The Hills are Alive

I´m just sitting here hanging out with this bag of fish sitting next to me...no big deal. Pretty sure today was the best P-day of all time. We went to the mountains to go fishing! No, I´m not lying. Also I caught two fish and put my line in probably 4 times. Staring at the mountains was way too distracting to keep track of putting bait on my line and taking that nasty hook out of the mouth. I felt like I was at home. The mountains will always be home for me. I was having some way trunky thoughts of the Uintas and Mill Hollow this week and missing the mountains like crazy, so being surrounded by nature with mountain air swirling around me was bliss. I sat there and had the craziest realization that I was just hanging out in the Andes mountains of Ecuador fishing with a way old-school fishing pole. How did I get this lucky to be here? They made us take our fish...and we´re not really sure what to do with it because none of us want to clean it nor eat it. So probably this giant bag of fish will soon be in the hands of some members in the ward or something. 

Aside from our grand fishing adventure...I spent Tuesday in a trio with my trainer, Hermana Castillo, and my current companion, Hermana Borja. Hermana Castillo was with us because her companion finished her mission, but we still hadn´t had changes yet so she was companion-less. I quite enjoyed life in a trio because when I didn´t feel like saying anything I didn´t even have to because there is only room on the sidewalk for 2 people to walk next to each other. I was content to just sit back and let my thoughts run in a thousand different directions. 

Tuesday night we got word of changes...finally. Hermana Castillo went to Guayaquil. Elder Johnson, one of our zone leaders, went to Loja. My district leader, Elder Jensen, went to Guayaquil. I was bummed to see those elders go because they did an absolutely amazing job here. But they´ll tear it up in Loja and Guayaquil. The 4 of us hermanas in the Alamos ward stayed. This is the last change for my companion and Hermana Glanzer. I can´t even imagine what it must be like to be at the end of these 18 months. So crazy. But I am way stoked that things stayed the way they are in my ward. My companion is great and I have crazy amounts of things to learn from her. She reminds me a lot of Hermana Pace, my companion from the MTC. Both super sweet girls. 

Here´s the embarrassing story of the week: Thursday was super windy in the afternoon. We were walking around the downtown area of the city towards a bus stop with a ton of people standing ther waiting. Suddenly this huge gust of wind blew my skirt right up! Total Marilyn Monroe moment. I lost it. I was laughing so hard I think everyone thought I´d gone insane. There was this lady standing there selling bread who almost fell out of her chair laughing. For some reason I was not even that embarrassed. I feel like funny things like that make life less boring. Maybe God does things like that on purpose to make us laugh. I don´t think he likes it when we´re so serious all the time. 

On Saturday Pablo Chuñir was supposed to get baptized, but he´s going to have to wait a bit because of some recent issues that have come up. He´s super rad and will still get baptized...just not yet. Next month most likely. Sometimes having baptisms fall through (or even appointments or anything here) is such a punch in the face. I want so badly for people to understand how much they need the gospel and how much God loves them and how much happier their lives can be as they let the Savior take away their pain. But sometimes they don´t get it. And then I get frustrated with myself because maybe I´m not expressing it well enough. Maybe I am not contacting effectively, or maybe I don´t say the right things in the lessons, or maybe I suck at listening to the spirit. It´s hard to remember sometimes that people have their agency and that everyone progresses on different time tables. Maybe someday I will be really good at trusting God more than freaking out when things don´t go the way I think they should go. I look forward to that day.

In the meantime I will just take frequent serenity breaths and also try not to scratch my flea bites all day. 

We visited this cute family in our ward on Friday night. The Samaniegos. We didn´t really know which bus stop to get off at, and we totally missed it and rode the bus all the way to the end of the line. Somehow Gonzalo, the dad, knew that we were up there and came and met us. Then we had to climb down this muddy mountain to make it to where we were supposed to go...and then we had to walk through these fields and mud to finally get to their house. But it was well worth the journey. Their home is absolutely exploding with love and happiness. Also they are hilarious. I love that I have the opportunity to spend time with so many different people and see how they interact with their own families and friends. It is such an amazing learning opportunity to see what works and what doesn´t in a family. 

On Sunday night we stopped by to visit Mayra Gutama, one of our investigators. She´s 14 and comes to church almost every Sunday even though her dad (who lives in the US) won´t let her get baptized. She has a rockin´ testimony and we´re just waiting on permission. Anyway...we showed up and she came out and told us she was too busy packing to have us teach her. I got way stressed that they were moving far away and that we´d never see her again. Except good news...they´re just moving to a different part of town. I guess the owners of where they live now randomly showed up one day and informed them that they had to move because they want to build some other building there. Such a suckfest. So this poor family had to throw everything into boxes in one night. We helped them pack things up and shared a brief message with the whole family. They are so great. 

Also on Sunday we had to teach a lesson to all of the adults of the ward on how they can contact and share the gospel with inactive members. We found out we were teaching at 10:30pm the night before and had to go pick up investigators at 7am for church. So we had to throw something together during sacrament meeting. It was way stressful, but the lesson turned out pretty decent. I´m learning how much I love teaching classes and giving talks in church. But I also really love it a lot more when I have time to prepare. 

Well, lovelies. Hope you find lots of things to love this week. 

Big, fat hug from Ecuador.




(pictures to come!)