. After that we relate their feelings that they had to the feelings of an investigator when we don´t follow-up with them. A lot of the time they feel the same way. It was a really fun round of trainings. We really enjoyed that activity :)
This next week is going to be pretty fun too :) We´re going to have ZL Council on Monday and Tuesday and we´ll travel to the coast Wednesday-Friday for Zone Conferences. This month is Zone Conference month so we have more stuff to do :) We get to plan out how to feed the missionaries at the conferences for lunch. I´m excited though :) So this month, January, we all had interviews with President Sloan. In my interview President told me that I should prepare myself to go back out into the field. He told me that he didn´t know when he would change me but he wants me to be prepared if he´s going to do it. That could mean that in 2 weeks I could be back in the field!!! I´m excited to see what happens :)
Well I love you all. Thank you for all that you do for me. Each and every one of you is special to me. Thank you!!!!!!!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

PS....You reminded me of something. On Wednesday during the training we saw 2 General Authorities, Rafael Pino and Marcus B. Nash, and David Beck, the Young Men´s general president. They all came for some training here in Quito. It was a nice surprise :)
Well, the Taco family didn´t get baptized yet. They didn´t go to church again so we´re waiting until next week. I´m not 100% sure about them anymore. They say they want to but they aren´t doing anything so their desires will turn into action. The hardest part is that the dad is going to be working out of town. For 3 years he will work 15 days out of town and then have 1 day to come back to his family. I´m not sure if we should baptize him unless he´s really converted. A lot of the times we baptize people when they have a testimony because we know that by receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost they will be able to obtain a personal conversion. In the Taco family´s case, they wouldn´t have the support that they need because the dad won´t ever be at home. I guess we´ll see what happens.

PPS.....I forgot to tell you about a cool experience that I had in the hospital. It was about 11:00 PM when he decided that he needed to go to the hospital. I said ok let´s go, but my companion suggested that we send the secretaries so we could sleep before the training that we were going to have the next day. I thought it was a good idea but I said no we´ll go anyways. I just felt like we had to go and not the secretaries. I said a quick prayer and I felt the same so my companion and I went with him. When we got there and he was with the doctor he wouldn´t let her help him. He knew what they were going to do because he had done it 2 days earlier. He sent the doctor out and told us that we were going home again. We were a little bit frustrated and we started talking to him. We told him that he had to do it and he kind of broke down. He said that he couldn´t take the pain anymore and he started questioning why he had to suffer so much and why he was getting worse. We offered to give him a blessing and we did. We left him in the room alone and told him to make his decision and to pray. After about 10 minutes the doctor went back in and did what she needed to do. I honestly believe that we had to be there because he could have gotten a lot worse if we wouldn´t have made him stay. The secretaries aren´t as direct as we are and they most likely would have let him go home. I felt the Spirit so strong during the whole time when we were talking to him and when we gave him the blessing. It was an awesome experience.

January 22, 2011

2011-01-23T15:44:00.002-06:00

An old investigator of mine got baptized in Los Chillos so I went to the baptism today. Her husband baptized her and it was a great experience.

Dear Family,
I think the weeks are going by faster :) I can´t believe that I´m writing you guys again. Well this week we had a ton of trainings. Otavalo was beautiful as usual. I went to a small town outside of Otavalo called Cotacachi for divisions with the Zone Leaders. It was pretty sweet. The people that we taught and contacted all spoke kichwa (the native language there). They all spoke Spanish too but their main language is kichwa. It was pretty sweet. We had some good experiences talking with everyone and with their investigators too. It was a fun trip. The training went really well too. President changed his part a little bit and he basically set us up perfectly for our part of the training. The Spirit was a lot stronger and it was awesome.
On Thursday and Friday we had more trainings here in Quito. They all went really well and we had to wait a long time after each one because President is interviewing all of the missionaries here in the mission. We have to close the chapel so we were there for a while. Yesterday we had a pretty crazy experience though. We left to do some things in the offices and when we got back some zone leaders told us that one of their missionaries had passed out on the bus at that he was sitting at some bus stop. We were pretty close so we left our stuff and we ran to the stop. We couldn´t find him when we got there. We called the zone leaders and they told us that we were in the right place and then we started looking again. After a while and after asking everyone if they had seen him we called the zone leaders again and they told us a different place that was pretty close by. We took a bus and we finally found them. He was crashed on a seat in the bus stop. He was really pale but he could move around so we took him to the chapel. He turned out to be alright but he stayed the night at our house last night. We had 7 people in our house last night because there was a missionary that had his appendix taken out on Sunday night/Monday morning. It was really crazy in our apartment last night.
Well, the Taco family didn´t get baptized this week. The dad had to go to Guayaquil for work this weekend. I feel kind of dumb saying this week after week but they´ll get baptized this weekend. Our zone is going to have a lot of baptisms this week so we´re going to have all of the baptisms in the stake center. It will be a white out :) I´m excited for it.
Thank you for everything that you do for me. I´m so grateful for all that you guys have done for me and for making me who I am. I love you all so much.

Love,
Élder Hakes

Pictures:

January 15, 2011

2011-01-23T15:37:00.002-06:00

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

January 8, 2011

2011-01-23T15:36:00.002-06:00

Dear Family,
This week was pretty crazy!! We had soooo many meetings. On Tuesday all of the new missionaries arrived safe and sound. They are all with their trainers now. We had some very spiritual meetings and trainings with the trainers and the new missionaries. On Wednesday we had Zone Leader´s Council. It went really well too. We were able to present the new process of following up baptismal goals and investigators. It was amazing. On Thursday and Friday we had meetings with all of the leaders in the entire mission. I was glad that we could talk with the District Leaders. The District Leaders now have a bad culture of just doing everything that their Zone Leaders say and they don´t think for themselves at all. We were very direct with them and they were excited when they left. They all had some pretty good ideas and were going to use them now. I´m really excited to see how this new process is going to be implemented in the zones. We talked to them more about ministering than administering. A lot of Zone Leaders have the culture of worrying too much about paper work and not enough about what their missionaries are actually doing. All of the leaders opened their eyes up a little bit. We´re really excited to see what happens over the next few weeks and months :)
This week we´re going to the heat again. We´ll be in Esmeraldas on Wednesday and Thursday and in Santo Domingo on Friday. We´re excited to go and work with the missionaries in their own sectors on splits this month. I´m excited to go traveling again. It feels like it´s been so long. This round of trainings my companion and I will be doing most of the trainings because President Sloan will be interviewing all of the missionaries in the mission during the month. We´re excited to get back to teaching again. President has done almost everything in the past 2 months.
Well the Taco Family is doing really well. They´ve been coming to church and they are ready for their baptism next Saturday. We´ll have to get the secretaries to visit them so they can keep progressing while we´re out of town. I´m so excited that they´re finally going to get baptized!!!!
I love you all. Thank you for your love and care for me. I´m still receiving Christmas cards and packages. Thank you for remembering me. I love you all!!!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

January 1, 2011

2011-01-10T14:41:00.003-06:00

Dear Family,
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! I can't believe it's 2011 already! Time has gone by so fast. So I just wanted you to know that I've been a little bit sick this week. It was just a head cold but I've been staying with the Geldmacher's (a senior couple here) because President wants me to be in perfect health for this month. I think he's overreacted a little bit but oh well. I got to have new year with all of the senior couples.
So this year I learned a lot of weird Ecuador traditions that they have during New Years Eve.
1. Everyone drinks and dances the night away (I guess that's not completely weird)
2. There are a lot of young men that cross dress and stop cars until they give them money
3. There are other young men that stand on each side of the road and hold a rope between
them stopping cars. They don't let them by until they get money.
4. Everyone buys paper mache figures and/or masks and burns them. It represents burning
the old year away. My favorite was the one with Hillary Clinton being a puppeteer of all the
presidents of South America he he he :)

We could see all of these things happening from the window in the Geldmacher's apartment. I couldn't get any good pictures though because it was so dark and the camera didn't pick any light up. Elder Geldmacher told me that at midnight Quito looks like a war zone as soon as the clock strikes 12 because of all the fireworks. He was the only one that stayed up to watch them :) It was a fun New Years :)
So today we had Juan Carlos Montalvo's baptism!!!! It was such a good baptismal service. There were a couple of musical numbers and he had all of his member friends there. I had the privelige of baptizing him. He was so happy!!! They asked him to share his testimony after he got baptized and it was powerful. He compared his conversion process to climbing a mountain and that my companion and I were like his guides. He also said that this is only the first mountain and that there many more that are much taller. He understands and has goals to go to the temple. I'm so excited for him!!! He is a reference from Norma (my convert). They seem like very good friends so hopefully they get married :) That would be an amazing blessing!!!
So this week is going to be pretty crazy. We have 4 new missionaries arriving, ZL Council, and 2 All of the Leaders meetings this week. It's going to be a fun week :) Well I'm so grateful for the many blessings that I received in 2010. It was an excellent year. I definitely progressed more in this last year than in any other year before. I've learned so much and I've had some amazing experiences. I'm so grateful for each of you that have influenced my life. Thank you for helping me to be who I am. In my Patriarchal blessing it talks about how I have the opportunity to know and be associated with great and honorable people. You are those people. Thank you for everything.

Love,
Elder Hakes

December 25, 2010

2011-01-03T16:02:00.005-06:00

A gift from some members

A Ken Hakes Family tradition....making omelettes on Christmas morning

His comp Christmas morning

Their Christmas Tree

An Ecuadoran tradition at Christmas time

No offical letter from David today,

BUT we LOVED talking to him via Skype today.

He was able to show us some pictures from his camera and talk to us about them. I can't tell you how wonderful it was to see his face and hear his voice!!!!

December 18, 2010

2011-01-03T15:51:00.003-06:00

pictures of us ice skating (My comp is in the white shirt)

picture of my comp and I in the mission home

Dear Family,
Well this week has been amazing!!!! On Wednesday Elder Morales and Elder Duarte went home. They´re enjoying their families right now. It´s so weird thinking that they have already left. So I have a new companion now. His name is Elder Arellano. He´s from Mexico City, Mexico and he has 21 months in the mission. We have gotten along amazingly well. I feel a lot more comfortable around him than I did with my old companion. President has noticed the difference too and is really happy about it. We´ve been able to teach together a few times now and it has gone really, really well :)
This week we finally got to go back with our families that we´ve been teaching. They´ve missed us and they have all said that they´re going to try to go to church on Sunday so we´re excited for that. Last night we did something special for each of our families. The 4 of us, Vomocil, Di Natale, Arellano and I, went and sang Christmas Carols with our families. We would sing a hymn and then we would read part of Lucas 2 and then we´d sing another song and then go back to Lucas 2. It was an awesome experience that we had. Each of our families were able to feel the Christmas Spirit :)
Today we had another really fun p-day. We went ice skating!!! My new companion has been in Quito for most of his mission and he knew about it so we went :) It was kind of funny because Elder Di Natale (the new secretary) had never gone before and wouldn´t leave the wall. My companion was way good and Elder Vomocil and I did alright :) After going ice skating we went and played laser tag (in the same place). It was kind of funny because they split the 4 of us up into 2 teams and they put 3 little kids on each of our teams. We had a lot of fun doing that as well. Mine and Elder Di Natale´s team won :)
Well sorry that this letter is so short. We have a talent show in the ward in a little bit and we´re participating :) I love you all and I´m grateful for all that you do for me. Remember Christ in this Christmas season. This is the time to share the great joy that our Lord and Savior was born and that he lived a perfect life so we can get back to our Father. Thank you all for your love and support.

Love,
Elder Hakes

December 11, 2010

2010-12-13T16:28:00.004-06:00

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

2010-12-04T20:38:00.004-06:00

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

November 27, 2010

2010-11-29T13:41:00.004-06:00

With Elder Morales

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

November 20,2010

2010-11-22T12:05:00.002-06:00

Dear Family,
So this week went really well for us. We weren´t able to go to our sector as much as we would have liked to but we had some really great spiritual experiences. We had a good one on Wednesday night. We got home from Otavalo at around 7:30 PM It was pretty late and by the time we were ready to leave it was about 8:05 PM. We were thinking about just going somewhere close so we could get home quickly but we decided against it. We went down to where some investigators with baptismal date live, the Maza family. They live down 133 stairs. When we got there just 2 sons and the daughter and the mom were there. We asked them to invite the dad but he didn´t want to (we had never met him before but we told his family that we would talk with him some day). About half way through the lesson the dad walked in the room. We were all surprised but we invited him and we continued with the lesson (about baptism). About 10 minutes later the other son showed up. That means that for the first time ever we were with the entire family at the same time. It was such an amazing experience to be able to have all of them there and to be able to share that time with them as a family!!!
Thursday night we had another cool experience. We went to visit the Taco family (the ones that went to church this last Sunday). We got there and we found out that they had read in the Book of Mormon, but they didn´t remember anything that they had read. This whole month we have been talking about the Book of Mormon, especially Moroni 10:3-5, in the Zone Conferences so we decided to teach that to them. We talked about the importance of being able read it with a sincere desire and with real intent. They were able to understand the difference now. So last night when we went by again we found out that only the son had read and that they didn´t have time. We weren´t sure what to share with them because we knew that they had understood what we taught them the last time. My companion started and he decide to share Helaman 5:12. I felt that that was what they needed and my comp explained it very well. When it come around to me I still wasn´t sure what I was going to say but the Spirit helped me. I talked about how we can recognize the promptings of the Holy Ghost as we read. They shared with us that that is what they had felt as we were teaching them, the Spirit. It was a really amazing experience and the Spirit was so strong.
We had another cool experience on last Sunday too. We showwed up to our investigators house and the dad came out and said that everyone else was sick. He invited us in to share with him and we did. We talked about blessings of health and we gave 2 blessings of health and 1 blessing of strength to his family. The Spirit was so strong and they were extremely grateful for what we did. I hadn´t given a blessing in so long so it was nice to be able to do that again.
So It has rained everyday since last Thursday here in Ecuador. There is a phenomenom here called "la niña" ("the girl" in English) that makes everything cold and rainy in all of Ecuador. It´s been in the 50s and the low 60s this whole week. Kind of weird. Luckily today it was sunny in the afternoon when we were at Mindo because it started raining on the way home :)
Well I love you guys. I thank you all for all that you have done for me. I have learned so much from each and every one of you. I am grateful for this Gospel that i get to preach everyday. I´m grateful that i am learning to live it and help others to live it as well. This work is God´s. I can testify of it now. He leads me everyday where i need to go and puts the words into my mouth in the exact moment when I need it. Again, thanks for everything!!!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

