Sometimes... Strange Things Happen.

Hey everyone!

This week has been interesting and crazy.  First of all, after I got done telling you that I haven't gotten sick and that I don't plan on doing anything of the kind, I woke up on Tuesday morning with a fever. On Wednesday we had interviews and a video presentation with President Riggins.  During the movie I was able to tell Hermana Riggins that my Fever had reached 102.74, she told me to drink pedialyte, water, Tylenol, go home and get some rest.  I agreed.

The movie however was really good.  Here in Ecuador, all the missionaries heard rumors that there was a movie in the United States called "Meet the Mormons" but it was very sadly out of our reach until this last week when President Riggins got the new Spanish Dubbed version for us to see.  He said that pretty soon all of Ecuador will have it. If you guys haven't seen it yet, shame on you. I was forced to wait.

Besides getting sick and recovering we had a pretty weird week: 

First - we saw a guy with a Potato Sack with a dog sicking its head out of the side confirming that The Dog-napper is real.

Second - we got to see what happens when too many fat pigeons sit on the powerline and the top line sags down to touch the bottom line. There were pretty colors and lots of toasty scared pigeons.

Third - I got to see how Ecuador can REALLY rain.  Luckily I got to see that from inside the house.  sitting on our balcony felt link sitting under a powerful waterfall and I'm pretty sure an umbrella would fold itself.

Apart from all that, Gabriela Maldonado got baptized on Saturday night:

I'll probably continue with the story of all of that next week if I can.  The truth is that the story is probably personal to her and I don't know if I ought to be sharing it until I get back...  I don't know.
I'm just going to say that this girl spent years listening to missionaries. even though her whole family was baptized she didn't want to get in the water until some personal things were taken care of and that she had an answer for herself the the Book of Mormon is the word of God.

Long story short, she got her answer. And she's amazing.

We finished the Saturday night with Tres Litros de Cola y Torta con una cena.

Victory.

-Cameron

Life in Guayaquil

Hello!

I'm here in Ecuador, doing the normal. Mom asked a few questions, so I thought I'd address them:

I'm in El Barrio Albonor in Guayaquil.  The people here are a little more on the richer side, which means they think with a little more logic and can be a little bit prideful. The Logical part is ok for me, as long as you belive in the Bible our faith makes complete sense.  The trick is you actually have to read the bible to understand that.  (FYI the bible is actually pretty awesome and talks a little about the plan of salvation in Corinthians and other parts) The problem we've been having is that people have started putting stickers on their doors that say "This house is Catholic.  Please respect our religion"
Which is cool, and I respect their religion...but I've also read the bible, and I've figured some things out for myself... ANYWAYS!

Yeah, This area is richer, a little bit cleaner, and a whole lot more compact.  Every block has a number but none of the numbers are in order, and people usually write their addresses on their door with a crayon which can make it VERY hard to find a little house in this maze of a city.  In BuenaFe we used landmarks.  Our directions we literally like "The street with Water Tower of San Jacinto, left at the guy who sells chickens and take a right after two blocks.  It's the house with Old blue paint and a brown door"

Here the directions are: "Sauces VIII Mz 454 F7 Villa 12, ring the doorbell for the third floor and ask for Familia Loor" It's very different.

We're teaching a few families, one is Familia Maldonado, who are some mas o menos activo members with a daughter who has been on the fence about baptism for a few years.  I cooked some Pancakes in their house on Saturday and my friend Gabriel who's 10 years old is starting to master my recipe.  I think if I ever come back here after my mission I'll find a very successful Pancake Restaurant in Sauces VIII.  Our goal is to help Gabriela find her answer about the Book of Mormon and help her be Baptized before the end of January.

Elder Taylor is awesome.  He likes working, and I do too!  It can sometimes be kind of hard being two good looking white guys walking down the street in white shirts and ties.  We get called "guapos" several times a day on the street.  The thing is with my companion and the two other guys that I'm living with is that I can usually expect to end up laughing about a new inside joke every single day.

