Friday, October 31, 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
MisiĆ³n Ecuador Quito Norte 






Thursday, October 23, 2014

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

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

"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!!  




Wednesday, October 8, 2014

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."