November 13, 2010

2010-11-20T14:37:00.000-06:00

Dear Family,
This week was pretty crazy. It went by so fast because we were traveling the whole time. We left Tuesday morning at 8 AM and we got back at 6 PM on Friday evening. It was so long but so fun too! With the Zone Conferences and the Specialized Trainings this time we haven´t done anything. We have a grand total of like 1 hour between the 2 days and all we do is have a demonstration and have them do practices. It´s good because this time around I´m learning how to be more observant and I can make more comments to them about their teaching skills. It has been nice. So President Sloan decided to take us and the zone leaders out to eat with the Stake President in Esmeraldas and in Santo Domingo. I ate some pretty good food this week :) I probably gained like 5 lbs. ha ha. Seafood in Esmeraldas is amazing!!! It´s a city that is literally on the coast so it´s all fresh and it´s fairly cheap. I had some pretty amazing shrimp there :)
So on Sunday we were finally able to get out and work. We went with some of our families and we were able to help them progress more. The Taco family and the Maza family have baptismal dates for the 27th!!!! We had 2 amazing experiences with them on Sunday to help them to accept a baptismal date. When we do the baptismal invitation we normally do it in 2 parts (I might have already explained this before but oh well!). The first part we ask them, "Will you prepare to follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized just as he was?" Normally they will say yes I would like to prepare for that. The second question we ask is basically the same, "Will you prepare to follow the example of Jesus Christ by being baptized on the 27th of November?" Normally on this question they´ll have some sort of excuse or doubt. Basically we help them to realize that if they truly have the desires to do it that they can do it. They just need more faith!! After the second question we are able to know why they don´t want to get baptized and we are able to help them to repent and to be ready for that day. It is such an amazing process and it works with everyone. That is why we are baptizing so many people here in the mission now. I love it!!!!
On Thursday night we went on exchanges in Santo Domingo. I went with one companionship and my companion went with another. It was so amazing to be able to get to work again. I hadn´t done any type of "in the field" missionary work for a few days. I couldn´t even do a contact because we were with President in his car the whole time. I was dying ha ha :) We had some amazing experiences that night and I´d like to share just one of them. We went to one of these missionaries investigators that is going to get baptized today. When we showed up he asked us to go visit him with one of his sisters that hadn´t listened to the missionaries before. We went in and she wasn´t too interested but I told her that we could help her and that I wanted to share an experience with her. She said that she would rather set an appointment for another day and I told her that I live in Quito. She finally agreed and we started with a prayer. I just started to ask her questions about her life and about what she desires. She opened up to me and I don´t know why. She started to tell me about her depression and her need to be loved unconditionally by someone. She had been studying with Jehovah´s witnesses and she hasn´t felt anything special yet. I asked her a rhetorical question and said, "Who have you shared this with before and why did you share it with me, a complete stranger?" I told her not to respond and then I said, "The Spirit of God is testifying in your heart that I am one of His servants and that I can help you." She just sat there thinking. I shared an experience with her and we ended with a prayer. She tried to invite us over for dinner the next day and I said that the 2 missionaries that i was with could go but that I couldn´t. I am so grateful that the Lord worked through me that night. The Elders that I was with told me that they had tried to talk with her before but that she wouldn´t listen. I needed to be there on that day and I had to be there to help her to feel the Spirit. I hope and pray that she will continue listening to the missionaries and that she will be baptized. It was such an amazing experience.
Last night the Taco family said that for sure they are going to go to church with us on Sunday!!! We are super excited because that has been their challenge over the last few weeks. We talked with 2 of the sons in the Maza family and they are going to go to church as well (the mom wasn´t there). They said that they´re going to help family to go as well.
I just want to let each of you know how grateful that I am for you. This week I have pondered over the many blessings that I have received in my life. I am so grateful that my Heavenly Father put each of you in my path and that you were able to influence me in my progression towards God. I love each of you. Thank you for everything.

Love,
Élder Hakes

November 6, 2010

2010-11-20T14:35:00.000-06:00

Dear Family,
What a crazy week ha ha :) We were in meetings all week just as was planned. It turned out to be really good. We learned a lot of things. During all of the meetings and trainings, we did demonstrations with President Sloan. The demonstrations have really helped. My companion and I are more confident teaching together now and the missionaries can see a good example and they can see that we aren´t perfect. It has been really great. We have been able to feel a special spirit during the demonstrations. So on Tuesday in the Zone Leaders Council we had an hour to play soccer and/or Ecuavoli (Ecuador Volleyball). My companion got hurt playing soccer. We thought it was just a sprained ankle but it is really bothering him still so he´s going to get it x-rayed next week.
So today in my personal study I read a scripture that really impacted me. It´s scripture mastery but I have never felt like this when I read it. It´s in D&C 130:18-21:

18. Whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection.
19. And if a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through his diligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the advantage in the world to come.
20. There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated—
21. And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.

I don´know why it hit me so hard this time. It really helped me to have more of an eternal perspective. It has given me more desires to be even more obedient and to repent of all the little mistakes that I have made in my life.
Well I love you all. Thank you for the good influences that each and everyone of you have been in my life. I realize now more than ever how grateful I am for the people around me and for what they have done for me. I have so many experiences, good and bad, that have helped me to be where I am right now and that have helped me to truly apply the gospel in my life. I am so grateful for the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I am so grateful that our Heavenly Father gives us our free agency and allows us to make mistakes so we can learn and become better each day. Don´t ever forget what He did for each and everyone of us individually. When we can have that in mind all of the time, that´s when we can become perfect.

Love,
Élder Hakes

October 30, 2010

2010-11-04T21:21:00.001-06:00

Dear Family,
This week was pretty fun. On Tuesday and Wednesday we were in Esmeraldas and Santo Domingo again. The trainings that we had went really well. It didn´t feel as hot as last time we were there. I actually enjoyed the weather. It was funny because my comp was dying in the heat and he´s from Guayaquil which is a lot hotter. He´s going to die when he goes home in December. On Thursday we had divisions with the Secretaries. Elder Vomocil and I stayed in the offices doing stuff while our companions went and taught lessons. We left a little bit earlier and one of Elder Vomocil´s investigators gave us rice, potatoes, beets, fried beef, and an egg. It was sooo good. They are from the coast and the people from the coast know how to cook better :) Yesterday and this morning we were in Otavalo. It was the last Specialized training of the month and I think it was the best one too!! In this one we did something a little bit different. We always have practices in all of our trainings so the missionaries can know how to apply it in their sectors, but this time my companion and I decided to do a demonstration and then we had all of them practice instead of just 1 companionship. It turned out to be really good. The missionaries were able to see that we´re not perfect and that we need help too and it gave them more confidence in the practices that we did afterwards. We´ve decided to do a demonstration in every training that we have in the future. Last night we were supposed to have another training with all of the ward and stake leaders from Otavalo but no one showed up. We waited for like half an hour until the Stake President finally showed up and we scheduled it for a different day. The training wasn´t well announced (it wasn´t announced at all) so President Sloan wasn´t too happy. Afterwards he felt bad for all of the missionaries that had waited for nothing. He bought the whole zone and us hamburger combos for dinner. It was way sweet.
It´s interesting to see how I´m progressing now. Before I could see it a lot easier and I was progressing in things that we do everyday. As I´ve been here in the offices I feel like I´ve progressed more as a leader. I feel like I understand the Gospel more now and it´s actually part of me and my life not just like a job. I´m learning a lot about how to have good judgment too because we have to make a lot of decisions as assistants. I´m more grateful for my calling now and I don´t feel useless anymore ha ha :) Thank you for all that you have done for me, all of you.

Love,
Élder Hakes

October 25, 2010

2010-10-25T17:22:00.003-06:00

Dear Family,
This week was still kind of crazy. The first half was really nice because we were in our sector a lot. We found another new family this week. The Taco Family, no I´m not joking :) There is a part of our sector where almost everyone is from the Taco Family. The first time we visited them was really awesome. We were with the husband to start off with. We talked about the Gospel and how it can bless him and his family. After that we invited him to be baptized. He accepted and he has a baptismal date for November 13. After we invited him his family showed up and we got to know them. There are 4 people in the family, Mom, Dad, son and daughter. The daughter just turned 2 so she can´t get baptized yet. It was an awesome experience! The Maza family couldn´t go to church this week. Well only the son that´s 18 went. He is way cool. We presented him to President Sloan during the Stake Conference and President told him that he looks like a future missionary. Our investigator responded by saying I would like to do that. He is an awesome guy!
So at Stake Conference I ran into a family from Idaho. They told me a pretty funny story. They are here for like 1-2 weeks to go to the Galapagos Islands. On Sunday morning they looked on the computer to find where they could go to church. They typed in "Quito Stake" in google and the first thing that came up was my blog. In the letter last week I wrote about how we were going to have stake conference. They saw me and they thanked me for writing about Stake Conference. I thought that that was pretty funny :)
So my life is going to be completely crazy for the next month. In November we will have a lot of meetings. 1. Zone Leader Council, 2. All of the leaders in the mission meeting, 3. Specialized Trainings in all of the zones, 4. Zone Conference in all of the zones, and 5. Specialized Trainings for 2-3 Stakes. According to the schedule that President posted every week this month on November we will be in meetings. I should be free on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays for p-day and church but we´ll see what happens. This month is going to go by sooooo fast!!!
Today we played soccer again. It was really fun. I´m finally getting better at it. I made 3 or 4 goals today. It was way sweet!!! One of them was aimed so I could head it in but they kicked it too low. I decided to hit it with my chest and I got a goal. Everyone was laughing because I don´t think they´ve seen that before. It was way cool :)
Well thank you for everything. You all have been great influences in my life. Thank you for your love and your support. I love each and every one of you.

Love,
Élder Hakes

P.S.
We had 2 specialized trainings with 2 stakes, Ofelia and Calderón. The Spirit was so strong in each of the trainings. We had they same thing planned but the each turned out differently and the Spirit was so strong in each of them. The topic is "How can we help investigators, less-actives, and new converts have a good experience at church". It was a really special experience and I truly felt the Spirit working through me. I was able to recognize all of the little blessing that the Lord has given unto me in the last few weeks. I am so happy and filled with the Spirit right now :)

October 16, 2010

2010-10-18T14:55:00.002-06:00

Dear Family,
This week was a little bit crazier than I thought it would be. I didn´t realize how hard it is to work with such a big group of new missionaries. On Monday afternoon and night President Sloan had to interview all of the new missionaries. He couldn´t wait till the next morning. We were in the President´s house until 10:20 PM waiting for the interviews. After taking the new missionaries to the house where they were going to sleep we got home around 11:15 PM. It was a pretty crazy night. On Wednesday I had a really cool experience. We were in the training for the new missionaries and we were going to do our part last. The first parts took a really long time. When we were to speak it was already past the time that we had planned to end at. President Sloan told us to just bear our testimonies and then we´d end. I liked that he told us right before we had to get up. I wasn´t thinking about what I was going to say. I just said what I felt. I felt the Spirit so strong in that moment. I shared with the new missionaries and their trainers about my experience with the Book of Mormon. When I got to the mission I had read the Book of Mormon 3 or 4 times cover to cover. I thought that that was sufficient but I was wrong. President Sloan challenged us to read the Book of Mormon with real intent as soon as we got here and I chose to do it. It was the best experience that I have had in my life. I now know that the Book of Mormon is true. I can feel it in my heart. I love the Book of Mormon. Just by reading the Book of Mormon I have learned to follow the Spirit. I know where to find the answers to my questions. I love it!!!!!! Don´t ever go a day without reading the Book of Mormon. If you do you will lose the Spirit and your day won´t be as good. I can testify of that now.
This week we finally went to teach a family of 6 that we found 2 weeks ago. They are so amazing!! We invited them to baptism in the first lesson and the accepted. They are going to go to church on Sunday and they are keeping all of their committments. It is so exciting!!!! I love being able to be in the feild! This next week President and Sister Sloan will be in Peru for the Mission President´s Seminar so that means that we should have a lot more time to be in our own sector. I´m really excited for that!! President and Sister Sloan are going to Machu Pichu for part of the Seminar. They are so lucky!!!!
So next week we have Stake Conference in our stake here in Quito so I don´t know how much time we´ll have to write you next Saturday. If it´s not on Saturday it will definitely be on Monday. I love you all so much. Thank you for everything. Keep being faithful and CTR forever!!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

P.S.
We went to the Middle of the World again. This time I took a picture with a statue of an indian native to ecuador. They don´t wear any clothes so I used a Law of Chastity pamphlet to cover him up : )

October 12, 2010

2010-10-12T09:40:00.000-06:00

Dear Family,
This week was absolutely crazy. We were so busy with all of the trainings that we had to give. On Tuesday we had the zone leader´s council all day long. It went really well. It started raining really hard when we went outside to play soccer. It was way fun!!!! We had some amazing BBQ chicken the mission home and then my companion and I went home to plan the trainings that we had to give during the week.
On Wednesday and Thursday we had 2 trainings each day for the zones here in Quito. On wednesday President took us and the secretaries out to eat because it´s a tradition that he has every month. We went to a really nice restaurant. It was pretty good :) On Thursday night we finally went to our sector for the first time last week. We taught the Yasig Family (they went to church 2 weeks ago) and they had a lot of problems. They don´t have as many desires and they used to because we hadn´t visited them in so long. We made it very clear what they were losing and they rejected us. We will still go back but we have to help them to keep the committments that we left them. It was a really rough experience that we had.
On Friday at 8:30 AM (President showed up late) we were in President´s car on the way to Ambato. At 10:45 AM (half an hour late) we showed up to the training with the zones there (Ambato and Oriente) and we taught them. President is doing interviews with all of the missionaries this time so it takes a lot longer. At 5:00 PM we left to go to Riobamba and we got there at 6:00 PM. We showed up 3 hours late for that training. It was suposed to start at 3:00 PM. They were all so tired and I think President apologized like 100 times. The training still went very well considering that everyone was pretty much asleep. That night we slept in Riobamba with other missionaries. In Riobamba it is colder than Quito and the missionaries only had one blanket for each of us. I didn´t sleep at all on Friday night.
On Saturday morning we went on divisions (exchanges?) with a companionship in the zone. The division (exchange?) went really well. We put a baptismal date with one guy and commited him to go to the District conference and he accepted. We also taught a family of 5 [only the parents are older than 8 :)]. Everything turned out to be really good. After the division (exchange?) my companion and I were part of another training to all of the district and branch leaders in Riobamba. It went really well too. That afternoon we finally came home!!
Well my life is really busy right now but I love it. I really enjoy helping the missionaries in the entire mission. Today, tomorrow and wednesday is going to be really crazy with all of the new missionaries coming and with transfers. I can´t wait!! :) I love you all so much. Thank you for all that you all have done for me. I know that the gospel that I teach everyday is true. It is such a blessing to be able to have it in my life and with my family. Thomas S. Monson is a prophet of God. I know it.