Yep, the rain has begun. we've had a couple of beautifully refreshing rainstorms over the last week.  It's supposed to kick up more in a week or so.  I just got me a new umbrella today. Rain season also means cricket season.  They're all over the streets and they like to get into your houses.  It's another fun element that we get to experience here. The over shoes I got at Mr. Mac are cool and help a little.  But they probably weren't worth the $20.  Then again, in a muddier area they would probably be very helpful.

I've been kicking sick season like a champ so far.  Two people in our house and half of our zone got sick with a fever or a parasite last week, but I've been unscaved so far.

Yeah, that's all.  I've been doing pretty dang good in general.  That's all the time I've got for today. I'll write again next week, as always.
I hope all is well back home!

Love you!

-Cameron

P.S.  here's the picture of the suit you got me for Christmas and a box of Corn Flakes:

Food! ... Because food is important.

Hey!

I feel that yesterday I had a lot of things that I wanted to say in an email... but at the moment I'm at a blank. I feel like I talk about food a lot, but really, food is important to me and I feel that it is a matter to be discussed.

As a few young guys living alone together in a house in Ecuador, we seem to go through Phases when it comes to food.  All green missionaries go through an egg phase because eggs are universally simple and easy to cook.  After awhile however eggs get kinda odd and missionaries with imagination start getting creative when they buy their food on Mondays.

Me and Elder Taylor are relatively creative guys so we've hit some pretty yummy food phases: when I got here Elder Taylor and Elder Rallison were just coming out of a Smoothie phase, for a couple weeks over Christmas time we were in a pancake phase, at one point we hit an empanada phase, and right now we're heading into week number two of the Sandwich phase.

The Sandwich phase is pretty awesome.  Me and Elder Taylor have been rolling things out from PB&J to salami with cheese, basil, tomato, vinegar, and lots of other yummy stuff.  Not sure what we're going to figure out how to make in Ecuador next, but it's sure to be good.

For Christmas I had a suit made for myself and I picked it up on Saturday, it's pretty dang nice, I wore it for the first time as I gave a talk in sacrament meeting.  My talk was not all that fantastic.  People say your public speaking skills get better over the mission but I haven't seen that happen yet.  :P

We're just about heading into rain season here.  We got hit by a couple showers but nothing too notable.  So far rain season only means to me that I sweat a bit more because the extremely high humidity is just a little bit higher than before.  I'm currently looking to buy an umbrella because the one I took with me from home somehow found its way to Chile with Elder Povar from the CCM in Mexico.  He has since lost it in "Wind City" along with three other umbrellas.



So yeah, that's what I've got for ya'll this week.  Things here are pretty dang good.
As always, I'll write next week.
¡chao!

-Cameron

Feliz Nuevo Año!‏

Hey!

Happy new year!  You guys totally missed the party, Ecuador is nuts on New Year.  There's lots and LOTS of fireworks and people starting fires and exploding things in the street.  We were told that we couldn't go out in the streets after 9pm on new years eve, so we went on our roof instead and from there we saw it all go down.  We were told right, new years here is "apocalíptico"

New years was pretty cool, but it was also a big pain in the butt because everyone is either spending the week in the mountains, the beach, of some other place.  In other words, no one is at home and as missionaries there is no one to visit. Im going on the hope that this week will be a bit better as it seems that people are starting to come home again.

Another thing cool that happened this week (I kinda went out of my way to do this)  I totally added Cow Tongue to the list of weird things I've eaten in my life/mission!

It looks about as grody as I hoped it would!

Yes, I ate it willingly- Better yet I requested it.  It was prepared like roast beaf and tasted like it too.  Although the texture was completely different, I liked it!  As long as you told think about how its a tounge it isnt that bad. :D

Oh hey! Another thing, we discovered through a member (I promise I don't hand out on youtube) that there's a page that is interviewing RMs from all missions all over the world.  They interviewed our ex Assistant to the President and he basically spilled the beans on EVERYTHING that goes on down here.  You should check out all his videos, he pins it down a lot better than I have ever been able to and he speaks the truth on all his points.

