2/22 18: Still in Portoviejo

Guess who´s still here in Portoviejo! Yo! We had cambios yesterday but Hermana Espinoza(Chile) and Hermana Pugh(Utah) are the only ones in our sector who had cambios so they left early this morning. So it´s just me and Hermana Mancuso for now and our new companions will be getting here later today. By the end of this cambio I´ll have more than 6 months in the mission and I will have had 4 transfers here in La Paz. But I´m excited I get to be here in Portoviejo for the baptism of Fransisco and help him prepare for this day! Some highlights for the week, Hermana Espinoza and I saw fireflies on this little path and I think this was the first time I´ve ever seen them? so cool! Also, we didn´t eat cake for an entire week, how bout that?At the district meeting we have each week we read the letter from the mission president about deciding to be happy and after one of the zone leaders called me up to stand in front of everyone and told our zone to ask me questions and no one asked me a question for a solid minute and so I was just smiling because it was kind of awkward, and after someone asked me a question the zone leaders told everyone to be happy like me haha, cue the song Happy by Pharell. People here will have shirts with sayings in English, and they´re usually all really weird...my favorites are ¨ I am me´´ and ´´Your mom will love me´´..This week´s been great and I´m excited to find out who my new companion is! Oh, and last week I mean }t to type Helaman 3 27, not 3 7 haha. Have a good week ! CHAO CHAO!

2/15 17: Carnival

This week was Carnival! (carnaval?) We were inside all day Monday and Tuesday so what did we do...we ate a whole chocolate cake in under 6 hours! To be hair it wasn´t THAT big, but we live so close to a bakery so why not. We also had meals that didn´t consist of rice. Hermana Mancuso cooked chicken alfredo and macaroni and cheese (from scratch) and used the turmeric that mom sent in the package,haha. Then Hermana Espinoza made completos (a hot dog in a bun, with chopped tomatoes,guacamole,and a little bit of ketchup and mayo. We also had time to do...face masks! We didn¨t really know what to do with the free time we had, it was such a weird feeling! Then we had a conference with the zones from Portoviejo and Manta with President Dennis and Hermana Dennis Thursday morning and it was really great and we talked about Alma 26 and Helaman 5. And Francisco Velasquez, our investigator, is doing great! He´s so excited for his baptism on March 5th and it´s so cute. When we ask him how excited he is for his baptism on a scale from 1-10 he always say 20, but his face isn´t that expressive so it´s kind of funny haha. Because we have cambios this coming Sunday and dont know if we´ll be here in Portoviejo, we´ve decided to try food from all the places we´ve been oogling(is this even a word..?I think so?) for the past few months THIS week. Our favorite is Arte Pan (they have the best baked everything) so we¨re going to expand our horizons this week. Here´s a scripture I like that I read this morning - Helaman 3:7. Hope valentines day was good! The members who we ate with yesterday gave us cake for valentines day and always insist we have two pieces , "con confianza!" they say,haha. Love you, Chao!

2/1 15: Pizza and English

This email´s going to be shorter (than usual..) this week , but here it goes!! This week included visiting the Guillem family from our ward and the father made us pizza!! I miss pizza so much. And the mother is the new Relief Society president so we chatted with her and her family for awhile. Also, Hermana Espinoza is learning ENglish (all the Latino missionaries have english books to learn english on their missions) and so Ive been helping her learn new words and phrases like ¨´cream of the crop´¨ ,haha, our favorite. ALso the phrase ¨´totes amazing´´ (not found in the book..) Weve been well fed this week, as usual, and were especially well fed wednesday when we had already eaten lunch then were given a mountain of rice from someone else we taught a few hours later..I don´t know how,but it happend. But it´s okay because we´ve been doing the KALO (spelling..?) workout in the morning for exercise! Yesterday and SAturday our neighbors that live across this little street had kareoke night...and their voices sound the same as when the someone here kills a chicken..and they went all out last night (for 4 hours) so pray we dont fall asleep during a lesson today!haha. YEsterday at church Eva Ruiz, a less active member who we´ve been teaching, gave me a pair of earrings! SHe just asked me if I had earrings and I said no and she just took some out of her bag,haha.THis week´s been good and hot! CHAO!

1/26 14: Conference and Cake

First off, sorry this email is a day late! We didn{t have P day yesterday because we had a conference for the Hermanas yesterday and left at 7amin the bus and just got back to Portoviejo before lunch. Its been raining a lot this week and one day when we were knocking doors trying to find someone to teach, we found a woman named Betty Cirvantes! We were knocking the door across from her little home when she poked her head out the window and started talking to us. Then she invited us in, which was especially great because my skirt was soaked,haha. She told us how she had prayed for a sign from God and that when she saw us outside her window that that was her sign. She had been taught by missionaries about 3 years ago and said I looked like one of them. So we talked with her for awhile and it felt like we had known her for years and she opened up to us so quickly. She has 4 sons and lives with the father and said she{ll probably get married in our church...kind of like the investigator of our dreams! She is so sweet and has so much faith! 