Love,
Élder Hakes

October 4, 2010

2010-10-04T23:29:00.001-06:00

Dear Family,
Well this week was pretty weird. As a lot of you already know, on Thursday the National Police here in Ecuador went on a protest. They weren´t doing anything. They were burning tires, blocking roads, etc. President told us all to go home immediately and we did. On Thursday we were at home from 3 PM until the next day. On Friday and Saturday we were in the house at 6 PM. Sunday we went back to normal. We didn´t get to watch priesthood session and that really stunk. This week is going to be crazy for us. Tomorrow we have ZL Council, Wednesday and Thursday we have Specialized training, and Friday and Saturday we´ll be in Riobamba (my first time!!!). Next week is practically the same because it´s transfer week. Monday night we have dinner with the old missionaries that are going home in the mission home and we have to pick up a new Elder at 9:30 PM. On Tuesday we have a training for the trainers and we pick up 27 missionaries (22 Elders and 5 Sisters) at 1:00 PM. After that we go to the Panecillo (the place where the dedicatory prayer was said for Missionary work in Ecuador, by President Kimball) and then to the mission home for interviews and Visas. On Wednesday of next week we will train the new missionaries and send them off to their sectors with their trainers. On next Thursday we have another specialized training here in Quito and then we´ll finally be done for a week and a half. It will be pretty crazy but we´ll enjoy it and learn a lot.
This week we didn´t hardly go to our sector because we´ve been preparing so many things for these next to weeks and we´ve been locked up in our houses. I really loved conference though. I really enjoyed President Uchtdorf´s talk. We need to follow the living prophets and we need to learn how to use our agency correctly. Those are the 2 major themes that I was able to get out of conference. Sorry that this letter is like a mixture of thoughts. There wasn´t any internet all day and I don´t have very much time. I love you all so much. Thank you for everything that you have done, do and will do for me. Follow the impressions that each of you received during conference.

Love,
Élder Hakes

September 25, 2010

2010-09-27T21:31:00.003-06:00

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

2010-09-27T21:29:00.000-06:00

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

2010-09-13T22:22:00.004-06:00

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

2010-09-05T13:29:00.000-06:00

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 :)

August 30, 2010

2010-08-30T18:12:00.001-06:00

Dear Family,
I recieved a change this week. President Sloan called me as his new assistant. I´ll be in the offices and traveling around the mission giving trainings and stuff. I´m a little nervous but I´m grateful for the opportunity to be able to learn from him. My new companion is Elder Morales from Quayaquil. I love you all!!. My new p-day is on Saturday so I´ll write you then. Thanks for everything.

Love,
Élder Hakes

August 23, 2010

2010-08-23T18:15:00.001-06:00

Dear Family,
This week was really awesome. We have a new family that is really good. It´s the Itaz Family. On the second visit they accepted a baptismal date. They are going to be baptized on September 11th. There are 4 people in the family.

We had an amazing lesson with them on Saturday. We showed up and we were about to start when some other family members were visiting them. Normally when this happens, most investigators just send us away because they don´t want to be embarassed. They invited their family in and we started to teach them too. The brother-in-law who came had a lot of questions and I felt that he was trying to attack the church. I didn´t like it. We were answering questions about the Word of Wisdom, the Law of Chastity, the Book of Mormon, Tithing, etc. I finally answered one of his questions and went right into the Restoration. We were teaching with the Spirit during that lesson. It was really strong. Especially when we repeated the first vision to them (it was probably the 1st time in my whole mission when there wasn´t a distraction when we said it!!!! There is always a loud noise or something when we say the first vision). I know that they felt the Spirit. The brother-in-law changed during that lesson. He stopped attacking and said that our message is really interesting. He felt the Spirit. I told him that he felt the Spirit and he couldn´t deny it. He knows what he felt. It was an amazing lesson.

After that lesson we went to Conocoto (my old sector) because they had 5 baptisms. It was amazing because my convert, Daniel Diaz, baptized his little sister right after getting home from the temple (doing baptisms for the dead). It was an amazing night. It was sweet to see 5 people get baptized at once.

Today we went to a waterfall. It´s the same one that I went to in April. It was a lot funner this time. We got there earlier and we played Ecuavoli (Ecuadorian Volleyball). All of the Latins started throwing each other in the water. They didn´t even risk trying to throw me in. They know what would happen to them :) It helps to be a foot and a half taller than everyone sometimes. Well I love you family. You guys are so awesome.

Love,
Élder Hakes

August 16, 2010

2010-08-17T15:54:00.001-06:00

Well first off about the pictures. The big group is everyone that was there at the baptism. The old guy is a member. He was mad with us after the baptism becasue we didn´t ask him to give his testimony. He figured that since he´s been a member for over 30 years that he´d be able to bear his testimony. He´s way funny. He´s going to bear his testimony this next baptism

Dear Family,
We had another pretty crazy week. We had a few service projects and we had another interesting experience filling up a font (it wasn´t ours this time). On Friday around noon the sisters told us that the needed a propane tank because they ran out of propane and no one in their ward could help them. We called one of our district leaders and we told him to take a propane tank from his chapel to the sister´s chapel. We called him at about 7PM and he told us that the guy wasn´t going to get baptized so he didn´t take the tank. We called the guy that was going to get baptized and he said that everything is all good and that he´s excited to get baptized. We had to cancel the rest of our appointments for the night and take our tank to the sister´s ward. By the time we got there it was already too late to fill up the font and get home on time. We decided to get up early to go fill it up the next day (the baptism was scheduled for 7AM and I don´t know why!!!). We got up at 4 AM on Saturday to go fill up the sister´s font. We got there at about 5:30AM because there weren´t any buses. We waited and waited for it to fill up. It was going so dang slow!!! We started the baptism at 9AM. Not one member came because they didn´t know about the baptism. It was spiritual and all but it was way weird.

During all this time we were fasting so when we got home we broke our fast and made lunch. I was so dead. After lunch we went to an appointment and then we went to fill up our font for our baptism. Everything worked perfectly this week. Last week the construction workers had cut our water pipe. This week the water was nice and hot and it filled up really fast. The baptism went great. Coraima (15 yrs. old) and Carol (13 yrs. old) Llumiquinga (in english Jew-me-king-uh) were baptized. The spirit was way strong. We had about 25-30 people at the baptism. That is a lot of people for here in Ecuador. After the baptism my companion and I made burritos with them and the Morocho Family (my converts and the family´s neighbors) in their house. It was way fun. My companion and I have been sacrificing a lot for these last few baptisms in the zone and it´s all worth it. I´m still trying to catch up on sleep though :)

On Sunday we had a really cool experience. After lunch we weren´t exactly sure where to go. I just had the thought that we should go to this one part of our sector where I have never gone before. It was kind of weird but we went. The very first door we knocked on , the son of a less-active member came out and was really receptive. He wants to go to church on Sunday and he´s going to read the Book of Mormon that we left him. It was an amazing experience. We were led literally directly to his house. It is such a blessing to have the Spirit!!!

I´m doing really well. I´m now down to 205 lbs. I´m still losing weight!!! I´ve been feeling the Spirit a lot more over the last few weeks. Having baptisms helps, but I think fasting has helped me more. I feel a lot closer to my Father in Heaven. I feel like he´s helping us even more. I know that this is the true church. I feel it everytime that I see someone enter to the waters of baptism. It is such a blessing. The Lord has helped me so much in this sector. I now have 13 active converts in this ward alone. It is such a blessing that the Lord has given me. I love you all. I hope everything is going well with you guys.

Love,
Élder Hakes

This week we did feel a little bit of shaking but it wasn´t hardly anything. If I was standing up I couldn´t feel anything. Only when I stood up. It only lasted about 1 minute. It was a nice reminder that we need to be prepared for emergencies.

Pictures - August 9,2010

2010-08-11T10:34:00.003-06:00

Today we had a really fun activity. We decided to hike a mountain that has a huge cross on the top of it. It was a tough hike but I really enjoyed it. I´ve got some sweet pictures. I attatched a few here

August 9, 2010

2010-08-09T15:59:00.000-06:00

Dear Family,
This week was pretty weird again. We had more meetings and I got sick again. On tuesday we had our zone leader´s council and we ate pizza for lunch. At about 7 PM my stomach started hurting. It was right in the middle of President Sloan´s doctrine class. I ran to the bathroom but I didn´t throw up. According to everyone else I was very pale and had a tinge of green. It was a fun night. I just slept in the assistant´s house because it´s really close to the church that we had to go to the next day. I was pretty bad and I didn´t sleep very well. The next day we had our zone conference and we had to teach the missionaries. That was pretty fun. It actually wasn´t too bad. It made me trust more in the Savior. President Sloan was very happy with the training we taught. He said it was one of the best ones that he´s seen. We were really happy about that especially because we didn´t have a ton of time to prepare for it and because I was sick. By the end of the zone conference I was feeling a lot better. By the next day I was eating normally again. This weekend we had a baptism, finally!!! It was really good. We started off Saturday with a huge service project. We were moving someone from a 4th floor to a 3rd floor of a different building. It was way tough. We had 6 missionaries there and we didn´t finish until 2 PM (we started at 9 AM). They were nice and took us to lunch but they didn´t give us too much, which is fine, so we went to eat more. By the time we got to the bishop´s house to get the keys to fill up the font we were way tired and way dirty. We got there and he couldn´t find the keys. We just went to the chapel so we could at least fill it up with cold water (you can do that without the keys). There wasn´t any water that came out. All of the outside water spickets didn´t work either. In the janitor´s closet on the inside it worked so we attatched a hose and put it into the font, but it was coming out way too slow. Then we came up with an....interesting idea. In the ceiling in all the churches here in Ecuador there are 2 100-150 gallon water tanks. We decided to pop out the ceiling tiles and start passing buckets of water from the tank in the ceiling down into the font. It was way tough. My companion and the bishop were up in the ceiling and they passed the water down to me (because I´m the tallest). I took the bucket to the font and then threw the bucket back up tp the bishop. It was an interesting process. We were doing that for 2 hours. I was so tired and so dirty and so smelly. It was way bad. I have a sweet video of the process too. We were able to fill it up and clean up the mess right before Katherine Gaybor, the girl that got baptized, showed up. I was still in my dirty service clothes when they showed up. I sent my comp with another missionary to get me some clothes so I could keep getting the buckets out of the ceiling. I changed there in the chapel and then we had the baptism. It was way good. We haven´t had a baptism in so long so it was really nice to have one again. This weekend we´re going to have 2 more. 2 sisters are getting baptized. They want to go to the temple with all of the youth on the following thursday. It will be way cool. Well I had a really interesting week. I hope all is well. I love you all so much.

Love,
Élder Hakes

August 2, 2010

2010-08-09T15:37:00.003-06:00

Dear Family,
This week was absolutely ridiculous. We had way too many meetings. We were in Quito from 8AM-5PM on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Friday we were there from 9AM-1PM and on Saturday we had to give a training to our missionaries about everything that we learned. It was absolutely nuts. My brain was so dead the whole week. We learned so many new things. My teaching skills have improved by about 1000%. THe stuff we learned comes directly from the Prophet and the quorum of the 12. They just showed us how to be good teachers. I finally figured out what I was missing.The Spirit is so much stronger in our lessons now. We actually know how to teach now!!!! It´s kind of crazy that it took so long to learn it. I have read the same words every time but they had videos of other missionaries and to actually see it in action changed my view of everything. I know what it means to ask questions now. I know what it means to resolve doubts. It is amazing!!!! This week we found 4 new families and they´re all way good. A new couple went to church and they liked it a lot. In the investigator´s class I had to teach this week and I had everyone present themselves and tell everyone their favorite food. The husband of this couple that went to church for the first time said, "Chaulafan (It´s kind of like fried rice or Chinese food) and a nice beer to wash it down." It was kind of funny. He didn´t know that we don´t drink. We all got a good laugh out of it. The other families that we found are all so good. They were just on vacation this weekend. Yesterday we went to an appointment that we had planned but there wasn´t anyone there so we were walking back to another place. I felt like we shouldn´t leave yet so I asked Johan Cedeño, a priest in our ward, where we should go. He said he didn´t know so we said a prayer. We knocked on one door and no one answered. I felt like we should go to a contact that we had done about a week ago. We knocked on the door and said were missionaries and we asked if we could go in and share a message with their family. They said yes. That really surprised us. We got in and I felt like we should share about the Book of Mormon. That morning before we contacted him, the sisters in our stake had said something to him about us being the "Mormons" and he was confused. We didn´t tell him that we´re the "Mormons", but I felt like we should share about the Book of Mormon. We were able to answer the question that he had without knowing beforehand that he had a question. It was a really cool experience. The Spirit was really strong during the whole lesson and they´re going to read and pray. We´re really excited for them. This Saturday we should have 1 baptism and next Saturday 2 more. We´re really excited for that and we´re going to keep working hard. Tomorrow is another full day of meetings 8AM-8PM. It should be fun :) I love you all. Thanks for everything.

