Week # 75 - 29 left

Hello To  All those within the sound of my luxurious voice! 

Happy first week of the NEW YEAR !  The year in which I shine my greatest!

  The 6-Month downhill run!  It should be an Olympic event, ha ha.

SO!  First, I did love all of your photos!  From our rad new kitchen to your very own Año Viejo!  I did love it indeed!  WAY TO GO!!! 
I can`t wait to do it next year with you all, it should definitely be a new family tradition.    (and Dad`s Elk-Bacon burger sounds legendary!)

OK.... News of the week...  Ah yes!  It took me a week to realize, but we`ve been getting TONS of people with a baptismal date!  here`s a sample list:

-Family S: cousins to members, 3 boys 2 parents, their dad is a parachuting marine in the army, they are the most rich investigators I`ve ever taught, AND:  4 of them have a baptismal date! They are humble, and they are in need of the gospel!

-D and K: Newly weds.  one is 15, one is 18, and they have a baby!  They are great too, but didn`t attend church!  :(

.N,  She was attended Jehovah`s witness, but now her and her husband are way into the church!  Her husband has been to a lot of others, and hasn`t liked them.,.. until now that is!  They came to our ward activity (sport`s night) and also to church!  And they are great!

-G:  A reference from our ward mission leader... and all that`s interesting about him is that he accepted to be baptized, and we haven`t seen him since!  We`ll find him soon.  :)

So, all in all, the work is going well!  We`re still working with the family M, the rest of them need to be baptized so BADLY!!!   But we`ll see what we can do for them...

And for an update on our English classes!  I don`t know if I`ve told you, but Elder Kingsford and I have been doing english classes for about 4 weeks now, and it seems every other week it goes from Many in attendance, to almost none!  So we hope next week will go better!  We need some references hungry to learn some solid gringo language!  Because it`s a good service, because many english classes here are rather expensive and often ineffective, so it really does help to go to them!

And it seems  as of late, we have been making many trips to the hospital.  Not because we`re sick!  But because member after member have been falling ill these last two months back!  At least 7 if I+m correct.... so we`ve been busy with blessings, visits, and bringing good cheer to all.  In fact, one dramatic one we had recently was with one niece of the ward pianist who had gone blind and needed a surgery to correct it, and once they had the surgery, she couldn`t see!  The doctor`s said that it was her mind not letting her be able to use her eyes, but after a blessing from us and weeks of prayers from the members, her eyesight was restored!  So a lovely success story!  Blessings do work! 



So! I hope you all have a lovely week!  Eat well, get plenty of rest and exercise! 

When I say that, I really mean feed your testimony, give rest to your soul, and exercise faith!

(I just made that up on the spot, ha ha! So it`s an Elder Sander`s original!  But a good principle to live by!  So do it! )

Elder Sanders

Photos: New years!  Our año viejos, before and after!

Week # 74 - 30 weeks left

DEAREST FAMILY!!!

Christmas was mighty!!!

Plenty of candy bags from members, monopoly, and food!  We made homemade Navajo tacos and Wassail! And they turned out waaay good! 

And yes, the phone call was extraordinary…now I`m all trunky!!!  (missing home,missionary slang)  but I did love it.  And it seems as if Christmas was a dream come true for you all too!  We really enjoyed taking a day or so off from missionary work,  wait.  It`s impossible to get a day off from missionary work, isn`t it?  Oh well!

SO! Today we got to go visit Lago Quilotoa!  A giant volcano which inactivated and turned into a beautiful lake!  We did love it indeed! It took about a half an hour to get down to see it, but over an hour to get back up!  It was exhausting! But worth it! I`ll attach photos of our epic journey! We went with a member leaving on his mission in a week, his dad, and Ruben, sister Patricia`s son. 

SO we had fun… until Ruben threw up in the car!  It was bad because he was sitting in the middle!  But we got it all cleaned up. 

What else.. Ah yes!  We also got to help family Maldonado to make an `año Viejo`, an old man made out of newspaper and old clothes to burn on new years!   I don`t know if you recall the tradition,but you make a giant dummy to represent the bad things that happened last year, and then burn it! It represents putting the past behind and forgetting about the bad that was in it!  And then, many men dress up like widowed old ladies,  and stop cars with branches and chain the roads, and won`t let them pass until they give them money, because, well, their `husbands` got burned, and now they are poor and widowed.  Right?  but on the way back from the lake our car got stopped 3 times by the man-ladies!!!  Odd, but it`s an Ecuador special!

Alright, so as for the work, we had 3 new investigators with baptismal dates! BUT NONE OF THEM showed up to church! but we did find a new family of 2 newlyweds, and it seems that Patricia`s husband is going to give permission for her 2 sons to be baptized!  The goal is for the 12th, so we hope it goes well!

Anio Viejo !!!

WELL! That is all for the moment, and I do wish everyone a very Merry Evening,

-Elder Sanders