28 Abril 2014

Hey Everyone!

    This week was very interesting! We were lucky enough to have a visit from a General Authority, Our Area President, Elder Ulceda and his wife(Over a Big Chunk of South America). On Wednesday we had an all day mutli zone training meeting in Machala with the missionaries, and another meeting right after with all ward council members invited (including us). Yesterday we had a leadership meeting wth him with all of the zone leaders and sister leaders in the mission. I paid very close attention and took good notes, as he recieves direct and specific revelation for our area, especially concerning how we should work as missionaries. 

  One thing he said that really stood out to me is that ¨The obedience is a principle of the perfection.¨ As we become obedient with more exactness, we our gradually improving ourselves towards perfection.

   Another thing he talked about are some simple important that people should always do. I liked this part because I`ve always thought that the improvement in the simple things brings the most progress, as the simple things are many times the most important. Elder Ulceda talked about 3 ways to help someone develop faith In Christ: Conversing with God (prayer), Reading the scriptures (especially the Book of Mormon), and Church Attendance.

   Similar to how we use sunblock in this Ecuador sun, we can apply these 3 actions liberally. If we can see that our investigators are reading the Book of Mormon, Praying, and attending church, we know they are developing faith in Christ, which is the first part of our purpose as missionaries as stated in Preach My Gospel. We as members can apply this as we must all do those 3 things, and improve the manner that we do them constantly. 

   As for investigators, we are teaching an awesome family of 5! 2 in the family are recent converts, the Mom and Sister, and the other 2 have baptismal dates, the Dad and brother (the youngest sister is not of baptismal age). We are also teaching a 17 year old guy who is a nephew of some active members. There are many more but I am most excited for them.

   I´m loving being a missionary! Hope you are all doing great! Love you all!

Elder Pollock

 

 

 

Blast to the Past!

 This week I had a few back to the future moments.

    Number 1: I had transfers this last week and I`m back in the city of Santa Rosa! When I first started my mission I was in a city nearby, Piñas, which pertains to the Santa Rosa Zone. I`m remembering some of the past moments I had almost a year ago going to Santa Rosa for zone meetings, incluiding my favorite bread bakery! I buy bread there every time I go past it now. 

    Number 2: Stake conference! The last time I was in Piñas we had a stake conference, and this Sunday was a stake conference again! I got to see alot of the members a year later and see how they are doing. Inlcuding I got to see the sister, Janet, of one of my converts, Cesibel! Cesibel wasn`t able to make it as it is almost 2 hours away and she needed to help her mom, but it was awesome to see some old faces there in the stake conference! The stake conference was actually a Sattelite broadcast for all of Ecuador. The speakers by sattelite were Elder Holland, Elder Scott, and the General President of Primary. The mission President, President Torres, was present in our stake for it. I got to play piano for the Santa Rosa Stake as well as there wasn´t someone that knew how. They spoke about how to strengthen the families and our testimonies of the gospel. Elder Holland began to speak in Spanish, but stopped saying more or less ¨Ahora, no voy a seguir hablando en mi horrible español.¨ That was extremely funny. Elder Scott knows Spanish well. 

    Number 3: I`m back with Elder Saenz! He`s from Nicaragua and now has 21 months in the mission. I was with him 6 months ago in Huan Cavilca and Los Rios. We are the zone leaders now here in Santa Rosa North zone. I`m super excited to be back with him as he is a very good friend of mine. 

   We have some awesome investigators that we are teaching and I`m loving the mission. The sun is coming down on us still but I`m loving it here! I know this is the Church of Jesus Christ himself. Keep the commandments and do a good turn daily, the recompense will come in this life or the next! 

Love you all!

Elder Pollock

Just follow the map to a baptism!

Hey all!

   I`ll explain the title at the end, hold your horses. 

    Well I`ve had some super busy weeks and haven`t gotten to write much at all, but this week I have a little more calm PDay, so I´ll send some photos. We had changes last week. I stayed here in our current zone, and am now companions with Elder Lemich (who was my zone leader in my last zone!) He`s an awesome guy from Utah. We were apparently living one building away at BYU but we never meet eachother. 

