Merry Christmas!

    Hope everyone had an awesome Christmas! We had a great one! I got my package from my family, and I was super happy about that. Beef Jerky!!! All of my latin companions always me to ask my family for the "carne seco", and I think my companion was more excited then anyone when he saw that haha.We also had the baptism of Marco this saturday. He was super excited for his baptism, but pretty nervous for the confirmation in front of everybody! He`s super awesome and it was great to be able to teach him. 

    Right now I`m with other missionaries waiting for the new missionaries to arrive fresh out of the MTC. I`m going to train a new missionary here in this ward. Hopefully I can give him a good first impression of the mission and help him learn well. I love it here in the mission and in this ward! I`m doing well! I`ll send pictures and write you guys the next week!

Gracias,

Elder Pollock

Merry Christmas!

    This week I had transfers again!! It´s how mission life is alot of times and i´m pretty used to it. I was excited to see the baptism of Mariuksi and her daughter whose baptisms were for this Saturday, but the Lord knows where we should go and why so I don´t have any problems with it!

    My new ward is very small. We´ve met some young people who are awesome and want to get baptized. In that picture I sent with me, my companion and a bunch of teenagers, only 1 of them is a member already and almost all of the rest want to get baptized. We´ve got lots of work to do! We´re preparing them for that now here in this ward. I´m very excited because it´s awesome working with the teenagers. Here they can get caught up in a lot of bad stuff, but these have decided to follow the example of Jesus and avoid all of the things the world offers. As they come to church an take part of these ordinances they will have much more happiness in their lives and examples for others around them. Many of them want to go on missions as well! They are mostly the investigators we have for the moment.

   My new companion is awesome! He´s from Peru, has 6 months in the mission and is an awesome missionary. This weekend there was a ward christmas party, I played piano for that and a few of the photos I sent are from that. We were able to find some new investigators there as well. One we met there is the wife of a young guy who just got married recently. Someone told us she wasn´t a member and we basically ran to meet them. We taught her and she accepted to be baptized soon. She came to church on Sunday as well and loves the church!

   I love being here on a mission! I´m super grateful to have this opportunity. I know Christ is our Savior and it´s an awesome time to remember him. Hope everyone has a feliz Navidad!

Elder Pollock

   

  

 

Hola!

    We´ve been having a white Christmas in Ecuador! Not snow, that´s basically  impossible here, it´s like 80-90 degrees everyday. This week we had the baptism of an investigator we´ve been teaching, Roy. He´s a teenager that has loved the church and has been fellowshipped into a group of friends very quickly here. We´re super happy about that, because we know they´ll help him keep coming to church after his baptism alot! He´ll avoid alot of stuff the world might offer with this new group of friends and with becoming a member of the church. He absorbs the lessons like a sponge which is awesome! He has learned alot very quickly in the time we´ve taught him.

    The baptism was awesome! Roy´s Mom, brother, and niece came to support him. It all went well and the spirit was strong. At the end we gave him a new member package with new scriptures, a hymn book, etc. He was super happy to get that. We´re hoping the mom can get baptized as well, and that when the brother turns 8 he will follow the example of his brother!

   I´ve recieved a testimony lately that the when we put our part the Lord helps us in ways we don´t expect. This week we noticed a family in church that has been coming to church regularly, but we found out that the parents aren´t baptized. There was some complication with that the Dad needs to be divorced from a prior engagement in order to marry his current wife. If they´re living together and not married they can´t be baptized! 

    When we talked to them, they expressed to us a grand desire to be baptized. They´ve been coming to church for 5 years! For the dad to get divorced to his prior engagement from 15 years ago, the lawyer will be a big cost that is impossible for them to cover. The Mom of Roy happens to be a lawyer with lots of experience! We set up an appointment to for the family to meet with her. She veery generously offered to help them without charging any more than the base costs of the process, and in small payments (the laywer not recieving a salary for her). When that process is over they will finally be able to be married, baptized, and their goal is to as soon as possible be sealed in the temple.

   When we do all we can to do what the Lord commands, he´ll prepare the rest. We recieve many blessings for obeying the commandments. Sometimes it takes a while to see the results, but if we are dilligent we´ll recieve many blessings for our efforts. I´m super grateful to be a missionary in this work!

Gracias,

Elder Pollock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hey!

    I´ve been very excited for the work lately. This saturday we had the baptism of an investigator we´ve been teaching, Selena. She is an awesome convert. It took her a while to decide to be baptized, but when she did she was super sure of it and nothing would have stopped her. We´re now working on helping her mom to be baptized. We had a few investigators come to the baptism as well. One will be baptized very soon. His name is Roy. We´ve been teaching him for a couple weeks. He picks up every thing we teach super fast, and puts it in practice. It gets me super excited to teach him. 

   This week we were walking to see if a member of the church could come visit a family with us because we needed member (man) for sure. We were basically at our last hope going to a member that we knew probably wasn´t home, but we decided to go anyway. On the way there a lady stopped us on the sidewalk. She told us she was a member and said "Just who I was hoping to find! I´m from out of town, but I´m on my way to visit my friend and I want you to come meet her!" We needed to go find a brother from the church to visit someone that was preparing to be baptized, but we felt strongly that we should go. We came to meet a single mom with 3 kids, a 10 year old girl, and a 9 year old and 5 year old boy. We found out her 9 year old boy was autistic (I believe is the term). 

    The next day we came and felt we should start out teaching the plan of salvation, which is a little out of the ordinary, as we usually start out teaching the restoration or the gospel of jesus christ. The day after she accepted to be baptized soon with her daughter, and came to church with all her kids to church yesterday! I´m super excited to continue teaching this family, and happy for the opportunity God has given us to teach them!

   I know God has a plan for all of us here on Earth. He wants us to be happy. I love being a missionary and being able to spread the happiness of the gospel of Jesus Christ to everyone I can.

Elder Pollock