Feliz Navidad

We were able to talk to Austin on Christmas day. He is doing really good. Here is his Christmas letter...

Hey, so I don't have much time to type everything that happened this week, but here are some of them:
The first Friday we had the ward Christmas party and it was super late into the night. We did the skit and ran out the door. A lot of people laughed. The skit was about saving angels, like Abraham being told to kill his son and then being stopped or the angel saving Sam and Nephi from their brothers. They also gave us turkey, that was a plus. (You have to special order turkey).
Saturday we went caroling with the youth to all the less actives, and to the recent converts. We gave them cinnamon bread too, it is called pan de vida (bread of life) and I guess they do this every year. It was great, and after they bought us pizza. It was actually really good. This activity worked too, almost every person we visited was at church Sunday.
Yesterday we had lunch with our President, and our zone. It was a really good dinner, we had gravy and a really good pie. It sorta felt like an American meal.

Anyways, those were the highlights of my week. Love you all!!
Sorry, no pictures this week. This computer is sketchy and I don't want to lose my pictures.

Here are a couple pictures from our Skype call on Christmas Day. 

Little late...but here they are!! More Letters

Sorry everyone, it is that time of year for finals, so naturally I got a little behind. Here is last weeks and this weeks letter! Enjoy!

December 8th

Wednesday we went to the offices because my companion had to renew his visa. I got to hang out with some other elders while he did it. Once of them was Elder Valverde and he was Elder Call's padre (or trainer). It was pretty cool to talk to him. 
Thursday I got the opportunity to give a blessing in Spanish. It was pretty cool how much I was able to say. It's weird in lessons and stuff like that. I'm starting to be able to say stuff that I have no idea how to say after, it is kind of crazy the way you can express yourself with the spirit helping you. Saturday we had a lot of appointments that fell through because of the festivals of Quito. They are kind of like American Fork Steel days. They had a parade and a carnival thing. We met a really cool family though, the Borrero family. They are from the coast. We had a really powerful lesson with them. We also found a single mom, Nancy Caldron, who was really receptive to our message. Sunday we got to watch the Christmas Devotional and Lidia is all set for her baptism this next Saturday, now that she has had her interview. I will get to have my first baptism!!
Today we went to the offices and saw my companions last companion before me. He goes home on Wednesday. We took him somewhere nice for his going away party. I never thought a Big Mac could taste so good!!


December 15

This week was pretty busy. Tuesday we had the third companion from the zone leaders with us because the zone leaders were at a leadership meeting all day. It's amazing how easy it is to teach with three missionaries.
We taught a family, and something kinda stunned me and my companion. We always extend the invitation to read a little bit of the Book of Mormon, and then pray to know if it is true. When we asked him if he would like to read part of it, he responded "No, I intend to read all of it", that got me and my companion pretty excited!!
We had exchanges, so I was able to go on splits with both of our zone leaders, Elder Garcia and Elder Anderton, it was awesome! I really like teaching with them. We taught the Ortiz Family, the mom and her son were baptized Saturday, and the dad is next week. They are awesome. They got married this week so that she could get baptized. They also invited me, my companion and the zone leaders to lunch on this last Saturday before the baptism. 
We had the baptism and that's all we really had time for because the lunch took like 3 hours, because we were talking so much and they gave us a ton of food. At the baptism we baptized 3 people, Lucia Ortiz and her son, and then Lidia (our investigator). It was pretty funny at the baptism. First I slipped into the font, and it made a big splash and a loud noise. Then my companion said, "through baptism we are clean from our fish" when he was speaking at the end.. (in Spanish sin is pecado, and fish is pescado). But it was awesome, they all got confirmed the following day. 
Today we went to the Teleferiqo, this big gondola that takes you to the top of this volcano. It was way awesome. We couldn't go to the volcano because it's like a 3-4 hour hike from where you get off the gondola. But it was way cool and there were also a ton of Americans up there, so it was kinda weird to hear English again. 

