Short and Sweet

We went to the mall and ice skating today. We got back a little late. I also ate turkey on Christmas eve! I hope you all had a good Christmas! 

They got to eat their turkey.

Christmas gift Exchange. His zone leader got inflatable hammers and was super excited. 

Ice Skating!

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Hellllooooo everyone!

So the holidays are over and I am almost done being a greenie. This last week was pretty cool. They were selling these dolls and wigs everywhere. Because New Years is like Halloween mixed with the Fourth of July they light the dolls on fire at midnight. Also, the men dress up like women and dance in front of cars for money...it is kind of weird haha. Everyone was in the street during the day, and all the little kids were dressed up in costumes. It was pretty cool. At night somehow everyone had giant speakers that they played both Latin and American music very loud on. It was cool. 

Now for the important stuff. This week we focused a lot on finding members to befriend out investigators and recent converts. We taught our recent convert Lydia with her daughter and son. We had a little family home evening thing with the Vaca family, and sister Araujo. It went really well. My companion and I had to leave early. They all stayed and kept talking to each other. Lydia's daughter was at church on Sunday, along with one of her other daughters so this all paid off. 

We also contacted in a part member family awhile back. We did not thing to contact again until this last week, The Vizcaino family. The dad, Carlos, let us have a meeting with his family because he really wants his wife to join the church. We kind of dropped the ball on not trying to teach them for two weeks. Anyways, we taught them the restoration lesson and why the Book of Mormon is important. We taught them again on Sunday with Carlos's sister, who is a member. We taught the plan of salvation and sister Vizcaino was really interested in eternal families. She believes its possible, and she feels he spirit when she reads the Book of Mormon, but the Catholic roots are just to deep right now. We also found out that they are not married, so that is another challenge we will have to face. 

That is pretty much everything. Love you all. 

View from their house

The dolls lit on fire

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. 

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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!