Love,
Élder Hakes

July 26, 2010

2010-07-28T10:09:00.001-06:00

Dear Family,
This week was really weird. My companion and I were sick the whole week. It´s just a cold so it´s annoying us while we work. The only day we didn´t work was on Wednesday because I had a fever. I´m doing a lot better now. I only have a cough now.

Our sector isn´t doing so well now. With all the meetings we´ve had and with being sick, our sector kind of got destroyed. We want to get back to it but this week we have 3 straight days of meetings.

There are changes in all the missions in all the world and we´re going to talk about it starting tomorrow. We don´t know what´s going to change but we´re excited to see what it is.

This Sunday was way sweet. 6 of the people that I baptized and their families came to church yesterday. It was the first time that we had all of them there at the same time because they are all relatives. It was way cool because there were like 20 of them there. Here in South America, a ward with 100 people is pretty good. 1/5 of the ward is this family now. It was way cool. Germán Castellanos, the father of the family of 4, came to church in a white shirt and tie and blessed the sacrament. That was a really cool experience too!!! It is really awesome that I can watch these families progress towards the temple. If all goes well, before I leave there will be 20+ people that go to the temple (including the little kids that will be sealed to their parents). I want to see that. That would be the real blessing for me.

I love this work. It is such a blessing to be here. I have the wonderful opportunity to help so many people everyday. If I were to count up how many contacts I´ve done since I´ve been in the mission it would be over 1,000. It´s amazing that I´ve talked with over 1,000 Ecuadorians and helped them in some way. It is so important that we don´t waste our time. There really isn´t enough of it. We must always be helping people in every single moment or we will be wasting time. I´m not only talking about me as a missionary. I´m talking about people in general. We must always be ready to serve or it´s already too late. I love this work and I know that it is true. The Lord is on my side everyday. He leads me where I need to go. He has molded me into a different, better person. Thank you for all that you guys have done for me. Each and every one of you are a blessing in my life.

Love,
Élder Hakes

July 19, 2010

2010-07-20T08:14:00.000-06:00

Dear Family,
This week was pretty sweet. We worked way hard the first half of the week, but the last half we got a little bit sick. Just a cold so nothing to worry about :)

We were going to have a baptism this weekend but it didn´t happen. We showed up at his house about an hour before the baptism but he wasn´t there. We said ok we´ll wait. There were a ton of little kids playing soccer in the street while we waited for 45 minutes. He never showed up. One of the kids came up and told us that he was in his room and that he was hiding from us. We were a little bit frustrated to hear that that was what was happening. We knocked on his door again and we said if you want to talk with us again we´ll be in church tomorrow. He didn´t show up. We´re still going to pass by to see what happened and to see if we can help him.

The family Castellanos is doing really good. Germán (the dad) gave a talk yesterday in church. It was good but he was talking way bad about the Catholic Church. It was kind of funny for me and my companion, but it´s probably not a good thing that he said those things in front of everyone. They are progressing so much. They´re really excited that they can go to the temple. They´re getting prepared for it. They´re also going to go and do baptisms for the dead with the ward too!!! What an awesome family!!!!

This week we had transfers in the mission, but I´m still here in the same sector and I´m still with Élder Archundia. I´m way excited. I didn´t want to go. I can´t wait to see how we do this transfer as a zone. We have done so much better the last 2 months and this month is even better. Well I don´t know what else to say. I love you guys!!!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

July 12, 2010

2010-07-20T08:13:00.000-06:00

Dear Family,
This week was absolutely nuts. We just had a ton of meetings. I wasn´t hardly in my own sector. On Tuesday we had our Zone Leader´s Council, on Wednesday we had interviews with President Sloan, on Thursday we had a Mini-Zone Conference, on Friday we had the actual Zone Conference, and on Saturday we had a plaza presentation. It was crazy. I really enjoyed my time but I missed my investigators too!

At the Zone Leader´s Council we ended the night roasting s´mores. They were amazing. It was way fun. They also told us that we can now play soccer so we played soccer today. It was actually way fun. I´m not very good but I enjoyed my time. President Sloan also gave our zone permision to watch Toy Story 3 today. It was hilarious. We were laughing the whole time.

The family Castellanos is doing really good. I had them write in a memory book (a book with letters and pictures from investigators and members) and they wrote some really amazing stuff. They are an awesome family. I can´t wait to hear that they´ve gone to the temple. I´ll still be here when they can go to the temple. I hope they go while I´m here. That would be the true blessing for me.

Well this next weekend there are transfers because new missionaries will be arriving. I think I´m going to be leaving this zone finally. I don´t want to, but I think my times up here. I´ve been here for over 6 months in the same stake. I guess we´ll see what happens next week.

This week at church there was a family from Fresno, California here. The mom in the family is from Quito and they used to live here. They were visiting her parents. It was really weird because they´re a family of 6 kids and there were a ton of them. They all can speak Spanish too. It was way weird. Well family I love you all so much. I love being here on the mission. It gives me the chance to change who I am. I have a lot of corrections to do so I´m happy to be here. I love helping people change their lives. It is such a blessing to represent Jesus Christ in all that I do.

Love,
Élder Hakes

July 5, 2010

2010-07-07T14:44:00.003-06:00

Dear Family,
This week was pretty awesome. We had the baptism of the family Castellanos, 4 people. It was so amazing. It was a very spiritual experience. THey had so many trials and temptations this week and it was hard for them. They had a family member tell them that the Mormons have 7 wives and that Joseph Smilth was a drug dealer. The father of the family Castellanos told them that it isn´t like that and he bore his testimony to them about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. He also gave them a pamphlet about the Law of Chastity that he happened to have with him. They will be really strong members for their entire lives. Their baptism and confirmation went perfectly. The dad even got up and bore his testimony. He was going to give a talk for about 10 minutes but the bishop asked him to do it for next week. It was way cool
This week when we were contacting we saw in someones yard that they had a monkey on a leash in their yard. We started talking with them and they let us in to take pictures. It was way cool!!!! I have some cool videos too but they´re too big to put in an e-mail.

We also had a talent show this week after the baptism. We did some pretty cool stuff. I have some sweet videos of that too. They´re also too big to put in an e-mail. The time here is flying by. I can´t believe I´ve been away from home for 10 months now. I´ve been here in Ecuador for 8 months. The time is flying. Well I love you all so much. Thank you for all that you do. It´s sad to hear that Grandma Dell passed away, but I know that she´s in a better place now. It´s such a blessing that we are able to know where she is and what she´s doing right now. It´s something that only the Restored Gospel can bring to us. Love you all!!!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

June 28, 2010

2010-06-28T18:08:00.002-06:00

Dear Family,
This week was pretty weird. I can´t believe I´m 20 years old now. I will never be a teenager again :) I ate about 5 times on my birthday. It was pretty sweet. Right now we have a family of 4 that will be baptized this Saturday. They are such an amazing family. We found them in the streets about 3 weeks ago and they have just made a complete change in their lives. They were looking for the truth. They are feeling that the emptiness in their souls is being filled. It is so amazing. Last night the father told us that he wants to give a talk at his baptism. We were really taken aback and we said yes that´s fine. We´re not sure what he´s going to say but I guess we´ll find out. Today we went to the Basilica again, the big catholic church. It was pretty sweet. I realized that I´m the missionary with the most time in Zone Los Chillos. I´ve been here in this Stake for almost 6 months now. I´ll probably get changed in 3 weeks. Well I´m doing amazing family. I´m so grateful for all of the e-mails that you sent me this week. I can´t tell you all how much I love you!!!!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

June 21, 2010

2010-06-24T18:17:00.004-06:00

Dear Family,

Thank you so much for all of the e-mails that you sent me. They make me feel like I´m at home....kind of :) This week was an amazing week for us. We were definitely led by the Spirit to some new families. We were able to find 30 new people just in this week. We were led by the Spirit to a 19 year old kid that 2 days after we met him he went to church and he´s reading the Book of Mormon. He wants to know more and he is very receptive. We also found a couple and their cousins that live in the same house that also said that they want to follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized. They said that they wanted to learn more first before they get baptized :) About 2 weeks ago, we finished teching a lesson and we were going to take a bus to go to a different place. When we were about to turn on a street to go to the bus stop I had a thought about a person that we were teaching that really wasn´t that intrested. I didn´t know why I thought that. I half-way wanted to just go down to the bus. I said no and we went to this not-so-intrested investigators house. When we got there this time she just told us to go away that she´s not interested (we were visiting her in her store). She was with a customer and the customer said hold on a sec. I want you to talk with me and my family. We were very surprised and we said ok. We went and got to know her husband and 2 children right then and there. This family has been prepared for a long time. They now have a baptisimal date for July 3 and they are changing a lot. They read from the Book of Mormon and from the new Gospel Principles manual that we received this year. I will be eternally grateful that I decided to follow a thought that I thought was a dumb thought becasue 4 of God´s children will be able to return to live with him again.

This week we went to the Equator again. We went to a different spot than last time. This is supposed to be the real Ecuator line. They had some really cool stuff. They had water fall in the North and in the South and on the Ecuator. It was way cool because it went opposite directions and on the Ecuator it went straight down. There´s also less resistance on the Ecuator. He had me put my hands out and he tried pulling my arms down. Away from the Ecuator he couldn´t do it but on the Ecuator he did it pretty easily. It was pretty crazy. We also balanced an egg on a nail. They also had some cool stuff from the Orient, the Amazon Jungle. It was way cool to learn about all this new stuff.

Well I just want to share my testimony with all of you I know that the church is true. The Gospel makes changes in the lives of the people here. I love being a missionary. I can´t believe that I´m going to turn 20 years old this week. Thank you so much for all that all of you have taught me in my life. I´m so grateful for each and every one of you.
I love you all so very much.
Love, Élder Hakes

June 14, 2010

2010-06-16T23:07:00.003-06:00

Dear Family,
Wow! What a crazy week. Well as I wrote last week I´m with a new companion now. This week was pretty good. I feel like we could have done more and this week will be a wake up call to him. We had 2 baptisms last weekend. A couple got baptized. It was a really sweet experience. They changed so much just this week so they could be prepared for baptism. They will be an amazing eternal family when they go to the temple. They´re so excited to change their lives now. I love helping people to do that. I do have some bad news too. THis week we laost the family Villamar, the family of 8. Everything was going good and they were preparing for baptism. We had the interviews on thursday and it was a disaster. All of the kids younger than 18 said that they wanted to wait until they turned 18 so they could make a good decision. The oldest, 19 year old, was completly shut and prideful. She didn´t confess her sins. She said that she didn´t want to be baptized and a lot of other things. We talked to them afterwards and told them that they can´t reject the answer that they have received. THey know that the church is true and they are just rejectng it because of their pride. We read some scriptures about how if they have an answer and they reject it it will be bad with them in the last day, but they didn´t care at all. It was really sad to see them like that. They were progressing so well and I felt like everything was going so well. I guess it wasn´t there time. We´ll visit them like 1 or 2 more times to see if they´ll change, but if not we´re going to have to leave them for now.´
Today we went bowling and played pool again at the same place. I ate McDonalds and Taco Bell today. It was pretty amazing. Well I hope you all know that I love this work. I know that there are a lot of ups and downs and that this work is very difficult, but....I LOVE IT!!!!!! It´s so weird to think that I´m going to be 20 years old in a few weeks. It´s kind of funny, I think I´m starting to lose my vision a little bit. I told my companion that my eyes only have a 20 year gaurantee he he he :) :) Well I love you all so much. I´m really excited for our zone and our companionship. We´re going to have a lot of baptisms and that´s always good.

Love,
Élder Hakes

June 7, 2010

2010-06-07T18:45:00.002-06:00

Dear Family,
Wow what a crazy week it has been. We changed apartments to a really nice apartment this week. We also had to clean the old house really really good. My camera got stolen today.

I have a new companion. His name is Elder Archundia and he´s from Mexico. I´m training him as a zone leader and we have a new zone. We have 5 new missionaries in the zone and they made the zones a lot smaller. There are now only 14 missionaries in our zone. We´ll be able to help each missionary better now.

We had a really amazing experience on Saturday. We were with the six kids in the family of 8, the family Villamar. We talked about how to receive an answer and the importance of being humble to be able to receive an answer from God. It was a really amazing lesson. To end the lesson I felt like we should ask, in the closing prayer, if the church is true. They did it and each and every one of them received their answer the spirit was so strong. It was amazing. They have the goal to be baptized this weekend but I believe it will be changed to the following weekend. I´m so excited for them. I haven´t prayed so much for one family in my entire life!!!!

I love being a missionary.