.

Transfers are over.

Okay, so this week we had a ton of events. First we had interviews and a little zone conference, so that took up pretty much the whole day. We also found Hermana Dora (the grandma that spoon fed me and my companion). We had Thanksgiving with our zone and it was delicious It actually felt pretty American.We had verification's in Quito, so all of the trainers and their companions went to Quito. I got to see my old district again, we also went to Panecillo which is this huge statue at the top of Quito.We took Dora to an activity at the church, then hurried back to our  sector and took three of our investigators, the Villegas family, to the baptism the was going on at the church. We had 4 people at church, Hna Dora, Hna Lidia, and Hna Maite and Terre Villegas. All of them have baptismal dates. This was a pretty good week for being week 6 (the last week before transfers is always bad). We had a lot of really good lessons and I got to see my friends from the CCM. 

So ya everything here is going great!! Love you all 

He finally got his packages! Stockings for him and his companion!

Their Thanksgiving. It is chicken, not turkey. They don't have turkey. 

A view of Ecuador

El Panecillo

His companion, and the three miles farther they ventured. 

Dora

He is getting a hair cut! So responsible!

Last Week Before his First Transfer

Hola people,

     This was a great week, but first, let me tell you something that I totally forgot to say in my last email. 2 weeks ago we were following up on a reference that we got and when we walked into the house there was the persons entire family sitting around a small casket. The kid was 6 and died from Cancer. We shared a message about the plan of salvation and the atonement, The spirit was super strong and it was pretty hard not cry with them. Anyways, the next day after lunch, we got a call from the ladies brother, he asked if we would share a message at the funeral service. We thought it was a little strange considering they were pretty serious Catholics, but we accepted. That night we shared a similar message to 40+ Catholics. It was a pretty cool experience and the funny thing was, I didn't mess up once with my Spanish so that was pretty cool also.

     Monday we taught the Martinez family, they are awesome. But they are always at work, so its hard to get them to church and find times to meet with them. 

     Tuesday we went on splits with the zone leaders. I was lucky enough to be with the gringo zone leader, Elder Anderton, it was really nice to be able to ask what something is in English and then teach what I actually wanted to say, instead of just something like, what I'm trying to say. 

     Wednesday when I got back, I found out that one of our old investigators that did have a baptismal date moved in with her boyfriend, and now we don't know where she is. She left her Book of Mormon at the LDS family she was living with`s house. That was pretty crappy. 

     Thursday we found an investigator that had kinda disappeared, Apparently her schedule for school changed so she wasn't home when she usually was. Her names Erica Kinitoua and she is probably going to progress really fast now. She asks a ton of questions and really has an urge to know if this is the true church. Also we had a little mut follow us around for 4 hours from appointment to appointment. He would wait outside while we taught and then continue walking with us, He chased after some kids and then we didn't see him after that, but it was pretty funny. 

     Friday we taught a really great lesson with one of our investigators with a baptismal date, Lillian Altifulla, and her daughter Jeniffer. Jenifer doesn't really know if God is there and her mom is really worried about her. We had one of the strongest and most spiritual lessons about the atonement and God. It was so cool. and after her daughter left Lillian bore her testimony to us about how she knows this is the true church and all she wants is her daughter to feel what and how she does about the church and the atonement. 

     Saturday we only had time for one lesson because my comp had to do interviews with all the investigators that are getting baptized this week. We also had to walk like 4 miles back to our sector because there was this huge Catholic march thing that was going on in the main road so none of the buses were running. There were a ton of carts with mystery soups and meats all over and some investigators happened to be at one. They gave us some for free...yaaaayyy...it was yellowish orange with a boiled egg and some other food like stuff on it and then on mine there was was a hair as thick as yarn.... we thanked them and said we were late for an appointment (which we were) and waited until we were far enough away to feed it to some strays.

