Family,
This week, my companion and I worked harder than ever. We literally almost worked my companion to death. He has been throwing up the past 2 nights and could barely move to get here to write. John and Mariuxi finally got baptized! Saturday night was the ordinance and it was great. This week will be full of stress again as we run all over the place to get 4 baptisms ready for Saturday. I gave my companion a blessing because he just cannot be sick this week. It is the last week of the change and we need to get this family baptized.
Virgina is a 55-year-old, single woman who lives with her two single children Lucy (34) and Marcos (30) We only met them 2 weeks ago but they are so great! … and they are going to get baptized this Saturday. They immediately accepted the Book of Mormon and all the gospel principles. They understand everything we teach, and do all the challenges we leave them. They are super great.
Okay so the people. My mission president told me something that I am going to remember for the rest of my life. In fact, a lot of things I have learned so far will stick with me for the rest of my life, but there just really isn´t enough time to talk about all of them. When I come home, we will have tons of time to talk about how the mission ¨REALLY¨ was and all the great things I learned. However, in short emails that I write super fast in 20 minutes, there is just no time to type in lots of details about what I learn. Anyways, so what my mission president told me is, ¨Why is South America poor?¨ the answer is... Poor planning. or No planning. The people work for one whole day, to pay for the next day. He told us that´s why you see 30 year old grandmothers with 7 kids and 2 grandkids. The culture is not to plan. When we find someone who did take the time to go to school and get a decent job and get married our eyes light up, because those are the people who are prepared for the gospel. So the no-planning is most of the people. They are working 16 hours a day to pay for their 5 kids and their girlfriend. The schools here have had to change to fit that life style. At 13 years old, you pick what you want to be so you can be done at 17 and working to support your 2 kids.
The kids are on summer break right now so there is no school. I am not sure exactly how it works for them. I will say, the difference between members and non-members here is amazing. The members live such a better life. It’s so obvious that when you follow the Lord´s commandments, you are blessed and happier. The youth are more successful also. The youth here make the youth in the US look like underachievers BIG TIME. The youth hold callings here. They are all at least a ward missionary. The primary president in Naranjito is an 18-year-old girl. The ward secretary is a 17-year-old kid. A lot of the ward mission leaders are young men preparing to serve a mission. Oh- and mutual- is cool here too. They just play soccer for a couple hours :)
My ward that i am in right now is amazing. La Colmena has to be the best ward in the whole mission. We have 20 ward missionaries. My companion and I teach those who are preparing for baptism and the ward missionaries do the rest. They visit all the recent converts and our investigadores and become friends with them and bring them to church. It is amazing. They are giving us references and the work is just progressing like crazy. My companion and I are super busy always. That´s how it should be.
Something else I’ve realized… Dad is not weird. We are weird. Everyone here acts like Dad. The traffic laws don’t apply to the public. They argue about all the little details that don´t matter. And yes, they treat me like dad would treat someone who couldn´t speak English. It´s not bad now, because I know how to say the essentials, but at the beginning… oh yeah, a taste of Dad. They would just disregard whatever i was saying. The best was a few months ago when I could understand everything they were saying. They just couldn’t understand me. So they would say things like, ¨Is he special? Why can´t he talk? Is there something wrong with him?¨ That made me mad for a long time until they started asking questions like, ¨Wait, so when the babies in the united states are born, they talk English!? But how? English is so hard!¨ At that point I didn´t care what anyone said about me anymore :)
This is life in Ecuador. It´s great. Tomorrow we have a meeting with president Montalti, The best mission president on the face of the earth.
Love,
Elder McRae
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