Well, I love you all so very much. Thank you for all that you do.
Love, Élder Hakes

May 31, 2010

2010-06-07T18:36:00.003-06:00

Dear Family.
This week was an amazing week. We had stake conference and we had an area 70 with us at the conference. His name is Elder Cesar Dávila. During his stay he also wanted to visit. An investigator family. The stake president knew about our family of 8 so he came with us to visit them. It was amazing. We talked about the restoration and it changed the whole attitude of the family. They all have a lot more desires to learn and progress. When we were in the priesthood session of the conference he invited us up to share the experience that we had. It was pretty cool. President Sloan was in the conference to so he was very happy that we were able to have that experience with him. When the normal session of the conference ended we went up to Élder Dávila with the family of 8 and he gave them all hugs. He also gave me a really big hug and told me thank you for the experience that we gave him. He called my comanion and I his senior companions. It was pretty funny. We also put a baptism date eith the family of 8 for June 12th. They still need a lot of preparation but I believe that they´ll make it. I´m so excited for them!!!! I´ve been so lucky. This is the second time that I have taught with an area 70. It was really cool. My companion was really nervous but I wasn´t. I knew that I was teaching the family and not Élder Dávila. It was an amazing experience.
Next week is transfers. We were talking with President Sloan today and he´s probably going to split our zone into 2 smaller zones. He wants to have zone leaders in each stake so we can work better on the stake level. That means that it´s about 99% sure that we will have transfers this next week. I think that I will stay in the same sector and that my companion will leave. He´s got a lot of time here in our sector. Just about everyone in the zone will have transfers next week so next Monday will be very crazy trying to help everyone change and find their new companions.
Well I´m excited to see what happens in the next few weeks. You all might have heard about a volcano that exploded but nothing happened here in Quito. We didn´t receive any ash or anything. The explosion was really far away. I do have some cool pictures of the volcanoes that surround Quito though. There are 4 that I can see from my house on a clear day!! Well I love this work. I wish you all could have my addiction to the work. Remember to keep studying your scriptures and saying your prayers. I love you all so much!!!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

May 24,2010

2010-05-25T15:57:00.001-06:00

Dear Family,
This week was pretty crazy. I was in exchanges the whole week. That means that I was with other missionaries in their sectors on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. It was kind of tough. I wanted to go back to sleep in my own bed and to teach my investigators. I hope I hleped the missionaries I was with though. We worked really hard this week. We had more lessons this week than any other week that I´ve had on the mission. We helped a lot of people. This sonday the family of 8 that we found only one week ago went to church with us. They really enjoyed it. The only problem is that the Stake President was there and he did something that made them angry. Right after Sacrament meeting we were trying to help everyone get to their right classes and then we realized that the family Villamar (the family of 8) wasn´t there we went outside and they weren´t there and finally we saw them in one of the classrooms with the Stake President and the Bishop. We wondered why they were there but we kind of blew it off and we started the next class. About 10 minutes into the class the family Villamar showed up and the teacher taught about baptism. It was really good. They understood a lot and liked it. We thought everything had gone really well for them. After church when the family had gone home we were talking with the Bishop and he said that the Stake President had challenged them to be baptized. We thought well ok, that could be good. We were wrong. We showed up at the house of the family Villamar after church and they were a little bit angry. They said that all we wanted was to baptize them and that they were pressured and all that. It was tough to see that but we were able to tell them that we don´t want them to be baptized from today to tomorrow. We told them that they aren´t ready right now and that they still need to learn a lot more and that they need to receive an answer from God. By the end they had calmed down a lot and they are still going to listen to us. I want to strangle our Stake President. I know that he was just trying to help but he needs to stay with the members. The investigators aren´t under his stewardship. That´s our responsibility. I´ll probably talk to him about that.
I read a basic scripture and applied it in a funny way. In Alma 1:27 it talks about how they were dressed neat and comly. That means that we have to buy all of our clothes in Wal-Mart ha ha :) Well it was a crazy week and I loved it. I learned a lot. This weekend we have our Stake Conference. We´ll have an area 70, the temple president, and President Sloan there with us. I´m pretty excited for it. Well I love you all. Can´t wait to write you next week.

Love,
Élder Hakes

May 17, 2010

2010-05-19T14:07:00.003-06:00

Dear family,
This week was pretty amazing. I´ll start off with our own companionship. This week was the first week where we actually had a lot of time in our own sector. We had a really amazing week with some amazing experiences. Yesterday we were walking in the street and we contacted 3 girls and they didn´t seem to interested but they told us where they lived. The address was very vague and se just started knocking on doors, hoping that we´d find their family. We went off to this little street so we could say a prayer and my companion started talking to this family, before we said the prayer. We found out that this was ther rest of the family that we were looking for. We told them that they had sent us down here and they let us right in to teach them. It was amazing when we walked in and it was a family of 8. I had never taught so many people at once. The spirit was so strong. I pulled the goofy gringo trick so the kids would want us to come back (the goofy gringo trick is when I just act a little weird for the kids so they want us to come back. I figure if the kids want us back the parents will too:) he he). It was amazing because they all want to go to church and read and everything. I can´t wait to go back there.
This week we had another baptism too!!! Rodrigo Morocho got baptized. It was really amazing because before the baptism he was pretty nervous and it didn´t seem like he had a strong testimony, but right after he got baptized he shared a powerful testimony that really brought the spirit. It was amazing. We completed that family when he got baptized. They can now all prepare to go to the temple to be sealed. We´re really excited for all of them. The fountain picture that I put in there is a fountain that they made and that they have in their front yard. I think it´s hilarious because I´ll probably never see a statue like that again.

This week the our district did pretty amazing too!!! We were having some problems with one companionship and we talked with them about it and this week they did so much better. THey finally started to work and to grow in faith. It´s an amazing process to watch. They´re doing as Alma taught in Alma 32:27-30. I´m so excited for them to keep doing that.
Well I love you family. You are all amazing. I love this work and I love being a called representative of Jesus Christ to declare repentance and baptism to this people here in Ecuador. I hope that all of you can be doing the same at home. We should talk with everyone about this gospel because we want every single one of God´s children to be with us when we arrive in the Celestial Kingdom. If we don´t talk and show them they may never make it. Well I love you all.

Love,
Élder Hakes

May 10, 2010

2010-05-11T09:56:00.000-06:00

Dear Family,
Wow!!! I´m halfway done with the phonecalls in my mission. It was really good to talk to you guys yesterday. Your voices are changing a lot. You pretty much know everything going on in my life right now. I just wanted to thank you all for the things that you have done for me. I have so many blessings from my family. Thank you for being so awesome. Well I really don´t have anything else to see. Just remember that I love you all and that you are all so awesome.

Love,
Élder Hakes

P.S. I forgot my camera in the house so I´ll send the pictures of my new suit next week :)

May 3, 2010

2010-05-05T17:35:00.003-06:00

Dear Family,
This was a pretty crazy week. We had a lot of meetings and a lot of things to do outside of our sector. It was tough for me to do that. I like being in my sector working with my investigators. We did have a really amazing experience this last friday though. We had the opportunity to listen to a general authority, Elder Nash. He the president of the area we´re in. It was way cool. He gave us all hugs and said something to all of us. I got to have a little bit more time with him too because I´m a zone leader. It was really cool. He gave me some really nice compliments. We, the zone leaders, were lined up at the door when he walked in and I was the first one lined up. The first thing he said was to President Sloan. He said something like, "He really shines" or "He´s got a good spirit to him." He was talking about me. I was really grateful for that. It´s not everyday that a general authority gives you a compliment like that. I was very happy. It was an amazing experience to be there with Elder Nash.
I think last week I told you about a really good contact that we had. This week when we visited him for the second time he had read the entire book of 1 Nephi. It was amazing I had never seen anything like it. When we visited him the 3rd time he had read up to Jacob. I was astounded. He read all of that in less than a week. He has some doubts and everything but we have answered all of his questions. We just need him to go to church and he´ll be a perfect contact. It was way cool.
My companion and I were a little sick this week. On saturday we were in the house for about 2-3 hours. We were sick with las bicicletas. You´ll have to ask Nancy or Brother Sowards what that one means. It´s nothing bad at all. It´s just really annoying to have.
Well family I love you all so much. I can´t wait to talk with you this Sunday. I love you all!!!!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

2010-04-26T23:56:00.004-06:00

Dear Family,
Wow! What a crazy first week as zone leader. There are a lot more things that we have to do that I didn´t know about. I forgot what it was like to be in a new sector. I am adjusting really well though. It was nice to come in and have 2 baptisms in the first week. It was really crazy when one of them asked me to baptize them. Their names are Alejandro Morocho and Rosa Ugsha. It was a really neat experience. We had a pretty amazing day yesterday too. Normally during a day we have about 4 lessons and 2 or 3 new investigators. Yesterday we had 6 lessons and 7 new investigators and our time was a little shorter because of church. It was really cool. We also taught someone who I had contacted on the bus and we had an amazing experience. On Friday we had our Leaders Counsel with all of the leaders in the whole mission. President Sloan talked about taking the fear of contacting out of this mission. I´m not going to lie, I was one of the missionaries that had this fear, just a little bit. When we were going home my companion and I set the goal to have 5 contacts in the 2 buses we had to take. I was really nervous for some reason. Satan didn´t want me to talk with these people. I did 2 contacts on the 1st bus and I had an amazing contact on the last bus. I shared pretty much everything with him. I shared about the Book of Mormon, the First Vision, Baptism, etc. It was an amazing contact. Yesterday we passed by the house of this contact from the 2nd bus. We taught him all of the 1st lesson and he was extremely receptive. He had a couple doubts but we shared some scriptures and he said that it all makes sense and that he likes it. We left a Book of Mormon with him and he asked us if he could read more that the little part that we showed him. We told him of course and he said that he will pray to know as well. I´m really excited to go back on Wednesday to see how he´s doing. I am so grateful that I overcame my little fear of talking because he probably never would have heard of the gospel if I hadn´t talked with him. It was an amazingly spiritual Experience.
This week is going to be really awesome. We have a conference with Elder Nash. He´s the Area President for our area here in Ecuador. I´m really excited to hear him speak. After the conference, all of the Zone Leaders have a special meeting with him afterwards. I´m really excited about that too. It should be a really good experience.
We had a plaza presentation on Saturday. I put some pictures of it in this e-mail. As a zone we all went to a park and we contacted people. We have 4 signs that have a picture and a question on each side. It was really cool to get to know more people. It will really help our missionaries. We are also going to have another one this Saturday. I´m really excited.

I also had a nice surprise yesterday at church. Sacrament meeting had just finished and I was putting my stuff away when I look up and see Brother Sowards with a big smile on his face. I´m not going to lie, I was speechless. It was pretty crazy to see a member from my ward in Ecuador. He was visiting Ecuador and he thought he´d pass by and visit me. He also delivered my new scriptures from my family. I was very grateful for that. I just had one crazy day yesterday. This whole week has been crazy and I love it :)

My new companion´s name is Elder Christopher Rodríguez and he´s from Quayaquil. He´s got 13 months in the mission and has been my Zone leader for about 3 months. Now we´re companions. He´s 5´5" and he likes jogging to keep up with me :) He´s a really good missionary. He teaches from the heart and he knows the scriptures very well. He teaches kind of like me except for he´s smarter. I will learn a lot from him. I´ll be sure to send a picture of us next week.
Well family you got a really good letter this week. I love you all so much. I´m so thankful for all of the letters that I´ve received from each and every one of you. Love you all.

Love,
Élder Hakes

April 19, 2010

2010-04-20T08:25:00.001-06:00

Dear Family,
This week was really crazy. I actually had a pretty tough time because I couldn´t work in my sector. It´s tough being with 2 people that don´t want to work hard. I´m glad that I have a companion now. Well, I have another new assignment. I´m a zone leader now. I don´t know why but I am. I only had to move across the street. The ward is called Salvador Celi. It´s kind of exciting but a little bit scary too. I´m just a little nervous because I´m so new and I am responsible for 22 missionaries now. My companion´s name is Elder Rodríguez. He´s from Quayaquil and has 13 months in the mission. That means that we´re both fairly new at being zone leaders. I´m nervous but I know that I´ll be alright and that Heavenly Father will help me know what to do. This last weekend a companionship in my district had 4 baptisms and we went. It was an amazing baptisimal service. THere were about 30-40 people there and the Spirit was so strong. During the service, one of my misionaries asked me to sing during the baptism I told him ok. I sang the first solo in my life. I´m not going to lie, I´d rather play in another state championship football game than do that again. I was way nervous. I did ok though, I think :) Well I love you family. I hope all is going well and I can´t wait to talk to you on May 9th!!!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

April 12, 2010

2010-04-12T23:38:00.004-06:00

Dear Family,
Wow, this week was really tough. I learned a ton though. It´s been really hard the last couple of weeks. My old companion, Elder Rivas went home. I know a lot of the details but I´m not going to share them. It´s been really hard on me too because I had to take him to Quito and I spent about all of my time sitting. I can only study for so long I found out. I always want to study more during the week but after 2 hours I´m pretty sleepy. Right now I´m with 2 Elders in my district that have problems, Elder Stieber and Elder Lopez. I´m trying to help them and it´s been hard so far. It´s hard also because I have to work in Conocoto but I can only go for a couple of hours during the week. I´m going to lose a lot of investigators and that´s really sad. I did have some good experiences too though. I had some crazy baptism interviews this week. I had 2 interviews with sisters. They were exact opposites. They both have to talk with the mission President and only one is ready to do it. The first interview was really weird. I din´t like it at all because from the moment we started I knew she wasn´t going to pass. She didn´t have a testimony hardly at all. The second sister however was an amazing experience. She is ready to baptized. I also knew it from the beginning. She also has to talk with President SLoan but she´s ready to do it. She is very humble and she has a strong testimony of the church and she has a ton of faith. It was an amazing experience.
This week we were visiting a family of the other Elders and I found someone that reminded me of Cooper. That is one personality that I thought I would never find here in Ecuador. He is about 6 years old and he´s hilarious. We were teaching him and his family and he wasn´t paying attention so we asked him if he understood. After that in the same sing-song voice that Cooper has he said I don´t understand anything. I got a really good laugh out of that one. This little kid is called Galo. It was a pretty funny experience too.
Another bad thing happened this week too. After my companion and I received the news that he´s going home we got on the bus and were an the way home. There was some guy there that had lived in New York before so he was acting like a gangster and he thought he was all cool. I eventually decided that I wasn´t going to talk to him because it was really annoying. He just kept cussing and saying very ina propriate things in English. I was so annoyed and distracted that I left my English scriptures in the bus. I was pretty sad because that´s one of the few things that I really want here in Ecuador. It was also all marked up and had a lot of notes in it. It hurt to lose it. Right now I´m studying from a Book of Mormon that a missionary has here. Luckily he had one in english or I´d be studying everything in Spanish.
Well I´ve had some pretty rough experiences this week. I feel right now like the Lord is preparing me for something. I just hope I´ll be prepared for it. There are transfers on Sunday so we´ll see what happens. I love you all and I´m so grateful for all the blessings that I have received from each and every one of you.

Love,
Élder Hakes

......I almost forgot. I had a baptism this weekend. His name is Luis Olmedo Lopez Mora. He´s a little bit slow and it took some time to get him ready but he did it. He has a really strong testimony and he lives next door to the Bishop and they´ve been helping him a ton. He is all for enduring to the end and not listening to what others tell him about the church. It´s really awesome. I have baptized my 5th person here in the mission. That´s pretty exciting!!!