     Sunday was pretty normal, the only cool/crazy thing that happened was we ate cow foot soup. It smelled like a boiled gym sock. We choked it down, taught them a lesson, and continued on with our day. 

     That's pretty much all that happened this week love you all!

The Flores Family

Birthday in Ecuador!!!

     This week was pretty slow, we had to do a lot of tracting to try and gain more investigators. For 2 days that's basically all we did. One crazy thing that happened is we saw a fight! A big truck and this small car almost hit each other, they stopped their cars in the middle of an intersection and started yelling at each other. The guy who was like 5´5´ in the truck got out of his truck and started trying to get the guy in the little car to come fight him. Of course the guy in the car accepted, he got out of the car and was about 6´5´, so he proceeded to put a beating on the little guy. Then to top it off, the big guys 6 year old daughter got out of the car to help her dad, luckily the fight got broken up before anything bad happened. It was pretty cool to watch go down.

     Yesterday was my b-day so I got to have cake! We ate at my favorite member’s house for dinner and had a small party, so that was cool. We also had 5 investigators at church, three were people we tracked that week (the Altafulla family). Also, this week we were teaching a family we contacted earlier in the week, we presented them the book of Mormon and as soon as we explained that is was the word of God, the accepted it right off the bat! We were pretty stunned. My companion said that's first time he has seen or heard of that happening, we were pretty pumped. They didn't come to church this week because they were busy, but they said they would clear their schedule for the next Sunday. 

 That's pretty much all of the cool stuff that has happened this week love you all!  

Double Letters: Week 2 & 3

Elder Keyes has had some short letters the past two weeks, so we are putting them into one blog post! Enjoy!

Week 2- By the way, the Elders went to the Zoo
 
It has been a pretty good week, I had a pretty cool experience this week. We were teaching a recent convert, who`s husband is a non-member. She opened up to us about how they had been fighting (I found this out after, when my comp explained it to me). Anyways, my comp and her were talking back and forth, (I had no idea what was going on). Then I just got this strong impression to open to a scripture that  i had been studying that morning. The scripture was Helamen 3: 34-35. This scripture is about how the righteous were being persecuted and how they held firm to the gospel and they received a lot of blessings from it. I shared the scripture, testified a bit and she started crying....I had no idea what I did but I felt the spirit so I just hoped it was good. After the lesson my comp was stunned that I didn't know what they were talking about because the scripture applied so well, so that was a pretty cool experience.  We gained some cool investigators and other than that it was a pretty normal week love you all!   

Week 3

This week went by way to fast, I am starting to understand a lot more things and I can understand almost everything if it is about the gospel. We are doing pretty good we have a baptismal date for the 22nd and then another on the 29th. We had 7 investigators at church, two families and our investigator that gets baptized on the 22nd. 

  One of our investigators treats us like her grandchildren, we go over to her house and she gives us colada morada (a fruit drink that Latins are obsessed with) she gave us a huge mug of it, which by the way the drink didn’t have sugar in it for some reason so it was very strong haha. After we finished our first glass she said ¨here have some more¨ refilled our mugs. My companion was talking about how the food was much better on the coast. She says ¨oh yes I make the best pescado¨ she takes out a dish and spoon feeds me and companion with the same fork. The food was actually good it was just funny she spoon fed us. She is this 76 year old lady who is so cool, she has a baptismal date for the 29th.

 It was Elder Bustillo´s birthday this week so we got cake at a member’s house. I was also able to eat a redish purple hamburger, one of the members made for us. when she put it on the grill it looked like good quality meat but then it just became a dark purple looking thing, it tasted like beef jerky. It was pretty interesting 

 We also went to a baptism this week it was the sister missionary’s investigators, and one of our investigators with a baptismal date was able to go. It’s pretty cool how spiritual and special it feels when it’s an investigator being baptized, you feel how fresh and strong there testimonies are.

Anyways love you all bye....

