The Book of Mormon Does It Again!‏

This week, a few sketches of how the Book of Mormon solves everyone's problems ever. They've cut down our e-mail time to an hour and a half here (Some of you other missionaries might say "'Cut down?!'") so my letters might be a bit shorter from here on it but it doesn't mean I don't love you!

First off, our investigator with date, Mayra, is still struggling to find a testimony. We asked her how she feels while reading the Book of Mormon and she mentioned that she feels a bit more alleviated - so I frantically searched for something like that in the Book of Mormon and my companion helped me find Alma 36, where Alma talks about how he felt as he cried out in the depths of his sorrows.

 18 Now, as my mind caught hold upon this thought, I cried within my heart: O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me, who am in the gall of bitterness, and am encircled about by the everlasting chains of death.

 19 And now, behold, when I thought this, I could remember my pains no more; yea, I was harrowed up by the memory of my sins no more.

 20 And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain!

Pretty great, heah? Check out the chiasmus that's in this chapter to even better understand the beauty of these verses.

Then, later in the week, we checked up on whether she'd called her parents to ask for permission to be baptized - she still hadn't called her dad and was a little afraid to do so. But we searched in the Book of Mormon and again my companion suggested we read Alma 20 - the story of when Ammon and his recent convert King Lamoni have a run-in with Lamoni's dad. The result being that Lamoni's dad gets converted a few chapters after!

We've also been teaching a family that's great, but the huge problem with their progress is the fact that like three of them don't know how to read. Lousy public education. So we've been teaching them bit by bit how to read and they have been having a bit of progress. But for me it was a big disappointment when they didn't come to church this week. I was pretty frustrated. But the second councilor in the mission presidency (I didn't even know mission presidencies existed), who's in charge of the branch, came down for a branch conference, and while he was there he shared a scripture in 3 Nephi 18, where Jesus explains what we need to do with people that might not be progressing.

 32 Nevertheless, ye shall not cast him out of your synagogues, or your places of worship, for unto such shall ye continue to minister; for ye know not but what they will return and repent, and come unto me with full purpose of heart, and I shall heal them; and ye shall be the means of bringing salvation unto them.

That helped me to realize that we should keep visiting them, despite my frustration. And when we went to visit them that night, we learned that they'd had a lot of problems with one family that day who had gone off and done a lot damage and now the mom was pretty ticked off. We ended up sharing that very same scripture with them, but applying it to their home! We testified that Christ can change people and that they could really see those changes they want to see if the follow Him.

And finally we were teaching a less-active that's also been having plenty of problems in their family. It's hard for her to come to church because not everyone in her family is a member and even those that are members don't want to come to church. This reminded me of a part in Alma where Alma goes to rescue the less-active Zoramites. When he sees their state of apostasy, he's really saddened, but I love the prayer he says in chapter 31.

 31 O Lord, my heart is exceedingly sorrowful; wilt thou comfort my soul in Christ. O Lord, wilt thou grant unto me that I may have strength, that I may suffer with patience these afflictions which shall come upon me,because of the iniquity of this people.

 34 O Lord, wilt thou grant unto us that we may have success in bringing them again unto thee in Christ.

 35 Behold, O Lord, their souls are precious, and many of them are our brethren; therefore, give unto us, O Lord, power and wisdom that we may bring these, our brethren, again unto thee.

The scripture really helped her to see how she can help her family and she came to church the next day!

The Book of Mormon does it, once again! Hurrah!

In other news like I said Presidente Ayala came, the second councilor in the mission presidency, and he organized for the first time an Elders Quorum here and ordained 5 new elders! It's great for the branch and we keep progressing. In only 4 years the branch has about 70 members and the missionaries here have been having a lot of success in baptizing as well.

The mission isn't easy but it's great. I know this is the Lord's work and that Christ lives! Have a good week, everyone.

A coconut tree.

The Cevallos family are some awesome recent converts in our sector from Colombia. They make guitars and play them for a living. How cool is that?

              Papaya growing in a member's backyard.