I don´t know how to explain Quito. It is really high in the mountains and there are mountains on every side. These last feew weeks it has been raining pretty hard. Everyday it rains now. It´s a nice chnge. I think the easiest way to show you what Quito´s like is that you come here when I have to leave. I´ve been growing a lot during the mission. I can´t beleive how skinny I am now. I hadn´t really looked a myself in the mirrior and it kind of hit me this week. I felt like Brent. It was weird :)

April 5, 2010

2010-04-05T18:18:00.004-06:00

Dear Family,
Wow this week was pretty crazy. It´s called Semana Santa. It´s really just another reason for people to drink and have vacations. It was really amazing watching the General Conference. It´s a lot different when you know about the scriptures they share. I learned so much. I only took 20 pages of notes this time :) I really liked how the whole conference focuse and families and strengthening the youth and children. It was amazing listening to the prophet´s voice again. It has a power that is very amazing. We´re preparing an investigator to be baptized this weekend. He´s really excited and we are too!!! Today was a really fun day. We had our zone activity and as you can see we went to some cascadas(waterfalls for you non-spanish speakers)!!! It´s about an hour long hike in there after all 20 of us traveled for an hour in the back of a small pick-up. It was way fun. We were literaly walking through the jungle and I took a ton of pictures. Well I love all of you. Can´t wait to write you next week.

Love,
Élder Hakes

March 29, 2010

2010-04-05T09:53:00.001-06:00

Dear Family,
This week was pretty crazy. We had transfers. I´m still here in Conocoto but I have a new companion. His name is Elder Rivas. He´s from Guatemala and he has 14 months in the mission. It´s kind of weird that I keep getting missionaries that have more time then me. Something actually happened with him and his old companion. He was a zone leader for like 5-6 months. I got a call last monday after I had written you and we went to the office. President Sloan was having an interview with him. Everyone in the office spoke only spanish except Elder Purnell, President Sloan and I. President Sloan told me, "I´m giving you this companion because I trust you. I know that you´ll protect him." President Sloan has a lot of trust in my right now. I didn´t realize it until this transfer. Elder Rivas is an amazing missionary. He has helped me a ton. With Elder Purnell I kind of felt like I was going backwards but with him I learn something new everyday. He teaches very well and I´m really excited to be his companion. This week was a little crazy. I had to do a lot of Baptismal Interviews and none of them passed. It´s pretty crazy thinking that I have the authority to authorize someone to be baptized. I know that it´s not me that does it but it´s still so crazy. Yesterday we had a really cool experience. We had an appointment with a family of 5 and we showed up and they said they had some of their family over. It ended up that we taught about 20 people at one time. It was the craziest thing ever and the Spirit was so strong. We invited all of them to go General Conference this weekend and it sounds like a lot of them will go (about10-12). It was an amazing experience to see all those people and to testify of Christ. I never would have though just 2 years ago that I´d be able to teach the gospel to 20 people in Spanish, but it´s really not hard at all with faith and love for the people. I´m going to miss this ward a lot. THey have helped us a ton and the investigators are really amazing.
This weekend is going to be amazing!! We are so blessed that we have the opportunity to listen to a prophet and 12 apostles called of God. It´s amazing that I can be thousands of miles from Utah and I will be able to listen to conference in English. I hope that we can all be prepared to listen to these words and counsel that we will receive. I love you all family. Good luck with all that you do.

Love,
Élder Hakes

March 22, 2010

2010-03-22T22:23:00.002-06:00

Dear Family,

What another crazy week. I don´t think there can be a regular week in the mission field. I guess that´s good because it always keeps us on our toes. This week I went to my first District Leader Meeting. All of the district leaders in the whole mission, there are about 30 of us, went to Quito to learn from President Sloan and the Assistants. It was a pretty amazing day. I learned a lot more about what I´m supposed to be doing and how to do it well. I love listening to President Sloan. He is an amazing mission president. Since I had that meeting all day tuesday we missed out a whole day´s work so that stunk. I´m officially addicted to studying the scriptures. I wish we had more time to study every morning. It would be sweet. Our investigators are progressing really slow here. We´re trying to figure out what we need to do so they can progress faster. Élder Purnell and I set some really good goals to try and help them. We´re excited to do it too! So about a week ago we talked with one of the guards at a gated community where some investigators live and he´s from Haiti. He speaks 4 languages, French, English, Creol, and Spanish. It was pretty weird talking to him because he keeps saying that we should talk in English because he is better at English than Spanish. There´s also some ward members here that want us to speak in English so they can learn English faster. It´s pretty funny to do. Well I can´t think of anything else this week. Sounds like everyone had a fun Spring Break. I love you all!!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

March 15, 2010

2010-03-17T00:57:00.003-06:00

Dear family,
Wow I feel like I haven´t really written to you in like 2 weeks. I´ve been really busy doing other things on Monday with my new responsibilities as District leader. I´m still adjusting to it. Well I´m doing really good. This week was way crazy. We started it off on last monday when we were in the bus terminal for 2 hours waiting for another Elder in our district to show up. We didn´t get home untill like 10 that night. I wasn´t very happy that we were late. During the next few days we did really good but on Thursday one companionship didn´t show up to the District Meeting so I had to go to there house. That took about an hour of our time to stop by there house and put a post-it on their door. Saturday was the craziest day of them all. We started it off with a service project at 8 am. We were filling up bags of dirt and making a wall with it so the members house won´t fall when there is rain. Their house is literally on the side of a hill. The bags of dirt will keep the dirt up higher so the house doesn´t slide. We finished that project at about 2 pm and then we had another service from 4 pm - 6 30 pm. We did service literally the whole day. It was nuts. I´m so tired right now from those services. Tomorrow I get to go to a District leader meeting. All the district leaders are going to Quito and President Sloan will teach us how we can do our assignments better. I´m really excited because President Sloan teaches in a way that really pumps me up for the work. I also learn a ton every time he teaches us. Well I´m doing really good. I finally started leveling off my weight. I weighed 213 lbs. again when I went to Quito. Hermana Rose, the mission nurse, was very happy that I didn´t lose more.
We had something pretty crazy happen last Sunday (8 days ago). We were in a lesson and I got a call and I felt like I should answer it. I did and a member told me that the mom of one of our investigators (a member) had been asaulted and that the other members had already given her a blessing. We finished the lesson and we went to visit them. When we got there it ended up being that our investigator was the one that had been asaulted. I didn´t hear right. We know that he has a problem with drinking so we know what caused it. We talked to him for a bit and talked about prayer and repentance. The spirit was so strong during the lesson. He told us that he wanted to leave the alcohol and everything behind him. We left an Ensign with him and told him to read it. The sad thing is that just 2 days ago we stopped by again and he was drunk laying in his bed. It´s really sad because it could affect his brain if he´s drinking right now. He has a really bad addiction and we´re trying to help him.
Last friday (10 days ago) I did my second baptisimal interview. It was an amazing experience. At the end of it she said that she wanted me to baptize her. I was surprised but I said yes. The next day we had the baptism and it was a really amazing experience. The sisters that taught this investigator were really happy too because one of them finished the mission the next week. It would be way cool to finish the mission with a baptism. I was really happy for her. That´s the 5th person I´ve baptized in my life. Emily Hakes, Miller Mina, Diana Nieto, Carlos Quishpe and Aidil Diaz. That´s pretty crazy that I´ve been able to do that in my life. It´s really a blessing. This week we also gave a ton of priesthood blessings. I would say about 10 of them at least. It´s a blessing that I´m able to use the priesthood almost everyday here in the mission. I love it.
Well family, my time´s almost up. I just feel like I should end this letter with my testimony. I know that I am exactly where I need to be right now. I love sharing the Book of Mormon with the people here. It´s a blessing that I can say, ¨This book was written by your ancestors and they wrote it for you.¨ I love telling the people that because then they get really interested and they listen. My testimony of the Book of Mormon has grown so much in this short time here in the mission. I also testify of the promise that the Book of Mormon carries. That anyone that reads this book, meditates in its words, and prays to God asking if it is true will know for a surety that this book was written by prophets called by God and that Joseph Smith translated this book. I believe that this challenge can be used by every person everyday, member or non-member. We all must read, meditate and pray about the Book of Mormon everyday so that our testimonies will be strong enough. One of my MTC teachers said, ¨Your testimony today is not strong enough for tomorrow´s challenges.¨ We must strengthen our testimonies everyday and we must know without a doubt in our mind that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, other scriptures written for our day that help and protect us when we choose to use them. My challenge to everyone is that you read the Book of Mormon again. 1 Nephi 1:1 - Moroni 10:34. You will all be strengthened and renewed and will have more success in everything that you do. I love you all and I hope you can all do these things with¨...un corazón quebrantado y espíritu contritu¨(3 nefi 9:20).

Love,
Élder Hakes

March 8, 2010

2010-03-10T00:01:00.000-06:00

Well I don´t really have any time this week. I have to go to the bus terminal to pick up a companion of someone in my district. Right now it´s just Élder Purnell and me in COnocoto. Elder Miranda went to a different sector in our district so I´ll still be able to see him. THat´s sweet to hear about Nate´s call. I bet he was way surprised to hear that he´s Spanish speaking but it´ll be fun for family reunions after the mission. I love you all. I´ll try to write more later if there´s time.

Love,
Élder Hakes

March 1, 2010

2010-03-02T17:45:00.000-06:00

Dear Family,
Well what a crazy week. We had some amazing experiences. Élder Miranda is a really good Élder and has been helping a lot. We´re teaching a lot more because when we have members with us we can divide 2 and 2 and teach more lessons. We´ve been doing that a lot this week it has been way fun. We had some sweet experiences last night too. I was with Élder Miranda and we didn´t really have any set appointments. We were walking by the house of a member and she wasn´t at church so we were just going to see what happened. There are 2 houses in the gate where she lives and her dad answered the door. He told us that the daughter of the member was in the hospital. We left the house and called the member. We told her that were going to go today and talked about prayer a little bit. After that we had a pretty funny experience but I know that it was a spiritual prompting. We said a quick prayer and I thought "I need to go to the bathroom let´s go knock on the door again." The member´s brother let us in this time and we went to the members house (not the houe of the brother and father) and the member´s son was there. He was really sad. We had talked to him before about the gospel but he wasn´t really interested. This time he was really open and we taught him about prayer and the experience of Joseph Smith in D&C 121. It was a really spiritual experience. At the end he told us that he was up in his room sad and thinking I hope the Elders come by and right after that we showed up. It was a really amazing experience. We´re going to start teachin him now.
I learned 2 things from this experience. 1, the Lord ca put promptings in your head through any way that he wants. We may think that we´re just thinking normally but it really is a spiritual prompting. 2, there is always a reason why we have trials. Hermana Amparo (she´the mom of the girl in the hospital) has been having a really hard time because her daughter has cancer and her kids aren´t members and don´t want to listen to us. She´s also a single mom trying to take care of her kids. It´s been really hard on her. Right now, because her daughter is sick her son will start listening to us. I believe that he will become a great missionary some day. These were just a bunch of thoughts I had after this experience. What I learned is that we always need to follow the Spirit. If we feel like we need to do something and that something is good. It is from God. Well I hope all is going good for everyone. I love you all.

Love,
Élder Hakes

February 22, 2010

2010-02-22T21:36:00.007-06:00

With President and Sister Sloan

Dear Family,
Wow what a crazy week. There were some emergency transfers in the mission. I´m still here with Élder Purnell in Conocoto but we have another elder with us too. We´re in a trio. Élder Purnell, Élder Miranda, and me. I also got called to be a district leader. I´m a little nervous but I´m alright, I´ve got a cell phone now ha ha.

Well we´ve had a lot of fun experiences this week. One was that the electric shower head broke when I was showering. It scared me half to death. I turned around and the wire was on fire. I blew it out and no harm done but it was crazy. We had cold showers for a couple of days but we got it fixed now.

We also had some cool Spiritual Experiences. We have a family of 4 that were teaching and they are way receptive to everything. We talked about baptism date with them. They didn´t accept the date but the said they will definitely read and pray more to know and that´s exactly what we want them to do. It was way sweet. We also had a really cool contact the other day that really shows the power of the Book of Mormon. We were talking to him about the restoration or something and he wasn´t really interested and he wouldn´t give his address. After that we kept talking and I started to share about the Book of Mormon. After that he was really interested and he gave us his address and he´s a sweet reference for another sector. I´m excited to hear about Nate´s call. That´s way exciting. Well I love you all.

Love,
Élder Hakes

P.S. This week Elder Calderon and area 70 is going to be with us on wednesday night. He´s going to teach with us and everything. It will be pretty crazy but I´m excited. Also another funny scripture in 3 Nephi 7:8.

At the Equator

The belt with added holes =)

February 15, 2010

2010-02-15T23:29:00.000-06:00

Dear Family,
We had a pretty amazing week here in Conocoto. We´re finally seeing the results of our hard work. We don´t have hardly anyone close to being baptized but we have a ton of new investigators that will definitely get baptized within the next month or two. I had my first interview with President Sloan this week. It was really amazing. He helped me a lot and apparently has a lot of confidence in me. This week we talked with 71 new people during the week and we have 22 new investigators. I can´t believe we actually did that but I´m really happy. I had a really cool experience last night. We went to teach one of our investigators and she told us that she drank on friday. That was after 24 days without alcohol because we taught her about the Word of Wisdom. It was really sad for me when she told us. I literally felt pain for her and her bad decision. During that whole lesson I wasn´t the one talking. Literally everything I said was from the Spirit. I remembered and shared about 5-6 scriptures that I hadn´t used yet in Ecuador. It was pretty amazing. The spirit was so strong during the whole lesson. She really wants to change and I hope that what I said helps her. Well I hope all is well in the States. I love you all!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

The Equator

2010-02-08T18:40:00.004-06:00

Dear Family,
Well first off, there is a new e-mail for the missionaries now. It´s supposed to be better and faster so my new e-mail is david.hakes@myldsmail.net It´s not too much different but it had to be changed. This week was pretty amazing. First off we had a baptism. There was an investigator that had been investigating for about 6 months now. We talked with him for 2 weeks and now he´s baptized. He told our district leader in the interview that the other issionaries before us just wanted to be friends and that we actually wanted to help him learn and understand. That´s why he got baptized. I felt really good hearing that because I knew we were friends too.