 Elder Keyes has issued a challenge!
"Hey so I'm challenging you guys to read the Book of Mormon personally and mark with red every time it mentions Christ and with another color mark favorite scriptures. Finish before you see me on Christmas (I'm doing this too but in Spanish)"

Obviously, my family and I will "see" him at Christmas time because of his phone call. However, he is asking those that would like, to have this done by December 25, 2014!

First Week in Quito

This week has been awesome! We got in and took some pictures with our group and the mission president and his wife. The assistants to the president were the first people from the mission we saw, and it was pretty crazy because one of the AP's was Mitch Lindeman, (a kid who went to my high school he, has been out a year). So it was pretty comforting to see a familiar face. We then had a little orientation thing and learned how to clean and cook, it was at one of the churches by our apartment. The city of Quitio looked like any city from America it is really developed.
The apartment we stayed at was in the other Quito mission, the Quito mission's kind of overlap in the city. The next day we activated our visas, and had a bunch of meetings, we also went and had dinner as the mission home and it was probably the nicest apartment I have ever seen. Then the day after that we got our companions and our areas, Elder Markham got sent to the jungle I believe and elder Olsen got sent to the country. I got sent to the "suburbs", basically its awesome, the people are so accepting of the gospel. I didn't get to teach a investigator my first day but we taught some less actives.
Our apartment is way nice, it has a shower with hot water and two extra rooms to put all of our crap. It's kind of funny, all of the building looks so bad and worn down from the outside, then you go inside and its super nice. There are also a ton of dogs! There is a way nice lab by the bus stop that reminds me of Boomer. :( But since I've been here, I was able to help set a date for one of our new investigators.
The people here are awesome. They are all way nice. We have a different mamita from the ward that makes us lunch. I haven't had anything crazy yet. Today we went to a restaurant and I got some authentic Ecuadorian food. It was this really good fish soup with plantain chips, I also had Inca cola which was amazing. So far we have commuted one couple to baptism. Its also really fun to teach people and watch them start to figure out the truth I can't  understand... but the things I do understand make me realize why missions are worth it.
SundayI was talking to one of the other greenies and I found out he got bit where you don't want to get bit the day before, so that made me and my comp laugh pretty hard, he didnt get hurt by the way. haha but Sunday was pretty cool, the congregation was almost as big as a Utah ward, 230 in our ward, it felt like home except there were a bunch of moms breast feeding in sacrament (apparently thats normal here). Also every thing was in spanish. All the members that could speak a tiny bit of english jumped at the opportunity to try it out on me so I got to speak a lot of spanglish this Sunday. The ward members here are so nice, way fun to talk to and I play with their kids. Also I don't know what it is, but the bus drivers must think they're in the indie 500 and picking up passengers is a pit stop.I have never seen someone drive so crazy and fast in such a big vehicle it is nuts. But we have definetly done a lot of walking and my feet are pretty blistered up so I am basically living off of ibuprofen to ibuprofen haha. But it's all good, I actualy like walking around our sector, is so fun to explore when we go from appointment to appointment. But ya I'm doing great and loving the work!!

mission home

Elder Lindeman

his apartment

Letter from the Mission President and his Wife

October 27, 2014

Dear Keyes Family,

We are pleased to inform you of the safe arrival of Elder Keyes in the Ecuador Quito North Mission.  We spent three days last week training with him and learned some fun things about him.  He shared with us that he and his sister are both adopted, which we found very interesting, considering that two of our three children are also adopted.  He seems to be adjusting and learning the language well and we are confident that he will be a great addition to our mission. 

We assure you that we will do everything possible to help Elder Keyes grow in his personal conversion, and to thus have a positive experience here in the newly formed Ecuador Quito North Mission.  This is a wonderful mission that experiences a high number of baptisms, and success in reactivation. Our boundaries include coast, jungle, a native Indian area, as well as the highly populated city of Quito so our missionaries have a wide range of experiences.  President Spencer W. Kimball said that the most pure Lamanite people live in Otavalo, which is a part of our mission.  This is easy to believe because of their faithfulness and strength – earning their city the title of “Utah”valo.

