Menos-Activo Madness

Welp sorry I don't have much time to e-mail you guys, but here's a bit of news from the mountains of Ecuador:

We've been shifting the majority of our work to the less-actives here. Which there are plenty of, as in all of latin america. The idea is to activate and through that find references and baptize, which is the way the area presidency wants us to work. It really does work, but for now we're just trying to help our less-actives get there to a point where they can also help others. Things will get better - and have been getting better - but it means we've had few lessons with investigators this week (even though we've been searching). We'll get there. For instance, our less-active Victor Piedra is doing great, coming to church on his own. And as he was the ward mission leader in the past he knows lots of people we can teach.

We had a pretty cool experience where our last appointments for the day fell through and so of course we had to contact at night which is probably what missionaries least like to do. After a bunch of rejections, we stumbled into a less-active family we didn't even know existed! That kinda happens. But they seem pretty receptive and we might see some good things there.

It was a frustrating week overall and I had a lot of doubts (as usually happens) as to whether I was truly doing enough, what I was doing wrong, what's happening to the sector...but everything turned out well in the end. I need to do a lot better about seeing the good things I do. It's so hard to be grateful when we least want to, but it's all in our heads in the end.

I'll leave you with that. Next week will be more extensive, I hope, and include pictures of me eating guinea pig, which is totally going to happen within the next week. I'm excited. Are you excited?

In the fields.

 I went on divisions with the zone leaders this week, which took me out to the "true" Otavalo experience out in the fields. It's really gorgeous out there, and poor as well. Here have the Lake San Pablo and Imbabura, one of the resident volcanoes.

I saw a sheep but it didn't want a picture.

 There's a tourist train that passes by every once in a while. I'd totally do it a p-day if it didn't take like 10 hours round trip and 50 dollars.