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.

Week Two!

He is doing so good! 

"It´s getting a lot easier just like the other elders said it would, the main thing is you can’t get caught daydreaming or you start second guessing why you here and lose focus of what is really important and that's bringing people to Christ and to happiness.  We have finished teaching our first investigator and have started our second.  Me and my companion know how to teach really well but the language barrier is what keeps us from really opening up and learning what investigators true needs are.  The lessons get easier every time and so I know by the end of next week we probably will just need to go in with our scriptures rather than a full written out scrip. 

I am getting more used to the food, I almost got sick last week so I pounded down 4 bananas down and that pretty much stopped all the urges if you know what I mean?   Any ways haha my district is getting along really well.  Me and elder Olsen hang out with elder Markham and elder Whetton a lot elder Markham is way cool,  he is from Arizona and commercially fishes in Alaska 2 months out of the year so we all get along really well.  We pranked another room in our casa because they kept leaving the door to our casa open all day, we took all the sheets off their bed and put a mattress in their shower.   Ya they were way mad it was pretty funny, most the people in our casa are pretty chill we usually get to bet around 11:30 because we are all in each other’s rooms talking.

A kid in our district gave a devotional about why he chose to come on his mission and it was probably one of the coolest story´s I´ve ever heard, his name is elder Osborn and when he was a sophomore, him and his friend went to his friends ranch for Easter weekend.  They just  kinda rode dirt bikes and went looking for deer antlers.  Anyway one morning his friends wanted to go back out and look for deer antlers, he decided he didn’t want to go so he just kinda hung out at the house and finally he got impatient and got in the side-by-side and went looking for them. He couldn't find them so he just started screwing around drifting and doing donuts. He tried drifting around and slid out and hit a drainage ditch and got thrown 15 feet and the side-by-side tumbled on top of him.  The roll cage landed on his pelvis and no one knew where he was.   He thought he was going to die.  Looking at what he had he had a box cutter an empty bottle of coke and a Gatorade.  Praying as hard as he could for the lord to just let him die then after 2 hours of laying there he wrote his goodbye´s on the hood of the side-by-side.  Then he stabbed himself 15 times and slit his own throat.   Another hour passed and he lived on, he started to hear the faint sound of a dirt bike and it turned out to be his friend.  His friend not being religious started to pray to god to help him get his friend unstuck.  His 180 pound friend by himself flipped the 1900 pound quad back on all fours.  They met the ambulance half way to the hospital.  The doctor told his father that he did not slit his throat by himself he was inspired by something else they called it a self preformed tracheotomy it allowed him to stop hyperventilating and the knife wounds relieved pressure in his body that could have killed him.  He was also 3 cm away from his voice box.  They said he would never play sports again and may never walk again.  He tried out for football only five months later.  He is living proof that God has a hand in all of our lives and that God really does care about his children. Love you all I’m doing great!!!!"                  


"just to answer some questions the CCM is 90 acres and a lot like a college campus with big walls around it. There are something like 850 missionaries here and at Provo they are pushing 3000 missionaries on a 30 acre campus, so we are pretty lucky here. All  we basically do is study, that's why it sucks when you don't have a a investigator to prepare for, like we did at the end of  last week. Your brain just pretty much shuts down and you can't memorize anything after like 6 hours of studying."

Elder Framp and Elder Keyes and Elder Harvicston

His District

Elder Markham and Elder Olsen and Elder Keyes