The theme of our mission is translated “The Center of the World; Centered on Christ,” and we have a wonderful group of 19 missionaries who arrived with him.  He will be serving in an area outside of Quito with Elder Bustillo, a wonderful Elder from Honduras.

The Lord is hastening the Work of Salvation and this is an amazing time to be a missionary.  Elder Keyes is needed here and we are so grateful he has chosen to serve a mission.  We will care for him as if he were our own. 

We know you’re already planning on it, but we want to remind you to write your son a weekly letter.  His preparation day will be on Mondays.

With love,

President and Sister Richardson

Misión Ecuador Quito Norte 

Last Day in the CCM

This week has just been pretty boring, it has been pretty hard to focus and we have had a lot of really long meetings. Elder Anderson came Saturday and that was really cool! Every missionary got to shake his hand. He spoke on the atonement and the more he spoke the more everyone in the audience realized how deep of a doctrinal topic the atonement really is. We learned A LOT that day, he spoke for about an hour and half. Sunday our district had to sing in our zone sacrament meeting, we sang Come Thou Fount in Spanish. We made our branch president cry so I think we did alright haha. Then my companion had to say the closing prayer at the main class (with the whole CCM), he was pretty nervous about that, he also had to speak in sacrament meeting. Then we had our little farewell thing and then a testimony meeting that night. we also gave blessings to all the sisters because 2 of them were leaving that night. Today we taught our last lessons with our teachers, which was actually kinda  sad, our teachers bore their testimony's to us, they showed us pictures of the investigators from their missions they were pretending to be when we taught them. Luckily one of my teachers (brother Juarez) is going to BYU in the spring to learn English so he´ll just be starting his regular college classes when I get home! he wants me to show him all of the good places to eat when I get home haha. But ya I'm all packed and ready, we are all just pretty much waiting to leave now. My next email will be from the field love you all!!!  

Austin made this tie for his teacher

His day time teacher

One of his first teachers

His night time teacher

"I'm Pretty Much Done"

(He accidentally sent a blank message....)

I didn't mean to send that last email, I'm sending a real one.

Anyways, sorry I didn't mean to send that, I hit the tab button and it sent so ya. But our zone got a new district that is half the size of our zone. When our district got here there were  around 800 missionary's now there is only 400. I think that my wave of missionary´s is the last big group so the CCM will be tiny after we´re gone.

This week we played a ton of handball (ultimate Frisbee with a ball) with another district, it was pretty sick because the field was basically a giant puddle so we were all soaked. that district left yesterday so I don´t really know what we are gonna do for gym now, there aren't very many kids that have our gym time now.

Today we got to go to the temple and see the outside world, it was pretty cool because everyone was setting up for the Day of the Dead. The temple was super cool, we didn't get to go inside because something is wrong with the foundation and it will take a year to fix. The old Mexico MTC is on the temple grounds and it is tiny like two small apartments and a class room/lunchroom/Deseret book looking thing.

The Spanish is still coming along, I have finished the language program on the computer so I know more or less the grammar of Spanish the problem is I'm just not comfortable with it yet.

This last week we started talking a lot to some Latinos in our district leaders casa and they were way funny, most were from Mexico, but there were a few from some random places!

Also Elder Neal L. Anderson from the quorum of the 12 comes on Saturday so I'm super excited for that, it will be a good pump up speech to send me out into the field. 

We got our flight plans this week, I fly out on Tuesday morning at 2:15 am. We have a 2 hour layover in Columbia, then an hour and half flight to Quito!!!

love you all and I'll email you next week from Ecuador!!  

Past Half-Way!