 

 

 

Cantan Santos Ángeles

THE JUNGLE

Just reminding you that's where I am.

But as you probably realized from the last photos I sent it's really just any other town. It's just hot, rains, and things are more expensive. But I think I did hear some monkeys running around outside the other day.

These week's update might be a bit shorter but first we have an investigator with date, Mayra Ponce! She's a 16-year-old that they found last transfer, but she's been having good progress. She doesn't live with her parents I think because she's going to school here and they work out on a reserve or something deep in the jungle (Yes, there ARE natives that still run around with spears, but a good 4 hours away, not counting the canoe ride, so we kind of don't work there.), so we still need to get their permission and she still needs a testimony as well, so that'll be the focus. But she could get baptized this week. We'll see what happens.

In the rest of the sector we have people who can progress in the future, but need to get married, and since so many people are Colombians getting the papers arranged for that type of thing is a nightmare. But one of my favorites of these people is Juan. He's a young guy but you couldn't tell by looking at it - he's been through some Stuff. And it sounds like his voice box got thrown into a blender from its whispery rasp. But he's awesome. To illustrate, a story from the other day:

One of the other elders was bugging him about his fancy-looking watch and the nice new motorcycle he bought.

Juan explains, "They're God's blessings. Just like the song." (Singing)  "'Count your many blessings...' I love that song. I sang it in jail. They'd always put that music on and I'd cry and cry..."

That's Juan.

Oh and speaking about baptisms we got to see a baptism from one of the other companionships here last Saturday. As we're renting an apartment for the church, there's no font, and so we baptize...IN A RIVER. Needless to say it was a cool experience and really very spiritual. Like I said, it's awesome seeing the strength of some of these members here that have hardly been members for more than a few years - or months or weeks. Pics at the end of the e-mail.

This week I got to know Coca, the other city where missionaries work out here in the Oriente. Since it's two hours from here to there in bus, we alternate where we have the weekly zone meetings so that half the zone doesn't have to lose that kind of time every week. (Remember that Coca and Lago Agrio are the two branches that are covered by this zone and that there are three companionship in each branch.) So that was cool and I also took a million pics on the bus ride.

I had a cool experience this week. There's a returned missionary living here who moved here from Guayaquil and he's a great help in the branch. He also likes to sing and is one of the few latinos I've ever met who's actually had some kind of training, and so we've already hit it off good. We're always finding hymns to sing and work on the parts. I suggested "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" because I love the bass part and we sang. We sang our hearts out. Then he surprises me by pulling me into a hug and crying. "Thanks for your service," he tells me with a smile. Music helps us feel the Spirit! And it helped me remember I'm here to serve in any way possible. That's the joy of the work.

I've been thinking a bit about these verses in 2 Corinthians these past few days:

 9 Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance: for ye were made sorry after a godly manner, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing.

 10 For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.

There's an interesting and important difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow. I had this problem at one point. Worldly sorrow is wanting to change because of our shame or thinking about what other people think. That kind of sorrow can't help us repent. Only godly sorrow, which is what we feel when we'll do anything to make things up with God. Getting rid of our pride is often the first step to repentance.

Love you all! Have a great week!

Oh and check out lds.org! The article on the front page that talks about pioneers talks about some members from Otavalo! That's part of the mission, an area of "campo," or field. There are so many members in Otavalo it's been nicknamed "Utahvalo." One general authority once said that it's one of the purest Lamanite places on earth. I'll have to dig out that quote. Anyhow there are four parts of the mission, more or less: coast, mountain (city), field, and jungle. I've gotten three down. It's likely I'll get sent to Otavalo in the future, too.

BAPTISM in RIVER

 To the left here is the building serving as the chapel, on the second floor.

 Pomarosa - one of those fruits I'd never heard of ever before coming here. It's pretty good, I guess.

Lago Agrio

Sorry I am late posting Miah's letter this week. I was at our church Girls Camp all week. Thank you for all your support for Jeremiah!