    This week we had the opportunity to listen to General Conference. Always an awesome part of the mission, as we are always preaching about Prophets and the restored church, and listening to the modern day prophet is like seeing what I`m teaching everyone over again. We brought many investigators to the conference and I just felt the urge during the conference to tell them ¨This is what I was telling you about! He`s a prophet and they are apostles!!!¨

    As much as I loved conference, I never get tired of the feelingof having a baptism, and that was the most exciting thing that happened this week. This week we had the baptism of Monica. She`s the Mom of Koraima, Kleiner and Raul, three of my converts. She finally decided to be baptized! She came to conference Sunday Morning, and here baptism was planned for that night. After the conference we lost sight of her and she must have left before we could find her. We were a bit worried, as she has a small memory problem, and we wanted to remind her after the conference of the baptism at night. 

   We went to lunch at the mamita, and got the rest of the investigators and went to the afternoon conference session. Directly after we went to Monicas house, about 2 hours before the baptism, and we were sad to find that she hadn`t come home yet! We tried calling her and found her phone was there in the house. We decided she might come home before the baptism and so we went to the fill the font. 

  When we came back an hour later she was still not there. At that point we realized she must have forgotten or backed out of it. We tried thinking of everything we could just to get ahold of her. We saw if she was at a cousins house nearby. Koraima the daughter was in her house and told us Monica might be at a freinds house a little far away helping her move out. We asked for Monica´s phone she had left, and found the number of her friend. That was our last hope, and the phone was dead. At that point it was already 7:20PM and the baptism was scheduled for 7:00PM. We decided all we could do was pray in our hearts and wait there hoping God would get her to show up.

   It was already 7:30PM when Koraima told us that she knows how to get to her friends house if she might be there. We really wanted to get in contact with Monica, but obviously we weren`t going to take an 11 year old girl with us in a taxi. So, on the last sliver of hope that she might be on her friends house, we tried to get directions from an 11 year old girl to another part of the city.

-_-

   She explained and explained, but I was not picking up on the directions at all. The best we would be able to do was get to the bus stop, and she knew atleast what bus stop it was. She went and got a notebook and decided to draw a map. As she drew the map and tried to explain it I literally laughed saying to myself ¨There is no way!¨

   She finished the map and explained it me best she could, which was basically after the bus stop you gotta go to the tree, look straight, walk toward the benches, go to the right and straight until you get to a wall, go through a fence that`s either green or black to the right, go to the left, tell a dog ¨tico¨ or he`ll keep barking, go to a green house and ring 5 times or they won`t come out. 

    I looked at my companion and told him ¨This is crazy. What do you think, do we go? We might as well at this point, let`s go!¨ So we got a taxi and went to the bus station on the other side of the city . With map in hand feeling like little kids on a treasure hunt and saying a couple punny jokes we tried to go find this house. We took a giant pause at the first step, go to a big tree, as there were like 50 trees. We laughed and kept going. I can`t really explain how we got to the house. But as we came around one corner we saw a truck full of furniture. Without knowing how to explain I simply asked some guy in the truck ¨Hola, está Monica?¨He said, yep she`s inside.

    She was a little confused about how we got there and we asked if she remembered what was supposed to happen right now. She said ¨What time is it?!¨ It was already 8:00 and she explained she had just completely forgotten! We told her there was still time and so we got in a taxi, went to the church to a patient bishop waiting for us and she got baptized.

   Know that there is always a way. As the classic scripture in 1 Nephi 3:7, the Lord will always provide a way for us to do his will. This is the work of the Lord and his Church.

Love you all!

Elder Pollock

PS I`ll send a picture of the map next Pday

                                    Monica

       Abraham, who got baptized the other week!

 

 From the tall guy in the red shirt in back, in front of him is Monica who got baptized yesterday, to the views left of Monica is the head peeking out of her daughter Koraima, who drew the map.

   The kid making the heart on the left is a son of Monica