Hey everyone,
  Everyone from the other district is basically gone, most of them left yesterday. But this week not much has happened, the language is still coming right along, all we really do now is look for scriptures that apply to our investigator. Our investigators are still following through on their commitments so it feels really good when that happens.

It's crazy, I was very skeptical on how long or whether I would be able to feel the spirit in a different language but after fast Sunday and one of our teachers baring his testimony, I can promise you the spirit is just as strong in a another language as it is ours. 

We taught a native on Thursday, she has been a member for 10 years and was really nice to us. I didn't catch her name because she talked so fast, haha, but it was good to hear a real member speak and not get the slow very formal no slang Spanish we get in the CCM. The language gets easier by the week.

While we were outside learning a new concept, I guess there was a big party or something going on just outside the CCM because for the first time in a month I heard normal music that I recognized and it played pretty much all day so that was fun to hear.

This week me and my companion get to be investigators for this companionship of sisters in our district and then next week we'll teach them. It's fun and a lot less stressful then teaching a teacher that is fluent so next week we will technically have 4 investigators!

Conference was great! It was the first time I think I have watched all 5 sessions and the first time I had wished it wouldn't end. It was in English thankfully, the presidency realized we wouldn't really get anything out of it if it was in Spanish.

The food...I haven't got sick, I think me and Elder Markham are the only one's in our district that haven't gotten sick from the food. So hopefully that means my body will hold up in Ecuador... probably not though.

But ya that's pretty much whats happened this week. Love you all and I hope to hear from you guys

Austin and one of his teachers (el maestro)

All the kids from Lone Peak High School

"It looks like I am on vacation."

           

Halfway Through the CCM (MTC)

We are all almost done with the CCM (MTC). It's getting harder to think of things to write about. The days are starting to melt together. Our zone got a new District...it's weird to our district to have new missionaries because we all still feel like the little kids that don't know anything.Elder Olsen and I started teaching without notes this week, it was challenging and probably didn't make any sense. But, good because we figured out what key words we are still missing in our vocab so we can learn it. It also makes the lessons feel real and you teach more from the heart which is what we are supposed to be doing, so for how bad our spanish is, our lessons still have meaning and are powerful. We also have two investigators now  Julio and Romido they are complete opposites. 

Julio asks us the hardest questions that would be hard to explain to someone even in English. Like, "Why are you guys called elders?" or "I don't need to be baptized because i've never sinned before". It's tough to find the correct words to explain to him what he needs to know and then teach him a lesson in 15 minutes. We usually explain the answers to his questions and then never get around to the lesson so it's good and bad.

Romido does not ask enough questions, we try to get to know him more and figure out what his needs are, but it's hard when he just gives you one word answers. We usually get through the lessons and just stress the parts we think he needs.  

Fast Sunday was pretty cool, we got to do the sacrament meeting for the cafeteria workers. Elder Markham and Elder Whetton are the substitute zone leaders now because our zone leaders left last week, so they have to direct all of our meetings now in Spanish.

(He sent the letter early, but don't worry he finished it...)

I wasn't done yet. We got a new district in our zone, and it was funny to see how we were acting just two weeks ago. They looked freaked out haha, but on family night they had all started to settle down and chill out more just like we did. Elder Frampton leaves next week, so after next week we will be the oldest district in our zone. That's super weird because we all still feel like we just got here, I also really like their district, they help us out a lot, and we are always in each others classrooms.
We watched a devotional from Elder Bednar, that he gave to the Provo MTC on Christmas a few years back. It was way spiritual and kinda funny, he basically said that the majority of the missionary's speak their languages so bad, that the only way people can even be converted is through the Holy Ghost. And it is so true, I know my spanish is terrible but all the feed back we get from our teachers (who are also our investigators) is how great. They tell us our lessons are good and they tell us how good we teach, and then they say we just need to get the spanish down. I love it here, I know it's where I need to be and I know with all my heart that the church is true. Love you guys talk to you next week.