If only my blog could have:

-the titles of Elder McCrary's blog

-the picture of Elder McCrary's blog

-the snarkening pop-culture saturation of Elder McCrary's blog

-the food of Elder McCrary's blog

And then I was going to put a picture here of me eating a fish but it looks my blog does at least have the inconsistency of Elder McCrary's blog. 

Anyhow, looks like you won't be getting pictures because the computer refuses to read my card. And on such a crucial day! Oh well. Such is la vida misional. He was able to post pictures, they are at the end as usual.:)

GO, INFO DUMP

As I said before there's a missionary in charge of the branch here, one of the zone leaders. Our district leader also has a responsbility - he's the secretary. Other than that there's just me and my companion, the good ol' normal companionship. We've got a gigantic sector here. Logistically, it's an absolute nightmare, because there aren't any buses and we have to pay taxis to get anywhere. Also we live on one extreme of the sector and on the other end live practically all the people we're teaching. On top of that my companion wasn't taught the sector very well (because his companion wasn't taught the sector well beforehand) and we've got to figure it out pretty much together. But hey, I'm hoping that within a week or so I'll get the hang of it and we can start being more efficient.

As for being "jungle," it's not like I'm hacking through undergrowth with a machete or anything. Really, I'm not even sure we're in the actual Amazon. Go look at a map or something and tell me. It's an actual small city out here and fairly nice, too. Pretty clean and with actually good-looking planning closer to the center. But where we spend most of our time I'm stepping on pebble roads - my feet hurt a good bit.

The majority of people here are actually from Colombia - I'm not exactly sure why, but it's annoying at times because it means I have to spend another few months with Colombian bread, which is just the worst thing on the planet. At least, when you've experienced Quito's bread. But weare teaching a recent convert that only knows the native language here - I don't remember what it's called. Her daughter, who's a member, translates for us. But she lives in a normal (Ecuadorian) house and everything, so don't get all excited.

Also things are generally a bit more expensive here, I'm guessing because getting stuff here is a bit of a trek through the mountains and whatnot. Just imagine those windy Western-PA backroads that always get you sick. That's pretty much all of the roads leading to or from here. They're well paved and everything, it's just fairly slow going, so what would in distance be only a two or three hour trip on a normal highway in the states turns into like twelve hour trip. And so bananas cost 10 cents each. TEN CENTS. That's a 100% difference from the coast. I guess that's why they give us 30 more dollars to play with here.

As for the branch membership, the great majority are converts that have at most 3 or 4 years in the church. It seems like we have an attendance of about 60 members. There is a couple of returned missionaries that moved here and they're a great help for the branch, it seems. And of course a lot of the converts are great, too! I'm just excited to try to find a couple on my own, too haha.

What else? The house is tiny. That's not fun. And it's not always super hot here so it stinks showering in cold water. It rains a ton - I think it's rained every day while I've been here and I managed to lose my umbrella about a month and a half ago...but there's KFC.

Relatos Verídicos

I thought I'd share a couple awesome stories I heard this week. For instance, I was talking with one of the other missionaries in the branch when I learn he's a recent convert with just 2 years as a member! It's awesome hearing that sometimes from gringos because I guess when I look at a gringo I assume he's been a member for all his life. Turns out his parents are less-actives and he didn't know much about the gospel, but as he went to college in Utah he got to know lots of member friends and one of them gave him a Book of Mormon. One night he finally got around to reading it and as he described it, started to feel super bad about the things that he had been doing. He got in contact with the missionaries and three weeks later got baptized. Now he's serving a mission and being a total champ.

I talked with one of our recent converts and she explained how she got to know the church a good while back but could never convince her husband to get married so they could get baptized. Then they moved here and last year got in contact with the missionaries again. This time she told her husband, "I'll give you two weeks and if we don't get married, I'm leaving - to China, if necessary, so I can get baptized." The husband had a change of heart and they got married - and one of their kids got baptized to with his wife. Now they have callings and they're all doing great in the church.

Yesterday was testimony meeting. I watched as a young lady who couldn't have had more than a few years as a member get up and testify powerfully of her desire to be married in the temple.