Heres a link: Living as a Missionary in Ecuador

Seriously check it out!

Hmm, flipping through my photos I cant really think of anything else to write about... that's how I remember things; I take pictures of them.

I'll email you all next week!

Love ya!

-Cameron

Makin' Banana Pancakes

Hey everyone!

It was great talking with the family on Christmas day, sorry we had problems with the computers.  I intended to call on time.

One of the problems was that I totally forgot my Skype account name and passward so I had to get on to Elder Banegas' account to call.

It was also crazy and totally predictable that Lindsay got engaged over Christmas!  She sent me the story, pretty cool stuff!

Christmas was pretty fun here, we had a big dinner party with all 250 missionaries in the mission in the Kennedy Stake Center where I got to see all my old companions and friends.  We also had a big ward Christmas party where we sang a Spanish Christmas rendition of The Lion Sleeps Tonight that we wrote, it was pretty stinking brilliant! Elder Rallison will go as far as to say inspired.

To recap some things that I madtioned in the call: I made Banana Pancakes on Christmas Morning with Ariana De Platano (Banana flour) and little bits of chopped up bananas.  It was bacically the best thing ever!  I couldn't help but humming Jack Johnson.

Other things happened too...

Also, someone asked in our Skype call if we had Eggnog here.  We never really found any, BUT Elder Taylor looked up the recipe and made some!  It was some good stuff, not perfect, but it was good.

We're waiting to see what happens on New Years this week, we here that it's "apocalíptico" and we got a message from the Assistants saying that we were to "BE IN THE HOUSE BEFORE 9PM"
From what I heard, people take their little paper statues out onto the streets and light them on fire.  Some of these statues are ten feet high, and the fireworks are also supposed to be crazy!  We will wait and see. :D

I'll talk to you all next week!

~Cameron

We got flashed today....

Hola!

Feliz Navidad a todos!  Today as we usually do on p-day we went to the shopping mall to eat lunch.  I've started eating at other resturants that they have because I realized that Carls Jr. just isnt the same here and sometimes makes me feel sick...

While we were eating, one of the "workers" from the super market walked to the center of the footcoart with a shopping cart and his uniform.  He stopped and someone started playing a keyboard in the corner.  He then started singing straight up opera, it was pretty cool.  Than some of the carls junior people came out and some people from the other stores in the mall and they all started singing We Wish You a Merry Christmas and other Christmas songs.  It all turned out to be a awesome little flash mob that the stores in the mall all planned together.

This is probably the worse picture I could have took of the flash mob, but its all I have...

 We baptised two people on Saturday, one was a boy named Israel, his friend got the chance to baptise him and it was really cool.  The other person was Jaime, he's an interesting story...

His wife has been a strong member for many many years, but he's always been kinda stubborn in being part of his other religion that he doesn't participate in.  His wife, having a strong testamony, has had missionaries come to her house to teach him about the restoration several times without much luck.

The thing is with Jaime is that he has a mental condition thats something like schizophrenia.  He's kinda hard to talk to, especially because he's usually medicated.  He has been known to escape the house at night and walk the streets naked, and he says the darnedest things...

I first met Jaime when Elder Taylor was introducing me to everyone in the ward.  When we went to his house to meet him and his wife I got to talk to him in the window.  I learned that he has been attending church off and on with his wife for many years and had recieved all of the missionary lessions.  I asked why he hasn't been baptised and he said that he has been baptised, infact he had been baptised three diferent times in the church that he used to attend.  I then told him that there was only "There is one Lord, one faith, and one baptism" and we left to visit other people.

The next Sunday we saw him in Church.  He was talking to the Bishop and his wife told me that he said that he wants to get baptised and that she thinks that it's because of what I said.  The bishop told us that we could baptise him the next Saturday and that he'd like us to visit and teach all the lessons again.  So we did.

Teaching the lessions was interesting, he has a default stare and it looks as though he wants to kill someone and he doesn't ever stop staring.  While we were teaching the law of tiething to him he came out and said "YO FUI JESUCRISTO MORMONA!"  Which translates to: "I was the Jesus of the mormons!"  he then continued to say that he was crusified 2015 years ago and that everyone has to pay their tithings to him.  

