LA COsTA .....DIGA

Well, Quininde is completely different in every aspect possible than Quito and Otavalo and Tulcan. Here it is suuuppppeerrrr hot and super humid. I am sweating like a beast here. I am showering in the morning and nights. We have a ton of fans in our house, the church has fans, the beds don't have blankets cuz we don't need them. It is SO HOT HERE.  The accent is super different here, everyone drops the s and everyone says diga. hahaha I had a super funny moment in sacrament meeting yesterday. A drunk man walked into the chapel and shouted. Son los mormones diga and then he sat down and was eating some fried chicken and being really obnoxious.  I was surprised that the bishop didn't kick him out.

Elder Antezana is my companion, he is 22 years old and from La Paz Bolivia, but he looks gringo cuz his ancestors are from Europe, he is super cool. He is super obedient and diligent and helps me a ton and we are just working our tails off here like there is no tomorrow and seeing miracles. Today in the morning I went to get my haircut and we entered a peluqueria or a barbershop and we heard a mans voice say espereme un ratiko, and we waited and out came a woman, well we thought it was a woman, but it was really a man.......and I was like heck no, he aint cuttin my hair or touching me. So as this gender confused man was preparing the chair and his supplies I pretended that I received my phone call and my companion and I HAULED out of there and went to another barbershop.

We had so many miracles this week. I want to share two with you. Yesterday all of our visits fell through and we didn't have much to do.  We prayed to see what we should do and we felt inspired to go to a part of the sector called Cupa, where we haven't worked much. Well as we were waiting for the bus to get there we were talking with a young kid named Anthony there at the bus stop and he was excited to talk with us. Turns out missionaries had taught him years ago and then stopped visiting him. We took the bus to Cupa but from there we had to walk like 40 minutes through rainforest to get to his house.  There were snakes and frogs and it was awesome. I was sweating a ton, but we were able to teach his family and it was amazing how the Lord put him in our path. 

The other experience was a family we found this week contacting. They let us in and we shared La Familia Una Proclamacion para el mundo with them and they loved it. They are super hardcore Catholics and they are really active in their church. We had a return visit with them yesterday and to be honest I was super nervous and scared to teach them the restoration...But when we showed up, they had already read the pamphlets we left with them and wanted to know more and told us they had been looking for the truth and wanted the Book of Mormon, so all of my nerves and anxiety left and I felt a peaceful spirit the whole visit and we taught the restoration with the spirit there. It was a very spiritual visit and the spirit really guided us as to what we should say. It was amazing. Hopefully they can receive an answer this week that what we had shared is true.  They would be a super powerful family in Zion.

So this week we continued to feel aftershocks, a ton of aftershocks.  I'm not gonna lie it is kind of cool just like wow there is an earthquake right now. Supposedly, we are going to be feeling more. Quninde wasn't that affected, just a little bit of damage, more than anything a ton of landslides where there are hills, some streets closed recovering from landslides. We went to Esmeraldas to go to the zone conference and there is some more damage there, but for how close the earthquake has been, no major damage. Some people we teach have bruises and broken bones from falling, but nothing compared to what those in the province of Manabi have experienced. I am grateful for a Heavenly Father who loves us and protects us. I wish you all a great week. 

Love, Elder Roberts

I was in an EARTHQUAKE

Well, sorry if I don't respond to your emails, cuz today I will be spending the whole day in a bus going to my new sector! I got assigned to the coast. I will be going to Quininde, and I am going to be the district leader! I am pretty excited. I am going to miss San Roque a ton. My heart will always be here with my Otavalian friends. It will be interesting to see how I get to the coast, cuz form what I heard the earthquake here has damaged like all of the roads to the coast.....so we will see what happens.

Ok, so Saturday night my companion and I were up high on the volcano and we were just showing up to the house of La Familia Cordova Tituaña, our recent converts. They were outside washing clothes and they came to greet us and then from there the ground started moving. It took me a couple seconds to realize that there was an earthquake happening, but the ground was shaking and it was kind of hard to keep balance. It wasn't super bad here. More than anything small objects fell off of shelves and one of the little kids fell. It only lasted like 10 or 15 seconds it seemed like, but I thought it was kind of cool that I was in an earthquake. We are all super sad here to find out about the many deaths to those living on the coast near the epicenter. From what I have heard when I get to the coast I am going to be seeing a lot of damage.

I enjoyed my last week here, it was filled with many spiritual experiences. I can honestly say that I love the people here.  I am so grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who permitted me to serve here among the sons and daughters of Lehi, the Lamanites. I loved going to church in a ward that speaks Kichuwa. 

Sorry if this is short and I don't send pics, I have to go to the bus station, gonna spend the whole day in the bus and pros wont be able to respond to your emails until next week. I wish you all the best. Please pray for Ecuador, the people here are very sad and I am sure when I show up to the coast it will be a very different scene.