I was eating at the same table as our branch president/zone leader and I asked him, "What did you do before the mission?"

With a smile he says, "I was a bum."

More than anything it's just amazing how the gospel changes lives. There's nothing else that can do it so completely. When we light up a dark room the darkness just flees. It can't do a thing.

I like to think about Alma the Younger, sometimes, and the change he had in my life. I realized while being out here that at some point we have to stop reading the Book of Mormon stories and start living them. It can happen. And it will! I know the gospel is true and that it changes lives. I know the Book of Mormon is true and that we have living prophets. Love you all, have a great week!

Aha! I figure this thing out. Good, pics. Here's a lousy one of me in front of the sign that says "Lago Agrio."

We passed by some gorgeous scenery on the way down here.

Another lousy picture of the place we're renting to do the meetings.

With the Cevallos family, a family of recent converts. My and my comp are about to dig into that bandeja paisa. It's a Colombian dish and it has: sausage, egg, rice, avacado, plantain, pork, arepa, ground beef, and beans. It was the best way to end a fast ever.

Rain and more rain.

Death in The Jungle

"Hey, Elder Scanlan! How's it been!"

"Great! I'm getting sent to the Orient!"

"The jungle! No way! And your companion?"

"They say I'm getting sent there to kill him."

I just like how missionary slang works some times.

Anyhow, I got changes! And I'm getting sent to Lagio Agrio! As it's going to be my companion's last transfer he's going to "die" and I'm going to be the one that "kills" him. I'm super excited because I've heard a lot about this place. It's in the "selva" of Ecuador - basically on the exact opposite side of the country. I'm going from the coast into the deep, dark, jungle.

Well, actually, from what I know it's just a city like any other. Apparently it's just really hot - as hot as the coast, but without wind, and more humid. It rains a lot there. There are monkeys. They also eat "gusanos" (worms) and I've heard you can find boa, armadillo...I'm excited. Are you excited? I'm excited.

Lago Agrio itself is an oil town - how big I'm not sure, but there's one branch and three sectors. In fact, our mission currently works in just two places in the Oriente - both of them branches. One in Lago Agrio and one in Coca. The missionaries haven't been out there for more than about 4 years, so it's going to be a totally different experience and I'm super excited. A missionary works as the branch president and other missionaries have callings like councilors and secretaries (I know all of this thanks to Elder Equite, who was my companion a few months ago. He was the secretary in Lago Agrio for a while.). Now it's not like I'm going to be teaching natives or anything like that - Lago Agrio is actually pretty close to Colombia from what I've gathered, so there's a good number of Colombians and some Peruvians as well. I think the majority are just people who've come to work in the refinery. But we'll see what happens.

Also there aren't any sister missionaries out there. I'm going to have been at least half a year with being in a zone with sister missionaries. Not that I'm complaining, exactly...also, President only visits every three months or so I think, so we're kind of out on their own. Everybody forgets about the people out in the Oriente. I'm not going to know anybody by the time I get sent back to someplace like Quito or Otavalo...

I'm actually in Quito right now, enjoying the cold for a little bit. Since it takes long enough to travel from the coast to the selva (about 6 hours for each trip from or to Quito) they have us do it over two days so I'll be staying in one of the houses in Quito tonight. Next week I'll have plenty of pics, I'm sure!

But anyhow, Esmeraldas...It was great being in Paraiso. The change us a lot in this mission so it's interesting to see the growth of a ward and in the people there over a longer period of time - the three changes I had there. I guess it's hard, more than anything, to keep a good perspective. As missionaries we have goals to meet and expectations we have and some times it's easy to get stressed out about people not getting to a certain point in a certain amount of time. But in the eternal scheme of things, if it brings salvation...we just need more charity.

Maybe that's one of the things I learned most being in Paraiso, watching the interactions of the ward members and the missionaries. It can be very hard to put your trust in somebody and care about them enough to help them out. It's often very hard to know whether certain people will progress, others no...it's important to see with charitable eyes. I read a talk a few weeks ago that talked about seeing with eyes wide open but a heart wide open as well. It's so true. Just have charity with all the people you interact with! A while ago the Karatosses sent me this talk: https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2012/04/the-rescue-for-real-growth?lang=eng and I really loved it. More than anything I love the story that he tells.