It was a crazy day the day he got baptized. I don´t know if I´ve ever seen that much rain in my life. I got soaked through my big jacket. We were outside for about and hour because no one would let us in or talk with us. We eventually went to a part-member family's house and taught them and waited out the worst of the storm. It was nuts.

This week was way sweet with the members too. We´ve started passing around a little calender that says when can you help the missionaries and we have almost every hour filled out except Saturday. It´s a lot easier with the members too because there are a lot of returned missionaries in our ward. We can also do splits when we have 2 members with us. It´s been way sweet and we´re getting a lot of things done too.

Today was a sweet day too. We went to the Equator as a district!!!! It´s called La Mitad del Mundo in Spanish. It was a sweet experience. You can balance an egg on a nail and you weigh less and all of that fun stuff. I got some sweet picture of the monument here too. I decided I better celebrate Brent´s and Cody´s birthdays in style here in Ecuador. I´ll send some sweet pictures next week.

Well the work is tough here, but I love it. I´m really losing myself in the work and in Spanish. I don´t understand half of the phrases that my companion says in English anymore. I also can be reading in English and talking in Spanish, I can´t tell if the music on the bus is in English or Spanish sometimes. It´s so sweet!!! Well I love you all. Good luck with all that you do. Remember to say your prayers and read the scriptures everyday.

Love,
Élder Hakes

February 1, 2010

2010-02-07T12:22:00.000-06:00

Dear Family,
Sorry this is going to be a very short letter because the internet is being weird. I got a gringo for a companion. He is brand new and he does bot know a ton of Spanish but he is way good. We are working really hard here. He has helped me a lot with my attitude and with the little things that I was lacking before. We have been blessed because of it. We had a contact the other day and we asked if we could teach him (he is 22 years old) and he said yes even though it was the first visit. I did not know what we were going to share but I felt like we should talk about baptism. We taught that he was not baptized with the authority and that he did not make the decision for himself. We asked if he would want to be baptized and he said yes. It was the craziest thing ever. We told him that he needs to be taught more before the baptism and that since he lives in another sector he will be taught by other missionaries. It was an amazing experience. Well I love you all.

Love,
Elder Hakes

January 25, 2009

2010-02-01T08:43:00.001-06:00

Wow what a crazy week. Sounds like the weather has been pretty crazy in both Americas. We've had a ton of rain and lightning this week. It was pretty scary yesterday when it started up when we were about half way up a mountain. It was hailing. Well we had transfers, for real, and I'm staying in the same sector. I'm going to be training a new missionary too. Pretty crazy huh. I'm just happy that President Sloan trusts me with this. It's a big resposibility. For today and tomorrow I'm with another Elder from my group and he's going to train too. Tomorrow were taking one of the new missionaries to teach and on wednesday I,ll find out who's my companion. I had a dream last night that a received a companion from California but we'll see what happens.

We had a baptism this week too. We baptized our regalito who is 8 years old and lives with the bishop,s family. This week we also had our mission conference and had interviews with President Montoya (1st counselor in the mission presidency). It was way cool. I learned a ton. I also had exchanges with my District leader this week. I was with Elder Hirschi who's from my group. We were in his sector and it was pretty sweet. That night we ate lasagna from a bag. It's the kind that you take camping where you just put hot water. His family sent it to him and it was pretty good. The first time I had lasagna in a long time. We also had a sweet zone activity on Saturday. We have 4 signs with 2 questions on each sign and we put them in a park in my sector. We contacted a ton of people. We received 62 names with addresses in one day. It was way sweet. Now I just have to find them with my new companion ha ha. Well sounds like the family's doing good. I love you all!!!

Love,
Elder Hakes

Chicken Foot Soup

2010-01-18T22:22:00.000-06:00

Dear family,
Wow what a crazy week. I´m feeling a lot better now with the new sector. We have a lot of new investigators and we had a lot more lessons this week but it´s still nothing compared to the coast, it´s easy to find and teach there. Well today was interesting. We had a zone activity and we played laser tag. Weird isn´t it but there´s just about everything in Quito. I also ate a small pizza from Pizza Hut. It had so much grease it was pretty nasty. American food is gross :)

Well I found out how much weigh right now. You're not going to believe it but I've lost 32 lbs in 2 and a half months. I weigh 213 lbs. My shirts and pants are all to big for me and I've had to make new holes in my belt. I feel perfectly fine and I haven't been sick or anything. It's so weird that I only weigh 213 lbs. I haven't weighed that since like jr. year in high school. This week I ate my first thing really crazy, but I was warned about it before the mission so it wasn´t a huge surprise. I ate chicken foot soup. The soup was good and the foot is just kind of well like the skin of the chicken. There isn´t hardly anything to eat. At least I can say I ate it now :)
Well this Sunday/Monday we have the real transfers that are every 6 weeks. My companion keeps saying that he's going to leave and that I'm going to be a trainer, but we'll see. Also, transfers are the day of my companions birthday so we're having a family night at a members house that has a birthday the following week too. We have 2 baptisms planned for this week. One is what we call regalito (little gift) because he's 8 years old and it's a crazy situation that he lives with the parents of the Bishop so we're going to baptize him. I finally received all of the stuff from Christmas. It was all in Santo Domingo, but it finally got to the offices today. I'll find out what they say later because we're printing pictures right now in Quito. It's sweet to hear that there are a lot of missionaries in my home ward. My only suggestion is to start really studying the scriptures(especially the Book of Mormon) and Preach My Gospel. It will definetly help. I worried too much about the language. My suggestion to Nate is to do his papers now and write that he can't serve until June. That way he can return home with a whole summer to prepare for college after the mish. Well I'm glad to hear that everything is going good. I love you all so much.

Love,
Élder Hakes

Transfers

2010-01-11T17:16:00.001-06:00

Wow this week was the craziest week yet. On Wednesday morning, Jan. 6, at about 9 AM we got a call that I have transfers. At 12 PM that same day I had to leave for Quito. Right now I´m in a town that´s a part of Quito (like Mesa is a part of Phoenix) called Conocoto. I´m also the senior companion. My new companion is called Élder Salmerón. He´s from Nicaragua and has 6 months in the mission. The problem is is that he only has 3 and a half weeks in this sector. We´re esentially white-washing (2 new missionaries that don´t know the sector). It´s pretty tough too because the companion that I´m replacing didn´t do anything. He slept in till 10 and went back to the house early at night. That means we didn´t have hardly any investigators when I got here. We only had about 4-5. As of right now we have 10 more and we´ll have a bunch more because we received 11 references from 1 lady in the ward. It was really hard too because the area book was a mess. The area book is where we have a record of every investigator and their progress, former investigators, future investigators, etc. The former companion didn´t do anything in the area book and the companionship before that only did a little bit. That was my project today and I fixed it (there were forms froms 2003).

It´s colder here in Quito. At night it gets pretty cold, I´d guess around 45-50 degrees. During the day it´s perfect and I love that it´s not humid. We´ve been working really hard and I´ve had some sweet experiences. I´ve been teaching a lot more with Élder Salmerón so my teaching and my Spanish has improved alot. All the members say I speak really good but I don´t believe them.

We contacted on the top of a mountain the other day. Our sector is huge. it goes from the top of one mountain down almost to the bottom of the valley. We went to a small neighborhood called San Andres. It took us about 15-20 minutes of walking after we took a bus to the top of the mountain. It was worth it because we have about 4 future investigators up there now. Well I love you all. Hope all is well.

Love,
Élder Hakes

January 4, 2010

2010-01-06T15:08:00.001-06:00

Dear Family,
This week was pretty tough. New Years is a lot bigger than Christmas. That means that there were more drunks and more investigators and members that broke the Word of Wisdom. It was really tough when we went to talk to a part-member family that we've worked really hard with. The husband is a member and the wife wants to be baptized but they don't have money to get the papers for their wedding. They had been really strong until the holidays. We talked to the husband an the 1st and he was drunk. We cut him down pretty bad so we could get his attention and bring them back up the next day. That was really hard to watch because we visit them daily. The rules for New Years was we had to be in the apartment at 4 PM on 31 and we couldn't leave. That was really boring. On the 1st we couldn't contact people because they were all hungover or drunk. It was a tough 2 days. We couldn't do very much and all we could see is bad things. Almost all of our investigators drank during New Years. We're working with them now and teaching justice and mercy. It works really well when we tell them that they committed a horrible sin and they feel bad and then we tell them that they can repent. All-around it was a really hard week. Not much other news. Sounds like everyone had a great Christmas. For me it didn't feel like Christmas at all but that's ok, I'll give up 2 Christmas's for the Lord anyday :) I'd love to see pictures from all the families (Birtcher's, Gary and Lisa, Farnsworth's, Clark's, etc.) :)
We have really high goals for this month and as of right now there are 11 that I'm about 90% sure will be baptized in this month. We're praying really hard that they'll be able to be prepared for this. We're working like crazy too!!! I can't believe that I have 1 and a half transfers in the mission right now. The time is flying even faster now. Well I love you all Haz Lo Justo (Choose the Right in English).

Love,
Élder Hakes (Jeiks en Español) :)

December 28, 2009

2010-01-06T15:06:00.001-06:00

Dear family,
Wow this week was really weird. On Thursday we had to be in the house after 4 pm, except for 1 planned 1 hr dinner with a member family. On friday we had to be in the house at 6 PM and we couldn´t leave. Finally got to call home on friday too. It doesn´t feel like Christmas at all down here because it´s still around 80 degrees and humid. We had a baptism this week of a 9 year old boy. He´s the son of a recent convert so we found him taught him and baptized him. Diligence pays off :) We have another 10 year old for next week. This week I don't really have a whole lot to say because we didn't teach very much. We only had 7 lessons the whole week. I got to study a lot and I've got my scriptures marked how I want finally. There not complete but it's got what I need for right now. I really liked the 12 days of Christmas that you sent me. It was hilarious. It really brightened my day. It's been really rainy for the past few weeks. Yesterday was nuts. It started pouring when we were teaching a inactive and all the roofs here are metal. It was really loud so we were speaking very loud, but the Spirit was really strong. Right as we were ending the lesson the rain stopped. We walked to about 2 houses trying to set appointments and then we went to another appointment. Literally less than a minute inside the house it started pouring again. Yet again we had a really amazing lesson and we were talking really loud too. Yet again the rain stopped and we walked to the house. It rained for the rest of the night. There are 2 things that I learned from this experience. 1 we can still feel the Spirit when there are distractions that we can't avoid, 2 Heavenly Father blesses His missionaries so they don't have to be wet. It was a cool experience.
I kept the tradition alive of someone eating mexican food on Christmas. I made tacos and ate it with a jalepeño sauce that I found in the store here. It was amazing. I also made omlets for Christmas morning. They were awesome. I also made omlets this morning for us and the zone leaders. One of the Zone leaders is from mexico and he found jalapeños in a jar and we had those with the omlets. It was amazing. I'm having a great time here and thank you to all that sent me CHristmas e-mails. Sorry I can't write to everyone individually, but I really do appreciate it. Thanks for all that you do for me. Have fun in the dunes :)

Love,
Élder Hakes

P.S.
I should get my package on friday, finally.

December 21, 2009

2010-01-06T15:03:00.002-06:00

Ok I´m sending this one real quick because the power is about to go out and I probably won´t have too much time to send anything. The number is a land line and call here at noon Christmas day. Noon AZ time 3PM for me. The number is 005932759262. I think that is all you have to dial from the phone. We can only talk for 40 minutes maximum. Just say "puedo hablar con Élder Hakes" or you can just say Élder Hakes. It´s a house of a member. I love you all I´m going to start writing another letter

Love,¨
Élder Hakes

Half hour later.....

This might be just a bunch of jiberish but I´ll send it anyways. We had a baptism and I baptized her. Picture next week. We had little smokies with bbq sauce this week Send the family Christmas card please I love you all.

Élder Hakes

A few hours later....

Dear Family,
Well I found some more time. Élder Estrada had to go to Quito today for a District leaders meeting. I´m with some other missionaries for today and tomorrow. Sorry about the other letters. I was really rushed and wanted you to at least have something. This week was really good. I bought a CD player and that´s been really good to have for this week. There´s a big difference in the house when there´s music playing. I haven´t gotten any news on any package for me. I hope you sent it right. I think I fogot to tell you what President Sloan told us. He said send it to the mission office in Quito, it needs a green sticker, and don´t expedite it. If it´s more than 4-5 lbs. it will take a lot longer to get here. It was good to see the picture of the tree. I´m reaaly excited to watah the UofA bowl game, oh wait, they decided to be good when I´m in Ecuador. Oh well, I´m really not all that worried about it. THere´s too much to worry about here. We have a ton of planned baptisms for this next month. The goal is 11 right now. It´s very realistic too. We also have 2-3 this weekend. 1 hasn´t officially decided yet. She will tell us tomorrow or on wednesday.
I got the Ensign from conference and I saw something crazy in the pictures. On page 104 with the picture of the sister missionaries holding up signs look in the backround on the right hand side. Tell me who you think it looks like. This week I showed Élder Estrada li´l smokies and BBQ sauce and he really likes them. It´s really funny. We bought a ton of food for Christmas because we have to be locked in our house for most of the day. I think I´m going to buy a suit next week. It cost $60 for a suit (with pants). THe ones I have right now are to big. I can still wear them but I want another one too. It´ll have something special on it and I´ll send you a picture :) We had another baptism this week to. I baptized a 15 year-old girl. She's the younger sister of one of our other recent converts. It was a really cool experience with her because we found her taught her and baptized her. It was sweet too because she has a powerful testimony.
The ward here had their ward Christmas party on Saturday. THat was interesting. It started off with skits. We had 8 missionaries there and we did 3 skits. THey were all pretty funny. The young men here did a skit very similar to the Birtcher family. A skit where the director doesn't like what there doing and he keeps telling them to do it faster or slower or with more emotion. It was hilarious and I have it all recorded on my camera. After that they had a dance. THat's when we left. First off, we're not allowed to dance as missionaries and secondly, I didn't think the music they were playing was appropriate for a ward activity. It's all good though because we left. I really like the new house we have. A lot cleaner and a lot less bugs. The Spanish is coming easier everyday. I can teach about anything now, I just need to study more. I feel like I don't know the lessons very well. That's what I've been focusing on in my studies this week. Well I'll be waiting for your call on friday. 12 PM (noon) AZ time. I'm about 99% sure that the number is 005932769262. If it doesn't work try 005932759262. If I don't get your call I'll call you and then have you call back. If it ends up being on the 26th I'll call then if I have too (if all else fails). We'll make sure that we talk. Well I love you all. Have a Merry CHRISTmas!!!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