His wife almost fell on the floor laughing.  He gave us some interesting and true insight on how we will all be gods one day, but I quickly explained that we are not nor have been gods yet and for us in this world we only have one God and that we pay our tithing to him.

All in all he was baptised this last Saturday and all was well. His wife is happy, the ward is happy, and I think he's happy eventhough his facal expression never changes 

Me, Hermana Palomino, Jaime, Elder Taylor

Of my manny things to say, that's about all of it.

I'll be calling home at 1ish 2ish in the afternoon MST

I love you all and have a Merry Christmas!

~Cameron

New Area, New Companion, New Adventures!

Hello!

We just got done with a really fun p-day; THERE'S SO MUCH TO DO IN GUAYAQUIL!
On top of that we had a full week of crazy and awesome things!

Elder Taylor and I doing Service for an investigator

So, when I got here I moved into a house of four other missionaries:  Elder Rallison, Elder Banegas, Elder Taylor, and Elder Ramos.  Elder Rallison and Elder Banegas were my temp comps until there real change was made, they're zone leaders and they kept telling me that I was zone leader too because I was their companion, though I never really acted as one.  ANYWAYS, when President Riggins assigned me to Elder Rallison and Elder Banegas he told me that he already had my next companion in mind and that he would make the real change on the 15th when all the other changes would happen too.  So, I basically lived out of my trunks because I thought that I wasn't going to stay.
I'm not too sure what happened but the change was made on the night of the 11th instead of the 15th and I found out that Elder Ramos was leaving our house of five guys and that I was to be Elder Taylor's new companion.  I rejoiced and immediately started unpacking my bags after we dropped Elder Ramos off at the Mission Office.

GUAYAQUIL!!!

I am officially here in Guayaquil en El Barrio Alonor en La Estaca Orquideas living in a part of town called Sauces 8.

GOOD MORNING Guayaquil!

Like I said, my new and official companion is Elder "Tool-time" Taylor from South Carolina.
He's been in Ecuador for a little over three months now.  As far as I've notice he's pretty dang awesome.

Him having only three months means that for the first time in my mission I'm the senior companion, which is somewhat weird for me.

On top of that, MI COMPAÑARO ES UN GREENGO!  Which means I need to start acting like I know how to speak Spanish because I don't have Latin companions to back me up.  I'll survive though.



I got the chance to rob the baptism of Elder Ramos this Saturday, I fealt pretty bad about it but sending him away on a Friday Morning wasn't my idea.

Baptism of Kati

Elder Taylor Baptised Kati Torres.  Which is awesome because it's his first baptism in the mission!
She's SUPER pregers. Though the whole process everyone was worried that she would have her baby in the baptismal font.  Lucky we got her married, baptized, and confirmed without her baby with ten months in the oven coming out.  However, now that she all set for enduring to the end, I think its about time for this kid to be born in the covenant.  We await for the day.

This Ward that I'm in right now is amazing.  The leaders are all powerful and ready to help with the work, and everyone loves everyone.  On top of that, the majority of the ladies here are REALLY good cooks.  Lunch is heaven, and I am in it.

So that's pretty much it.  We're working hard every day to be our best selves and also to go and do the things the lord wants us to do as his servants.  I continue learn and know more and more that this church is true, and because this church is the church of Jesus Christ and is the biggest blessing that we can give to the world, I know that this work is the greatest work I have ever been apart of.

I love you all, I'll write you next week and be Skyping home on Christmas from the house of Hermano Glober Lopez.

~Cameron

Garden of Eden in Guayaquil

Rio Guayas - It's gloomy because it's winter.  HOWEVER, it's still 80f and we got a TON of sun yesterday.

Iguana Park!

Stare down.

Yo y Elder Ralison en Nuestos Camisas del Alimania

Eso es todo.

Fin.

(Me and Elder Ralison in Nuestos Shirts Alimania, 

That's all. 

End)