One Sunday morning some 30 years ago, while I was serving in a stake presidency, we received a telephone call from one of our faithful bishops. He explained that his ward had grown so rapidly that he could no longer provide a meaningful calling to all worthy members. His plea to us was that we divide the ward. While waiting for such approval, we decided as a stake presidency that we would visit the ward and call all these wonderful, worthy brothers and sisters to be stake missionaries.

About the third person I visited was a young female student attending the local university. After chatting for a few moments, I issued the call to serve as a missionary. There was silence for a few moments. Then she said, “President, don’t you know that I am not active in the Church?”

After a few moments of silence on my part, I said, “No, I did not know you were not active.”

She answered, “I have not been active in the Church for years.” Then she said, “Don’t you know that when you have been inactive, it’s not all that easy to come back?”

I responded, “No. Your ward starts at 9:00 a.m. You come into the chapel, and you are with us.”

She answered, “No, it is not that easy. You worry about a lot of things. You worry if someone will greet you or if you will sit alone and unnoticed during the meetings. And you worry about whether you will be accepted and who your new friends will be.”

With tears rolling down her cheeks, she continued, “I know that my mother and father have been praying for me for years to bring me back into the Church.” Then after a moment of silence, she said, “For the last three months I have been praying to find the courage, the strength, and the way to come back into activity.” Then she asked, “President, do you suppose this calling could be an answer to those prayers?”

My eyes started to water as I responded, “I believe the Lord has answered your prayers.”

She not only accepted the call; she became a fine missionary. And I’m certain she brought much joy not only to herself but also to her parents and probably other family members.

And I love the conclusion he draws from this:

Over the years I have wondered how this interview might have gone had I approached her as a less-active Church member. I leave you to be the judge.

Have charity! Love you all!

Look at what my companion did to his white handbook. It's..beautiful...such rules...

Have I mentioned I love the things people put on the back of the cars/trucks? This is one of the high councilor's trucks. "No success can compensate for failure at home."

 The Martinez family, our infamous cock fighters. Well, actually, the husband wasn't there that day but here's the rest of them.

Comin' back to the outskirts of Quito in the bus.

 The Rangel family! We were helping the husband to get active again and he was making great progress.

 

Esmeraldas Grab Bag‏

I used to have these e-mails so neatly laid out. I don't know what happened. But here's a jumble of stuff that happened this week!

First of all, we're teaching some clowns. Yes, that's right, clowns. It's a less-active family and the dad is a professional clown. It was actually pretty cool - he taught us some magic tricks using coins. I need to practice a bit more. And the son-in-law is a potential investigator. He's a Spaniard so he has a hilarious accent (People from Spain pronounces all their "s's" like "sh."). We'll see what happens there!

Saturday we went on divisions and I stayed in the sector with one of the zone leaders. It maybe wasn't the best day, but he really helped me to understand what a joy it is to invite people to come unto Christ. That's our missionary objective, after all. That's all we're here to do, invite people to come unto Him, ultimately through baptism. And more than anything we just do the inviting and the Spirit does pretty much all the rest. So probably the best appointment we had that day was when we found Lourdes and her husband, who isn't a member (Yet. Muahaha)! We didn't have much time but we had a great lesson about the Book of Mormon and invited him to read it. I definitely felt the Spirit during the lesson so that was a great experience for me. Read it, people!

Which reminds me of HOLA. It's an acronym we use here in the mission that means "Hay que: Orar, Leer, y Asistir." In English, "You need to: Pray, Read, and Attend church." It's to help us to remember the commitments we usually extend to everyone - and they're the canned seminary answers that build testimony and families. I've realized that it's dangerous to stop doing any one of these three things and especially as a family. Gosh why is it so hard for people to read scriptures as a family? It's something I've wanted to focus on more recently. People really need to get into that habit. It's hard for recent converts especially I think. So we've been trying to help people to do it here in the sector. I just know that if we read the Book of Mormon in our families we'll get the families we want! It's so simple but so important. Read this talk by Pres. Benson. At the end it lists that promise.