      This week...one day the sister who was going to feed us lunch wasn{t home so instead we bought a cake! The natural thing to do,right_ But dont worry, we ate some real food two. OH, and I killed my second and third cucarachas this week, it{s even harder when they fly! And Hermana Espinoza completed 5 months on the misson today,wooo!!! 

      And yesterday we had a conference with all the hermanas at the misson home with Hermana Dennis and it was so great! There was one talk that Hermana Dennis shared that I especially loved called Living by the power of faith by Elder Gene R. Cook. Its in Spanish so I dont know if this is the exact translation, but all the more reason to look it up! THis talk is great for everyone and are good things to remember for everyone who has goals that they want to accomplish (which should be everyone!) So these are the 6 steps to use faith as a principle of power to accomplish your goals 1. Believe 2. COmmit yourself 3. do your part 4. pray 5. know that there will be opposition 6. have faith that the lord will act. One of my favorite parts of this talk is when it says that we should have a vision of what we want to accomplish and see with the eyes of faith as if the things we want to accomplish have already happend. Hope this helps! Love all of you so much, CHAO!!

1/18 13: New Hermanas

Portoviejo is wonderful as always this week! Pretty sure this city has the best sunsets ever because we were walking on the street one evening and the sun was perfectly aligned between the buildings on each side of the street and was this gorgeous pink and orange color (okay this is how every sunset is, haha). Also we{ve recieved our fair share of food this week... One day we visited the Loor family and the mother, Nelida Loor, came out with all this food, which included an empanada with queso (sprinkled with sugar), papaya and then a small plate of mani (its like peanut butter but not..) with this white cheese everyone makes here that makes a squeaky noise when you chew it. Then for lunch yesterday we were given not one but TWO pieces of cake from the Lozano family, and weve gotten mangos from 3 different people this week so we have been well fed this week. 

      Two new hermanas arrived this week to live here in La Paz with us, one is Hermana Pugh (Logan,Utah) and the other is Hermana Mancuso (Miami,Florida) and its been so great having them here with us! Because both of them are new here in this area weve been showing them around and introducing them to the members of the ward. One night all of us went to home of the Sanchez family and while we were teaching one of their chickens was just circling my legs,ahh..But this week has been great and one of our investigators (Francisco) is also doing great and always come to church, even when he comes alone with his crutches. Love all of you! CHAO!

12: Staying in Portoviejo

Oh yeah, so I guess all of Portoviejo will be without water for a whole week sometime soon...so that ´ll be interesting! But this week has been good, we´ve been given plenty of food from the members...last sunday the family we ate with insisted that we have two pieces of cake after the meal, or we´ll teach a lesson at house after we´ve eaten lunch somewhere else and they´ll come out with a bowl of ceviche (which is fine with me because I can always go for some ceviche). Hope everything´s going good at home! Love you!! 

This week has gone by so fast! There are "cambios" every 6 weeks in the mission where you´ll get a call telling you´re going to a different sector and you have to pakçck all your things and go to mission in Guayaquil, or you don´t get a call which means you´re staying in the same place. So yesterday was the day was the day of cambios....and Hermana Espinoza and I don´t have any!! So we´ll be staying here in Portoviejo for another 6 weeks which is great because we can continue teaching the awesome people here. Yesterday Abraham Laniz, who was baptized last month, blessed the sacrament for the first time. It was such a great moment and Hermana Espinoza and I felt like proud mothers,haha. And a woman we´ve been teaching, Edicta Vera, has been coming to church every week and is officially an active member of the church again. She is so cute and is like our abuela! She always has a different dress when we visit and is so sweet. 

1/4 11: Happy New Year

Feliz Ano Nuevo!!!! This week again we were with the other four missionaries again im 12 de Marzo for a few days during new years eve! For New Years Eve we got to stay up until 12 and watch fireworks! We went up to the rooftop of their apartment and watched fireworks with hot cocoa and freaked out about 2016!! on the 31st there were a ton of those statues they make for the new years and my favorite was the giant Captain America in front of the bakery on our street. People light these statues on fire and its actually kind of anticlimatic,haha. They kind of just sit there and watch the statue burn and sometimes it fizzles out and they have to relight it. And of course there was plenty of good Latino music throughout the day playing in the streets and in the night. 

       Weve been teaching this couple, Carmen and Francisco Vasquez, and they came to church with us yesterday! They both have so much faith and are such great people. Francisco recentlly had half of his left foot amputated so he cant walk without crutches and wasnt able to make it to church because of this for the past few weeks. But last Friday he was able to get a wheelchair from a foundation here so he can make it to church now! Theyre so cute and theyre like our grandparents who give us mangos when we visit! Were excited to keep teaching them this week. 

       Hope everyone has some good new years resolutions, love you all! CHAO!