Family,
We had another busy week. Wednesday we went to Guayaquil for zone leader council with the mission president. He gave us a good beating... He figured out that half of the missionaries in the mission have no one in their program and are not helping towards our goals. What he did was actually pretty good. He forced us to promise a baptism from every missionary. If that means that we, as leaders, have to go to their sector and help them more than probably is necessary, then that is what we have to do. So this week I spent most of my time in other people´s sectors helping them study better, and put baptismal dates. It was actually a surprising result. We were successful in helping a lot of missionaries ¨levantar¨ their programs. And the most amazing part is we somehow found time to have some success in our own sector. This week we should finally be able to have a baptism.
Polivio and his daughter Ana are going to get baptized this Saturday. Polivio is the brother of a member in our ward. He recently moved here and his family brought him and his daughter to church. There really isn´t a big conversion story behind them. After church we asked them how they liked it and they said it was good. So we asked them to get baptized and they said, ‘yeah, let´s do it’. I wish all our investigadores could be as easy as them. The other thing I realized though is that everything that has to do with missionary work revolves around the members. If someone has a lot of LDS friends, then the chances of them wanting to be baptized are so much higher. I am super thankful for the Aucay family and their willingness to share the gospel with their family.
You guys ask a lot for me to describe some of the families we are teaching. So i will do my best. The truth is we don´t focus a lot on people who are not going to progress. People who decline the invitation to be baptized or decline the invitation to go to church are very hard to teach. We are constantly searching for the chosen people - people who will recognize us as servants of Christ and accept the invitation to follow him by being baptized. So we go through a ton of investigadors each week. That´s why I don´t give a lot of details about the people we teach because usually we only teach them one or two times and then they hide from us so we don´t go back. But we are teaching a man named William. He is super confused. Sometimes I feel like he puts on a little bit of a show for us but it is still obvious that he is a little confused. He knows there is a true church. He knows that if he is not a part of that church then he is damned. So he really wants to find the right church. However, he is so focused on the idea that there is so much confusion in the world and that it is super hard to find the right church, that he won´t put any effort in to go to our church and pray about it. But he told us a story of how he came to believe in God. His wife was 5 months pregnant when she went into a coma. One day the doctors came up to him and asked him to sign a paper giving them permission to try and have the baby be born in order to save his wife. He signed the paper knowing there was a 99% chance that the baby would not live. The baby was born at 5 1/2 months and is now 1 year old and his wife is fine. In that moment, he said he accepted God in his life. I would really like to help this man, and his family, get baptized in the church. He could be a powerful leader.
Anyways, everything is going great here in Ecuador. The zone looks good and our sector looks good too. It´s all down hill from here. This is the last 6th of August I will have in my mission...
The people here don´t really watch the Olympics. I see them on in stores that sell TVs but I’ve not seen anyone watching them yet. I did hear that Andy Murray won gold, and we saw women’s shot put today when we were eating in the mall. Please look up the woman from Hungary (I think) who does the shot put. My companion and I are convinced it is a man.
Tell Cameron and Gavin that there is a family in my ward from the US. Their 2-year-old daughter was watching some show about animals that rescue other animals. The one where the duck says, ¨The Phone is Winging¨ ¨This is sewious¨ ¨What´s gonna work? Team work!¨ I remember Gavin and Cameron making fun of that show.
Love,
Elder McRae
We had another busy week. Wednesday we went to Guayaquil for zone leader council with the mission president. He gave us a good beating... He figured out that half of the missionaries in the mission have no one in their program and are not helping towards our goals. What he did was actually pretty good. He forced us to promise a baptism from every missionary. If that means that we, as leaders, have to go to their sector and help them more than probably is necessary, then that is what we have to do. So this week I spent most of my time in other people´s sectors helping them study better, and put baptismal dates. It was actually a surprising result. We were successful in helping a lot of missionaries ¨levantar¨ their programs. And the most amazing part is we somehow found time to have some success in our own sector. This week we should finally be able to have a baptism.
Polivio and his daughter Ana are going to get baptized this Saturday. Polivio is the brother of a member in our ward. He recently moved here and his family brought him and his daughter to church. There really isn´t a big conversion story behind them. After church we asked them how they liked it and they said it was good. So we asked them to get baptized and they said, ‘yeah, let´s do it’. I wish all our investigadores could be as easy as them. The other thing I realized though is that everything that has to do with missionary work revolves around the members. If someone has a lot of LDS friends, then the chances of them wanting to be baptized are so much higher. I am super thankful for the Aucay family and their willingness to share the gospel with their family.
You guys ask a lot for me to describe some of the families we are teaching. So i will do my best. The truth is we don´t focus a lot on people who are not going to progress. People who decline the invitation to be baptized or decline the invitation to go to church are very hard to teach. We are constantly searching for the chosen people - people who will recognize us as servants of Christ and accept the invitation to follow him by being baptized. So we go through a ton of investigadors each week. That´s why I don´t give a lot of details about the people we teach because usually we only teach them one or two times and then they hide from us so we don´t go back. But we are teaching a man named William. He is super confused. Sometimes I feel like he puts on a little bit of a show for us but it is still obvious that he is a little confused. He knows there is a true church. He knows that if he is not a part of that church then he is damned. So he really wants to find the right church. However, he is so focused on the idea that there is so much confusion in the world and that it is super hard to find the right church, that he won´t put any effort in to go to our church and pray about it. But he told us a story of how he came to believe in God. His wife was 5 months pregnant when she went into a coma. One day the doctors came up to him and asked him to sign a paper giving them permission to try and have the baby be born in order to save his wife. He signed the paper knowing there was a 99% chance that the baby would not live. The baby was born at 5 1/2 months and is now 1 year old and his wife is fine. In that moment, he said he accepted God in his life. I would really like to help this man, and his family, get baptized in the church. He could be a powerful leader.
Anyways, everything is going great here in Ecuador. The zone looks good and our sector looks good too. It´s all down hill from here. This is the last 6th of August I will have in my mission...
The people here don´t really watch the Olympics. I see them on in stores that sell TVs but I’ve not seen anyone watching them yet. I did hear that Andy Murray won gold, and we saw women’s shot put today when we were eating in the mall. Please look up the woman from Hungary (I think) who does the shot put. My companion and I are convinced it is a man.
Tell Cameron and Gavin that there is a family in my ward from the US. Their 2-year-old daughter was watching some show about animals that rescue other animals. The one where the duck says, ¨The Phone is Winging¨ ¨This is sewious¨ ¨What´s gonna work? Team work!¨ I remember Gavin and Cameron making fun of that show.
Love,
Elder McRae
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