Oh, here's a cool experience we had. Our zone this month has as one of its focuses praying when our appointments fall through. We need the guidance of the Spirit in every moment! So we went to an appointment we had set and the family wasn't there. We started to walk away, nowhere in particular, when I suggested we pray. So we turned around the corner to find a bit of privacy and my companion said the prayer. We open our eyes, we turn around, and there are the parents, running right past us to their house in the rain! They let us in and we start to teach. I didn't really know what to teach - next up on the list was Word of Wisdom and we'd planned to just to keep going with that, but it'd been a while since we'd taught the family and so I wasn't sure if that was right. I prayed to know what we should teach in my mind. We start off with Word of Wisdom and like normal we first talk about the Spirit and how we need to feel it (because then we lead into why we need to keep our bodies clean to feel it, yadda yadda). I ask the teenagers (they're our focus in the family) if they know what the Spirit does and how it works. They give me blank stares. Then I realize that with my other companion we had never checked up on something really important. "Have you prayed to know if the Book of Mormon is true?" Blank stares. Well. We had a good lesson about that! Follow the Spirit! It's the only thing that'll tell you the true needs of a person - yourself included.

Attendance in church was light because of Father's Day (People here will look for any kind of pretext to goof off...it was hard to sleep Saturday night because of the music and drinking outside the apartment.) but we did have one of our less-actives we've been working with for a while come to church for the first time, Hermano Rangel! That was awesome. He's a great guy and we just want all of the family to be there. The wife and kids are always there, we were just missing him. And it was great seeing the ward helping him feel at home.

We also learned a little bit of cha'pala, the language of the natives from the coast here, the chachi. Here's some phonetic spellings: oora kepenéne (good morning), ia Elder Scanlan (I'm Elder Scanlan), na-nai-yu (how are you). Pretty neat. We've got a less-active chachi. Of course, she speaks perfectly fine Spanish too.

The other day a Jehova's Witness contacted us. That happens a good bit. First time it's happened to me in the street. As my companion explained, there are only two types of people that will come up and talk to you: the prepared people, and the Jehova's Witnesses. She quizzed us on how many books the Bible had, what language "Yawheh" is in, and how old she was. I didn't answer right once. She turned 80 recently! My companion asked her how her birthday was, which was fantastic (because, you know, they don't believe in birthdays). She was actually really nice though.

And I've been reading the New Testament in Spanish. It's so much more understandable, believe it or not. I've really enjoyed it. I'm beginning John, now. The other day I saw that one of the APs walked around with just the Book of Mormon and the New Testament. That's awesome. I'd love to do that. Sometimes it's a pain lugging all 4 standard works around...

Well there's my week. Hope you have a good one, too! I know this church is true, I know the Book of Mormon is true, and I know that Christ lives!

The river! I don't know what it's name is. But this is part of the river we cross to get to the island in our sector. Where it passes through our sector it's much smaller.

People like to put their kids/spouses/Homer Simpson on every decal possible here. Sometimes the results are terrifying.

I was trying to figure out a pose for the picture and my companion took it anyways but I like how it turned out. Esmeraldas!

This is a zapote eating selfie. It basically tastes like cantelope, but it's stringy.

This is zapote, just one of the many fruits I've only found here. No they don't normally have anime faces.

 

Our Hero Forgets To Think of a Decent Title Part 2‏

Update on Paradise!

There was this recent convert named Lourdes who I only knew vaguely existed because her name was in our records. I'd never seen her and she didn't come to church - one day some months ago one of our appointments fell through and we ended up at her house and found her! She explained she had found a job that had her working every single day and getting back home at 8 - so in other words there was no way we were going to be able to teach her. It was just a blessing that we stumbled across her that day. So yeah we taught something and didn't see her again.