Love,

Elder Roberts

The flag of Ecuador

Las visiones son reales

Well its been a pretty slow week, nothing super crazy has happened.  We are all so happy for the temple. This announcement has brought a lot of saints to have the determination to live better lives to be worthy of a temple close by. I am feeling better, my cough has gone away. We have changes this next Monday, so if I dont respond to your emails it is cuz I will be traveling to a new sector. We will see what happens. I dont want to leave San Roque at all, I love it here. Well with nothing super exciting to say, I am just going to write down some thoughts that I have had.

What does it mean to be wise? Last night I was reflecting a lot on what is the difference between wisdom and knowledge. This happened after my companion and I passed by a 74 year old member of the church who is the Bishops dad and recently served as the High Priest Group Leader. I was so inspired by the wisdom that he has and as we left his house I realized that many of the people I teach here have a great wisdom that has inspired me.

Here in Otavalo, the education isn't that great. Of everyone in the ward, only one member has graduated from college, maybe a third of the adults in the ward have graduated from high school, and maybe half of the adults have graduated from elementary school. Many of the people we teach cant read well or cant read at all, but that doesn't mean they aren't wise.

From what I have learned in the mission, humility is the key to gaining wisdom. Living a wise life is a life where we can be happy with the few things we have instead of being unhappy focusing on the many things we don't have and want and the people here in Ecuador are such good examples of not having temporal things like money, cars, toys, nice houses.  Many of the houses I teach here don't have electricity, or water, or floors, we teach a lot of candlelit lessons on dirt floors.

But many times as missionaries we teach people that they will receive their answers in the scriptures, but something really cool about this sacred part of Ecuador is that when the people literally can't read the scriptures they receive their answers in other ways, more than anything through visions and dreams. Our Mission President taught us this principle this last week in a zone conference we had, that here the people receive visions, and as he said that I realized it is true, almost everyone we have taught has had a vision of what we have taught. 

I thought this is so cool, so I am now keeping a journal of all the cool visions I have listened too here in Ecuador. I would be happy to share some with you when I get back.

Love, Elder Roberts

I STAND ALL AMAZED

Wow, all I can say is that it is such an exciting time for me to be a missionary here in Quito! Yesterday we were all just absolutely blown away at the announcement that our dear Prophet made that the time has come to put a temple here in Quito Ecuador the best city in the world! I was in the gringo room with maybe like 7 other missionaries and on a computer we watched the conference in English, in Tulcan I watched part of the conference in Spanish and even though I understood everything, it is so much better listening to the prophets own voices than in the voice of the translator. Anyways, he said Quito and we all just screamed and jumped up and down and were so excited. then we wanted to see how the Ecuadorians were reacting so we went to the other building where the sacrament room was and it was a very different setting. Instead of everyone screaming and jumping down it was almost absolutely silent. I was stunned at the silence, I was expecting that everyone would be freaking out, but instead of that it was almost perfectly reverent. The spirit was very strong in that sacrament hall. I saw tears streaming down the face of almost everyone. I realized that the prayers of thousands of these faithful saints had been answered. After the session the crying didn't stop, I conversed with a lot of the people from our ward since the conference was in the stake center in Cotama, and they were just all too grateful. there was such a strong spirit of prayer and gratitude there. 

The People here have had to make so many sacrifices to go to the temple to Guayaquil, it is an 8 hour drive or can be a little more depending on traffic, but it costs like 15 dollars to go with the ward, which may not sound like much but it is a ton down here, a lot of the people here make like 5 dollars a day.  To go seal a family or take a family down there can be like 100 dollars or more....its a trip that most members can make about once a year, and some not at all. Wow, a temple here in Quito will allow so many more of Heavenly Fathers amazing children to have greater access to make sacred covenants with him and receive great blessings.

I couldn't go to sleep last night, I was just thinking about how awesome it is that they are going to put a temple here, I was thinking of all the people I have taught, in my 8 months in Quito who maybe will wake up to seeing a temple outside their windows every day. Wow, we are all just so happy here. I pray I can come back one day to see the temple here.

Nothing much else happened this week, I thought I had already been the sickest I have been in my life, but i was wrong, this week I got really sick. I got a super bad fever and then got this cough, the good news is the fever and the headache and everything have gone away, but my cough just doesn't seem to be getting better at all. I think it is just one of those things where I have to suck it up and deal with it, but I spent a couple days in the house this week just dying in my bed. I hate being sick, but I guess its just part of life.

Well, I hope you all have a great day, I love you all and love seeing how you are doing. Please keep me updated on your lives, I thank you all for your support and prayers, and encourage you all to come unto Christ.

k bye