Apartment Change

2009-12-14T16:00:00.004-06:00

First day off the plane, in the airport

With President and Sister Sloan upon arriving

¡¡Dear Family!!
Well this week was pretty crazy. It was really good because we taught tons of lessons, but bad because one of our investigators needs to talk with the president. Actually it´s with The first couselor in the mission presidency because we found out that President Sloan received a 2 month break from mission president to recover. He´s going to remain here in Ecuador, but he does nothing with the missionaries. He´s in the mission home with only his family. Right now we have 15 baptisms as a zone for this month and that is really good. Élder Estrada and I are planning on having 1 this week and 5 the following week. We´re praying hard that they´ll all be safe and everything will work out. The goal for the mission is 200 for President Sloan. Right now we´re on the way of completing this goal. I have É. Estrada again for this transfer. I´m excited because we both know the sector well and this sector is really blessed. One of my district members in the MTC is now a district leader and trainer for this transfer. There´s another Élder that came on the plane with us that is going to train as well. I feel bad for them a little bit because it´s so fast, nut they´re going to have to learn really fast what to do so that´s good too. We´ll see what happens. This week i had one wierd night where i was sick. It was only during the night though. I didn´t sleep hardly at all because I had a really bad fever, but the next morning it was gone. I was just dead tired the whole day because I didn´t sleep the night before. I think I´m still losing weight but i can´t weigh myself so I don´t know. We changed apartments this morning too. It didn´t take too long but it was a pain to have to clean it. Our new apartment is a lot smaller but it´s safer and better than the old one. I keep trying to send pictures, but myldsmail.net is really slow with pictures. I´ll try to send more after this letter. The scripture for this week :) is in Jacob 6:12 "be wise". I forgot what it says but I wrote it down in my planner to send to you so I hope you like it :) My Spanish is doing a lot better now. I can understand most of the time now and I can say what I want to say in broken Spanish. They understand what I'm trying to say but it's not perfect.
The rule for the Christmas phone call is that you call to a phone here and we talk. Aparently it's really expensive to call from here. I haven't heard what the rule is on phone cards though. I think you'll call here at like 11AM-2PM Arizona time but we're going to plan it next week and give you and official time. The call has to be 40 minutes or less so we'll have to remember that. Oh yeah another rule. The family isn't allowed to make fun of the English of the Missionary because the missionaries don't like it :)
I haven't received any packages yet. The only physical mail I receive is the DearElder from Papa every week or so. Christmas here is weird. There really aren't that many lights and not very many people have christmas trees either. And it's hot and humid like normal. Actually it's more humid because it's rained everyday this week. Well I love you all. Talk to you in 2 weeks :)

Love,
Élder Hakes

TACO BELL

2009-12-07T15:55:00.001-06:00

Family!!!
Wow. I can't believe that Christmas is in less than 3 weeks. I can't believe I've been here for over a month. Well this week was kind of crazy. I went to Quito and got my Censo, card that let's me stay in the country. It's about 3-4 hours to Quito. We left at 3 AM on monday night/tuesday morning. We didn't even sleep. We got there and got the censo and then, believe it or not, we found a Taco Bell in Quito. It wasn't quite the same but it was good. I thought that was the craziest thing ever. I also went to the mission offices and found out that I have lost 15 lbs. already. I weigh 230 now. Walking in the heat and humidity in a 3rd world country can do that to you : ) I had a meal without rice the other day and I actually wanted rice. They usually have it with everything so I was astonished. The 1st Presidency Devotional was awesome last night. It was pouring and there was lightning for the first time during the devotional. I actually got to watch it in English with the other gringos. It was nice to watch something where the lips and words were the same. So I heard that the Christmas schedule is weird. We go to our apartments at 4PM because they have some tradition that women are scandolously dressed and won't let you pass unless you give them money. It's either money or they get to kiss you. That's just a little bit of a problem for us so we'll be inside. I don't know when I get to call. All I know is that it's for 30-45 minutes long so I don't know how you want to do it. Remember that I'm in the same time as Florida right now.
Also, it would be sweet if you could send CD's that are missionary apropriate. Himnos(Hymns in Spanish), Josh Grobeck or something similar. Whatever you want. I'm going to by a CD player and speakers here. It's actually more expensive here to buy a CD Player. I don't know what you think about sending it through the mail because it costs $50 for the player and $10 for speakers.
I keep trying to send more pictures but MyLDSMail.net is really slow and can only take 3 pictures in one e-mail. I think I'm going to make a CD and send it in the mail. I don't know when, but I'll send it eventually.
Well I have 2 scriptures, one is serious and the other is a funny that my companion showed me. First the serious. I studied Jacob 2 this week and I applied this scripture in a different way. It was just a thought that came to me when I was reading it. Jacob 2:16-17 replace "substance" with "knowledge of the gospel". I thought it was a cool application. Ok now here's a funny one. Read 1 Nephi 11:10 then read verse 15. I thought it was hilarious when E. Estrada showed me.
Well this week I feel more comfortable teaching in Spanish. I know it's not perfect, but I'm sharing more and more every lesson. I can almost understand everything now. I can tell what's going on, for the most part. That's sweet to hear that Greg is doing so well. I hope they kill Hamilton. Can't believe the Cats decided to be good while I'm gone : )
Next week there are cambios (changes). It's where new missionaries come so companions change. President SLoan doesn't have cambios though. Obviouly there will be one every 6 weeks for the new missionaries, but he does them whenever he feels it's right. E. Estrada's previous companionship only lasted for 1 week. So, the cambio isn't for everyone so who knows what will happen. I don't know if I'll get to write if there are cambios because it's on Monday's. We're supposed to be changing apartments on Monday too. That'll be fun. Well I love you all!!!!!

Love,
Élder Hakes

Daily Details

2009-11-30T16:16:00.004-06:00

Wow what a crazy week. I keep thinking that eventually there will be some sort of routine, but there never is. We had 2 baptisms this past Saturday. It was really amazing seeing the husband change this week. He is the one that drank two fridays ago. He needed this extra week becasue he progressed more in the last week than all of the others. He realized how important this is and I honestly believe that he will be a strong garment wearing priesthood holder in 1 year. We´re also talking with the family of the wife. Her whole family is really powerful and we think we can baptize 1 or 2 of them in December. I had the wierdest experience ever on Saturday. We were at our mamita´s (members that feed us lunch) house and they had invited the mom´s sister (one of our investigators) and they asked me to bear my testimony in English after the lesson while we were waiting for the food. I could not do it. I kept going back to Spanish. I finally gave up and did it in Spanish and it was way easier. I honestly am forgeting English. You can probably tell by my letters. I´m not sure if this is good or bad because I can´t speak Spanish yet either. I totally forgot about Thanksgiving until another Élder reminded me at a district meeting. It was wierd. Christmas is in less than a month and tomorrow is December. Weird!
Well the food here is exactly how Nancy described it. First, a bowl of soup. Next a plate with a ton of rice, a little bit of meat, and a side (potatoes, salad, fruit, etc.). There´s always juice or soda. There´s a soda here that is only in Ecuador and it´s called Fióra. It´s so good. Everything here is really cheap too. I live with $180 a month easily. I ususally have to send money back to Quito. My companion and I walk everywhere except the centro, downtown I think, then we take a bus. I´ve lost weight since I´ve gotten here. My belt buckle is one size smaller and I can stick at least 2 fingers in the collar of my shirt. It´s really weird to be losing weight. I´ve been trying to gain for the past 4-5 years.
Well my companion is from Cali, Colombia. He has 7 months in the mission right now. He is an amazing teacher. I´ve learned a lot from him about how to teach and also some doctrines. He is 19 years old and he was actually born into the covenant. He´s one of the few latinos that isn´t a convert. Everyday we have a mamita, or a member that makes lunch for us. We have to figure out dinner on our own, but usually our investigators feed us. I had one day where I had to eat 3 lunches in a row. It was too much food. I was dying afterwards. I´m able to understand about 80% of the time now. It´s a lot better. I feel more comfortable now that I know what´s going on.
Well the weather here is nice. It´s still kind of warm right now but it´s really humid. There is this weird rain thing that happens here but not in Arizona. It´s like tiny tiny tiny drops of rain that is more or less very fine mist. It´s weird but it feels good when we´re walking around. THere´s also a ton of fog every morning but it´s usually gone by the time we leave the apartment. Our apartment is pretty nice. We´re actually moving to another apartment that is better next week. It just has to be authorized by the mission. I haven´t had a warm shower since I´got here. I´m used to it now though. Well i can´t think of anything else. I love all of you. I hope Thanksgiving was good for everyone.

Love,
Élder Hakes

Following The Spirit

2009-11-23T22:14:00.001-06:00

Dear family, again,
I can´t believe I forgot about this experience. So on friday night we had divisions with the Zone Leaders. Me and one of the zone leaders and E. Estrada with the other. I stayed in my sector. SO we were walking to one of our appointments and i just didn´t feel right about it. It was what me and E. Estrada had planned the night before but it didn´t feel right. I couldn´t decide between the regular and back-up plan. We went off the road and said a prayer. I still didn´t know exactly where to go but I decided to go to the back up plan. The back up plan was to a recent convert, the one that was baptized my first sunday here. We got there and she immediately rushed us to her neighbor´s house so we could give him a blessing. It went really well and the Spirit was really strong. After that we resolved some of her questions and dedicated her home. I guess a couple of nights ago she and her daughter both felt like they were choking and couldn´t do or say anything. We decided dedicating the home was a good thing. It was a really cool experience for me because I hadn´t been "the leader" in the mission field yet. I know that I followed the spirit .

Love,
Elder Hakes

The Language

2009-11-23T22:13:00.000-06:00

Familia,
Wow what a crazy week. Satan is working really hard down here. For me it wasn't bad but it's hard seeing investigators fall. Friday night one of our investigators drank. It was the night before his baptism. He and his wife were going to be baptized on saturday but we have to wait until this saturday. It was tough to find out and talk to him about it. His wife cried the whole time while we had a lesson with them on Saturday. It's a young couple and they'll be good this week. Well time is flying for me. I can't believe that I've been in Ecuador for three weeks. The Spanish is coming along better. I finally noticed a difference over the last few days. It's not good speaking but it's becoming easier to understand. My English is getting worse. It's hard for me to write in my journal in English and I can't write good in Spanish yet either. It was funny because the zone leaders had me call the senior couple for the mission so I could speak in English to them and it was hard. I understood what the zone leaders wanted but I couldn't get it out in English. It was funny. Well we had a zone conference this past week. Usually the mission president and everyone is there but not this week because he's in the hospital still. He's improving and should be out sometime this week. The assistants to the president, mission secretaries, senior couple, and older sisters couple came to the conference. It went really good. It was weird sitting all day. I hadn't done that for 3 weeks.I think I may have lost a little weight. Probably just what I gained in the MTC though. Oh well we'll see what happens. This week I got served the usual soup for one meal and they served a big ole crab in the middle of it. It was the craziest thing for me and it tasted really good. I wish I would have had my camera with me. Here's another funny scripture. 2 Nephi 9:51, just look at the last phrase. It's pretty funny. Well don't know what else to talk about. THe work is going good here and we have a goal to find 5 families in December. The goal for the mission is 200 baptisms in December. It's a huge number but I know we can do it. Hope all is well at home. I get dearelders tomorrow so I might write back to those if there's time next week. Well love you all!!!

Love,
Elder David Hakes

First Baptism

2009-11-16T14:21:00.002-06:00

Familia!!
Well this week was crazy. So, we didn´t haveany baptisms planned for this Saturday, but the craziest thing happened. On Thursday night we were teaching a part-member family. Only one brother and the mom aren´t baptized, there isn´t a dad in the home. The lesson went good because we got there right as she was having a hard time and we really helped her out. Miller, the brother, listened to and it was good. So we were leaving and Miller was walking us to the gate when he, really casually, said he wanted to be baptized on Saturday. He has been going to church and seminary so we said we´d ask and find out for him. The next day, Friday, he had his baptisimal interview and he asked me to baptize him. We had the service on Saturday and he was happier then I´d ever seen him. I baptized him, I got it right the first time, and he was confirmed during church on sunday. It was crazy!! Well I found out that my companion´s name is Hammer Estrada. I thought that was funny. It´s really funny because everyone thinks it´s really hot here but I think it´s nice. Well I just recieved dearelders from the MTC this friday. I would say e-mail is the best way to communicate. So the ward here had their primary program this week. I tell you what, there´s a cody in every ward in the world. It was weird hearing it all in Spanish but it was great. Also, fast sunday was a week ago, the 8th, and the same types of people get up. Someone that cries, somone that talks a lot, etc. It´s amazing to see how much the church is the same around the world.
Ok so I found a funny scripture for my siblings. 2 Nefi 3. 25 - replace Joseph with Jennie, Brent, Ryan, Cody, or Emily and replace Nefi with David. It´s a fun one. I also found another one for food but I can´t rememberit right now. I got a hair cut today for 1,50. That was pretty sweet. Sorry this e-mail is so random. I have lots of thoughts going through my mind. SO this saturday we have 2 baptisms and 1 the following saturday. THis area is really amazing. I got to give a blessingin Spanish. That was crazy. E. Estrada pretty much told me what to say because I had no clue. It went good though because the one that recieved the blessing is an investigator and their whole family turned to prayers and scriptures for comfort. They´re a blessed family. Well that´s all I can think of for right now. I love this work! I´m tired every night and tired every morning so I must be doing good so far.

Love,
Élder David Hakes