Feliz Dia de Accion de Gracias!

Hey!

    If I remember right, last year they didn´t celebrate thanksgiving here in Ecuador, but the mamita made us chicken, mashed potatos and gravy! We´ll see how thanksgiving is here this year! 

    This week has been great! We have continued teaching some of the investigators I mentioned last week including Paul and Jesus. Jesus came to church again this week with his Mom and sister, who have recently come back to church. Paul couldn´t come to church, though he is still preparing to be baptized within the next coming weeks. Vicente, who seems to be the great grandpa of Cesibel, did come to church this week! He loved it, and after church he offered us some watermelon to thank us for inviting him! He is pondering the invitation to be baptized. 

   This week we spent alot of time looking for new investigators and we talked with LOTS of people, but the majority we have needed to ¨filter¨ as they do not show a commitment to come to church which is vital to us being able to help them come unto Christ. We visited what we call an ¨eternal investigator¨ . She is the Mom of a member who recently came back to church. She was investigating the church a while while her son was active before. Her husband recently passed away, so we taught her the Plan of Salvation. It was a very spiritual lesson, and I know it will help her towards the decision of being baptized (which at the moment she still does not accept). We also visited many recent converts and invited many of their non-member family members to church. 

   Despite all our finding efforts throughout the week, we hadn´t found anyone to accept a baptismal date. Our last hope for that was in a member´s aunt who came to church yesterday. We taught her and she accepted a baptismal date, along with her 14 year old son, in the last 30 minutes of proselyting time of the week. My companion and I were able to go home happy after our weeks effort!

   I´m thankful for the blessings the Lord gives us in his work. I´m thankful for the blessings of the gospel and the attonment of the Savior. I´m very thankful to have a great family. I´m thankful for the chance to be a missionary and help other´s families come closer unto Christ. Hope all have a great thanksgiving!

   Love,

Elder Pollock

This week we had the baptism of Ginger! She is the sister of Juliana who was baptized about a month ago (see the past photo I sent which has a picture with Ginger and her sister in Juliana´s baptism). She was very hesitant at first of being baptized or no but from the week before her baptism she became very decisive about being baptized. It was in good timing that she became so decided, as she actually moved to a new house inside of the ward boundries. The challenge came in that the owners of her new house are die-hard members of another religion. That created problems with being able to teach and visit that family efficiently to say the least. It didn´t prove to be a discouragment to her though! The moment of her baptism she was very happy. She bore a great testimony. Many members came in support of her (or maybe just to eat cake haha just kidding). It was awesome!

   Another awesome occurance was with one of the family of inactives we are ¨rescuing¨ (One of our duties our Mission President has giving to the missionaries here, according to President Monson´s talk a while back on ¨going to the rescue¨). We actually found this family a week and a half ago when we felt inspired to knock on a door (not something we casually do, only when the spirit indicates). When we knocked on the door, the Mom of the family happily began talking to us, and after conversing for a while we found out she has been inactive for years. Last sunday she came to church with her daughter. During this past week as we´ve been visitng them. One day the Mom introduced us to Jesus, a 10 year old kid who just recently moved in with her. She is his aunt and she had raised him since he was little, and now recently he moved in with her! She told us she wants him to be baptized, and we instantly set a date for the first week in December with him. Jesus came to church with his sister-cousin this week, as the Mom was sick on Sunday. We went to visit them after church on Sunday and found the Dad there as well with the older brother, Sam, who are also inactives and are hard to find in their home. We were able to talk to them and they commited to coming to church next week as well.

   The other invesitgator we have mostly been teaching is a 14 year old investigator Paul. He came to church again with his neighbor who is a counsler to the bishop, and loves it. He´s preparing to be baptized soon and is excited to do so. He came with a nonmember freind this week as well!

  Another random occurance, yesterday we contacted an old guy sitting on the street. He told us he´s from Piñas, which is my first sector, and I asked his last name he said Robles. I asked him if he knows Cesibel and he said he does, and we found that she is his great grandaughter. Small world! Cesibel was the first person I baptized here, and I met her great grandfather in another city!

   I´ve pretty much come to write mostly about the people we teach and the food we eat for P-days haha.

   As for food, so that I don´t break the tradition, we bought a roasted chicken and ate bbq chicken sandwiches which was delicious. I continue eating the great cereal here everyday as well, chocopic by Nestle. (product sponsor unintended)

Hope you all have a great week!

Love

Elder Justyn Pollock

This week we had the baptism of Monica! She is the investigator I had told about who used to go to church in another city but was never baptized. She was very content to be baptized and bore an awesome testimony after she was baptised. She always tells us that she has already felt a change in her life and that everyone in her home is happier in general. Those are the blessings of the gospel! While we had ward council meeting after church in the afternoon on Sunday, my companion and I noticed her coming to church for the Eternal Marriage class. It was very ironic, as I remembered she has the manual of that same class from 10 years ago when she used to go to church in Duran!

   This week we decided to do something a little different in the teaching and use the videos of the church alot. I´ve carried around a CD full of mormon messages, the restoration, and finding faith in Jesus Christ to show to our investigators. 

   As for invesigators we are teaching, we are still teaching Ginger, Juliana the recent converts sister. Also, we are teaching Diego and Paul, a couple of teenage freinds of members of the wards who try to look out for them and help them stay on a good path. This week we found another investigator, Jose, who is a 25 year old guy that we started to talk to walking to an appointment. To our surprise he started to talk in pretty good english! He told us he studied for a year in Harvard! We scheduled an appointment and taught him the restoration, and realized he studied in Hartford, not Harvard haha. While trying to find the address of Jose, we met another Jose, another young guy and married. We talked to him and have plans to teach him with his wife, grandma and cousins.

  That´s about all that happened of notice his week! I am happy to be a missionary! Hope you all have a great week.

Elder Justyn Pollock

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

    They don´t really celebrate halloween here, but we have gotten some way good food this week anyway so I´ll call it good haha. Speaking of food, we just got done eating one of our favorite easy lunches or night time snacks, hotdogs with mayonese (forgive me if I spelled that wrong, forgetting english), crushed up doritos and barbeque sauce. Not exactly healthy, but it´s tasty and fast!

   This week we had the baptism of Scarleth! She is the daughter of Monica, another investigator we are teaching. They attended church and listened to the missionaries in a city about 2 hours way more than 10 years ago. We found them asking directions for the hosue of Juliana when she came to church (who was baptized 2 weeks ago). They didn´t know where Juliana lived, but we invited them to church and they accepted. The next day we went by and taught a lesson, invited them to be baptized and they accepted. Scarleth came down pretty sick a few days before the baptism, but she got better in time for it and it was a great experience! My companion and I got a small cake and we went to the house of Monica with the bishop and a few members. They served us some Colada Morada which is a mix of a bunch of different fruits boiled together into a juice. Way good! 

    Their family loves the church and I´m happy to teach people like them. Monica and Scarlet come to church with the grandkids of Monica who she takes care of, Justin (7)and Melissa(4). Monica told us that Justin was walking the house the other day with a book of mormon pretending to be a missionary which was pretty funny.

   On sunday the mamita gave us homemade cream of mushroom and asparagus soup. It was the best soup I´ve had in Ecuador so far, as I love cream of mushroom soup!

That´s about all the news I have for this week. I love being a missionary and am grateful to preach the gospel. I hope all have an awesome week!

Elder Justyn Pollock

Baptism of Scarlet

 

The hot dogs we have made like 3-4 times already in the last couple weeks.