We Moved!

It’s kind of sad, my time of living with my companion and the Zone Leaders has come to an end.  We moved most of our stuff on Friday and today we put our beds together so now we will be spending our first there tonight.  This past week we were pretty busy with the moving our stuff, the land lady at our old apartment was pretty upset when we showed up to mover our stuff.   There are several repairs that she is insisting we make before we take most of our furniture.  So today in our new apartment we only have a fridge, table and our beds.  But we have running water, a shower and its new and clean so it’s a good trade.  It is sad that we don’t live with the ZL’s but we are still pretty close so we will still see each other a lot.

This week I went on splits with Elder Equite from Guatemala and it was pretty cool.  I love teaching with Natives, they generally teach better than Gringos because of not having the language barrier. 

We taught a discussion on the Restoration to this family and the spirit was so strong during the discussion.  At the end of the discussion we asked them if they would be baptized and one of the guys accepted the challenge and his Aunt and cousin started asking why they needed to be baptized when they had already been baptized.  This guy spoke up and said “we weren’t baptized by someone who has authority”.  Then he turned to us and said he has been searching for a church that has authority for a while and he thinks he may have found it with ours.  He is the perfect investigator except for the fact that he is rarely home because he is a Fisherman so it is a miracle we even found him at home.  Fishermen here will leave for weeks at a time and then be home only for a couple of days before they take off again.

Half the zone here on the coast has Chiconguya which is a virus that is going around and causes your bones and joints to hurt and you get really bad headaches, it is a pretty crazy sickness.  Luckily I haven’t got it yet, it is transmitted by mosquitos so we have been sleeping with a bunch of incense burning which have protected us so far.

Anyways I am doing great and love you all

Elder Keyes

Nelson one of our Investigators

Elder Colfac and I

First week with my Second Companion

This week was pretty great we have a family with a baptismal date! The Espinosas they just had a baby this week a little girl, it was pretty exciteing. Especialy because that means they will want to get married, that was the thing we were waiting to happen because she didnt want to get married while she was pregnant?

anyways we had a super spiritual lesson with them we talked about capitan moroni and the example that he always gave in his life. we related it to them being parents and how they always need to put the things of god before everything else. And Andres (the Dad) testified to us that he knows this church is true and owes so much to this church because they answered his prayers and provided him with a job. He also said the things he has learned has change him and his family's life forever. it was pretty cool. I love that family their little boy who is like 3 is super crazy but is now super protective of his little sister he wouldnt even let us go into the room when she was. 

I retook some of the pictures with nelson, the crazy investigator that we have who live in a shack up on the top of a hill. 

This week was a pretty slow other than that but we did find a part of our sector that is on stilt or like big wooden planks over the water, ill try to take a picture of it next week.

Love Elder Keyes

 

Fruit Salad for Lunch

 

Holy Week

This week was Holy week here and they celebrate the week Christ entered back into Jerusalem and went through the Atonement.  They celebrate this special week by not eating meat or swimming and drinking and partying until the sun goes down.  It’s really a weird way to show appreciation for what Christ did for us but hey, I shouldn’t judge. 

There was too much going on for us this week because of a lot of things that happened, one my companion was going home the next week so this last week he was pretty much coasten. Two we just had a lot of other non-missionary things to do like the contract for our new house and packing up all of the things at our old house, only to find out that the secretary’s didn’t call and finalize the bank information with the landlord so we didn’t even move out.

But anyways on the bright side it was conference weekend and this was probably one of my favorite conferences there was a ton of good talks. It was kind of cool we watched all the talks in English except for the Spanish ones so we didn’t really have to listen to the translator. They talked a ton on the family which is really what Ecuador needs right now. I was just a little sad it was mostly on Saturday when not as many people were watching. 

Also my investigator had her baby so now they can get married and baptized now so that’s really cool!.

Me and elder Anderton (the zone leader) ran into some friends last night that took all of our money and our cellphones (first time being robbed) because I had the district leader phone and he had the zone leader phone because both of our companions had left to Quito already. But luckily we did not get hurt or anything but we had to go rob the other district leaders phone at like 9:30 at night so that elder Anderton could hear the transfers that were going to happen. 

Also I got my new comp he is another gringo Elder Morgan.

Well that’s all that happened pretty much this week love you all 

-Elder Keyes 

My Comp goes home next week!

This week was super busy with a bunch of different stuff like our meeting with President that took up a whole day.  Then the next day we looked for houses with the President and the Assistants.

But this week we did teach pastor Juan who is a minister for his little Chapel that he has been building for like two years now.  He is awesome and we have great discussions but we have to plan out what we say to him very carefully so that we do not offend the doctrine of his church.  This last time we visited with him he said "I'm starting to think that Joseph Smith was actually a prophet" , so we now have something to work with.  He is a super awesome guy and is really excited to listen to conference next week.