Until like two weeks ago when we were leaving the island (she lives in the island) and somebody calls after us - Lourdes! So it turns out she's not working any more and came to church yesterday! We've started teaching her again and things are going great. We even managed to teach to her husband once and some family members - it's going to be a great opportunity to bring her back to activity and possibly find more investigators and baptisms!

Apart from that our investigator with a date, Roberto Chavez, is also progressing well! He came to stake conference yesterday as well and he's doing a pretty good job of reading the Book of Mormon and all. Maybe I'm invoking Murphy's Law here but honestly it seems like the only problem will getting all the lessons in. We can only teach him about once or twice a week because he works until late, and I don't want to just teach the lessons to get him baptized...I don't think it's likely he'll be baptized this transfer (i.e. I probably won't be here for his baptism) but I don't see any problem otherwise.

More than anything we've just been getting in contact with some people we haven't seen in a while and had 3 investigators in church yesterday. That was pretty great. And they're all demonstrating a great chance of progress. One of them is Alan, who I mentioned a good while ago - go find that e-mail because I don't have time to write out the story again here.

We had a Zone Conference with President. Here in the Coast we're a bit more cut off from the mission - there's just the two zones here and as it's about a 6 hour drive from here to Quito, we just don't see anybody else. We only really get "news" (who's in what sector, how people are doing) from the outside world when President comes or when there's transfers. It was good, but it meant we didn't do anything the whole day. More than anything we've been focusing on asking references and using recent converts and less-actives as a good finding tool.

And yeah. Here's a fun cultural thing about Ecuador. Like in all of Latin America, the biggest meal is lunch (though they don't do siestas here) and so people don't eat a very big dinner - just a snack. What's most popular is "pan con cola" or in other words just bread and soda (Cola is the word for soda here. It's funny because there's a returned missionary who recently came back from Panama in the ward and he says soda all the time and people give him funny looks.). And usually Coca-Cola. Anyone will attest that you don't know what it's like to have soda as a part of the food culture until you go to Latin America. I will sincerely miss the gallon-size bottles. Anyhow people gave me bread and soda a good two or three times last week. It made me pretty happy.

Hiding Happiness

I just wanted to share a little story I heard in stake conference yesterday that I liked.

Back before we were born, when the world was being created, the Gods held a council and decided how exactly everything would work it. Although there were many ideas they generally came to the conclusion that man would eventually come to dominate the world.

However, the three wolf gods had a different idea. They were determined that man would be miserable, and so they devised a plan. A plan to hide happiness from man. And so they thought and debated about how exactly they would do it.

"I know!" said one of the wolf gods. "We'll go up and hide happiness in the highest mountain peak. Surely they'll never find it."

"No," replied one of the others, shaking his head. "These humans are determined creatures. One day they'll work up the courage to climb that mountain. I'm sure of it."

So they thought and thought some more.

"I know!" said the second wolf. "We'll go down and we'll hide happiness in the deepest depths of the sea. They'll never find it there!"

"No," said the first, shaking his head. "You've forgotten these humans are clever things. One day they'll devise a machine that can reach even the deepest depths and find it there. I'm sure of it."

Now they were stumped. They thought and thought and thought. Where could they hide happiness?

"I know," said the last wolf, the oldest and wisest. "I know where we can hide happiness. Where they will never, ever find it."

The other two looked at the third, astonished.

"Where, where?" they asked.

The old wolf smiled. "We'll hide it in themselves."

The other two thought about this and as they realized what their companion was saying they, too, smiled and nodded.

"They'll be so focused on searching for it outside..." said the first.

"That they'll never look inside themselves," finished the second.

I just really liked that story. Hope you liked it, too! Just remember that the only way to true happiness is through the Gospel. Only the truth can dispel darkness, only the light can replace it. Love you all, have a good week!

 

Shaky cam of the zone.

I took about a bajillion pics of our cockfighting less-actives chickens the other day.

Motorcycles are popular here in the Coast.

Lourdes's house. Working in the island is fun. It makes me really feel like I'm not just in a crappy, hot part of the US.

This is what I drew for the zone shirt. I'm pretty happy.