We also ate encocado and it was super good, its this yellow sauce they make from coconut and put it on fish and it was so good.  Also something else we did I bought a coconut and we all ate it together it was way good.  I'm kind of sad we are moving out of the Zone Leaders tomorrow into the house we found with President.

We found a less active member and started teaching her hoping that we can get her interested in coming back to church.  We have been teaching her about the apostasy because she has said that she thinks it doesn't matter what church you belong to.  We have been spending time with her trying to get to know her so that we know what to focus on and found out that her brother died a while ago so we have been teaching her about the Plan of Salvation.  As we discussed baptism for the dead with her she started to cry and said that she wants to get worthy to attend the temple and do the temple work for her family.  I hope that we can continue to build on that lesson and help get her active again.

The work seems to be picking up her so hopefully we will start seeing some baptisms in our zone.

I love you all,
Elder Keyes

My favorite Drink here in Ecuador

A local church

Living with the Zone Leaders

So we found out this week that we will be living with the Zone Leaders for the rest of this change!!!  Its way fun being in the same house with other Elders.  We found a couple of new apartments that we could move into, but President said he will not be making a decision until the next transfer (in two weeks).  And our old apartment is pretty much unlivable without water or electricity so that's why we are with the Zone Leaders.

Anyways this week we found a bunch more people to teach and we also got Nelson (our investigator who's baptism fell through) to get excited about the church again.  Nelson has been working with the Missionaries for a little over a year now and it is kind of sad, every time he gets close to baptism something happens and he ends up not being able to.  We are the third group of Missionaries to teach him and we got him right up to the day of his baptism and members had heard rumors about him and didn't trust him so we decided it would be best to wait until we found out for sure that he rumors were not true.  So we had to tell him the day of his baptism that he had to wait.  It was super sad and hard to that to a person that has this happen to him so many times before.  We kept teaching him but it was different, he stopped reading and coming to church.  So we finally just asked him do you still want to be baptized?  He said no that it really didn't seem like he was meant to be baptized.  We then asked if wanted to continue to meet with us and he said no not really.  Me and my companion then began to ask him about his life and where and how it is going right now?  We taught him about the atonement and it life changing power.  We asked him if he felt better when he was following the commandments before or if he felt better when he was breaking them?  He started to weep and said he felt better before when he was keeping them and trying to get ready to be baptized.  He then apologized to us and said he was willing to do whatever it took to be baptized.  He came to church this Sunday and started to read again and he is happy again.  This guy has the most humble life I have ever seen, he lives in a small shack and collects bottles to make enough money to eat.  We just need to do all we can to keep him focused on whats really important so he doesn't slip into his old bad habits.

Now some other things that happened this week.  I went on divisions with someone in our district.  I was with Elder Equite from Guatemala he is awesome and we had a good time.  They have a small island in their sector that's like in the middle of the bay and I guess its below sea level or something because when its high tide some of the streets flood.  While we were at teaching appointment a bunch of the roads flooded and it took a while to get back out of there because we had to find a dry road.  Its really cool there because all the houses are built on stilts..

Something pretty funny happened to me and companion while were out trying to pick our investigators up for church.  There was this drunk guy that I think had been drunk since the night before, who started talking to us and would not stop.  So we told him we had to go but he could walk and talk with us if he wanted.  So he ended up following us all the way to church and came right in the church with us.  I think he started sobering up after about the third speaker in Sacrament meeting because he left to the bathroom.  He then left the church bought a water bottle and came back and actually participated in the classes which was awesome. hahh...  The after church he took out an appointment with us so I don't know if I should call that story a miracle or a dumb funny story but I thought it was pretty funny.

Love you all,
Elder Keyes

Another Week on the Coast!

Ya, so I'm on the Coast, its super hot and humid.  This past week our baptism fell through so we will have to wait for a little bit to see what happens with Nelson.  Anyways we found a ton of people to teach this week including another Gringo.  His name is Jud and him and his wife and his friends have been living in different parts of Ecuador for like six years studying different types of native music.  He is way cool and is from Boston.  It was really weird talking to someone else besides another Missionary about things.  Me and my companion even practiced how to teach in English after that because its way hard for us to not use incorrect grammar or words when we are teaching the gospel in English.

My companions name is Elder Hess and this is his last change before he goes home. He is a great Missionary and awesome to be with.  He was the financial secretary for  like 9 months.

Sorry I can't send pictures because this computer is super ghetto.

Love
Elder Keyes

My first week on the coast

This first week in a new sector was pretty different, it feels like a different Country.  The people here are really receptive to the gospel, they just struggle with following through on things like in most places.  Something cool when I got here we already have someone getting baptized at the end of this week.  His name is Nelson and he is one of the most humble men I have ever met, he has very little and doesn't ask anyone for anything.  I am also with a Gringo so I get to speak English a ton and he has way good Spanish so he helps me with Spanish a lot too.

Sorry that is all I have time for I will write more about the area next week.

Love,
Elder Keyes

Nothin like a Coconut after a hard day of Missionary work