Questions and Concerns

One time in Buena Fe me and my companion were finishing a lesson,

At the end of the lesson my companion asked the investagator if she had any questions, and she said no.  I then asked if she had any concerns and my companion cut me off and said questions and concerns are the same thing.

I've lately come to believe to that is more or less a lie. Over the last couple weeks I've found a couple of things in the doctorine that don't make complete sense to me.  This hasn't been the first time that I've come accross things that don't make sense to me and I am certain that it wont be the last.

There are lots of people who come accross these types of things and see it as a reason to not believe that the church true and to not join or leave the church. This is sad, because I've come to learn that these things always had answers. With all the things that I've come across, I've taken them to be questions rather than concerns.  And as questions, I looked for the answers through study and asking the people around me, and I've found some incredible answers that have helped me understand the plan that our father in heaven has for us a whole lot better.

If I were to take these questions as concerns or doubts, the doubt would do nothing but wear a hole in my testimony and probably spawn more doubts. 

As a missionary I would never be able to help anyone understand this thing that I myself don't understand if I let that thing personally become a concern. 

Concerns are different than questions, but it's true that they're similar.

However, if someone DOES have a concern about the doctorine of the Church of Jesus Christ, I encouage them to turn that concern into a question and take that quesiton to scripture study and friends.  Try to find the answer.  The cool thing about the church is that the doctorine is perfect and there is always an answer to the questions that we have.

It's true that some things are hard to find, not understandable, or hidden from us.  But what we need to understand is that God's plan is perfect and has no fault.  More, the Church is true everybody, that too is very important.  :)

Cameron 

Elders in the house

Hey there!

So, you guys have been asking about my new companion and the other two guys living in my house.

First of all, there's Elder Sanchez

He is from Concepcion, Chile

He was born in the Church, and been in the mission for 20 months

He has an odd obsession/attraction to the color green and small fluffy funny things, for example he loves the movie Ice age because Scrat is in it.  In other words, he finds his kindred folk to be very wonderful.

He likes working hard and working well, therefore, we get along pretty well.  Our house is also pretty clean because of him.

As for these guys... This is Elder Scribner and Elder Maturano.

Elder Scribner is from Orem Utah, he is a choir guy, his grandpa is ex MoTab and his mom is about to try out for it.  His whole family sings.  He is pretty dang smart and really quick with Spanish.  Hes been here for 7-ish months and speaks a whole lot better than me.

Elder Maturano is from Bolivia, he has been in the mission for 23 months and is just a few weeks away from heading home.  He is at the point where most missionaries get a little trunky/antsy/stop working hard because they are going home soon, but he is doing a great job at running until the end.  He is a great worker and a cool guy.  and very funny.

We have good times in the house, we never know whats going to happen next.

Talk to you all next week!

Cameron
P.S.  Here are some bonus Pictures I took!

This first one, I didn't photo shop the light just hit perfectly!

We are doing Spanish Study on our house window.

Tony

Hey there,
At this point I don't really know what to write.  Everything going on with our investagators is either too sensitive to share or not too exciting.  However, we've been working with a guy named Tony and his family since I got here.  In the last twoish or threeish months he has cut his hair with my trimmer to feel better about going to church (It was down to his shoulders, now it's a clean buzz), quit smoking, drinking, and use of all harmful substances in a matter of two weeks, and recently he read the Book of Mormon in two days without us knowing. He has skimmed the Bible, and is just now starting to read the Doctrine and Covenants.  He's incredible!  As to why he isn't Baptized is the sensitive part that I'm not really supposed to talk about in my letters home.  

He's super super awesome and the ward has helped his family out a whole bunch.  His family got food from the Bishop's store house, the ward is helping him find work, one of the members gave him a suit.  and lots and lots of cool stuff.

As for me, the normal.  Life is alright. Though I'm always tired, that's normal.  Tony tried giving me a super energy drink with raw eggs, I couldn't get myself to drink it.

As for my companion, I'll send you a picture of his personality.  Tony still thinks he looks like King Julian.

and that's everything.  I'll write next week, as always.

Love you all!

~Cameron

New Companion

So I had a really weird moment sitting here in the cyber having the realization that my sister just got married and that no one is going to be about to update my blog for at least four week.  Yeesh...

It weird, but it's cool.  I'll suppose I'll meet this guy someday.

I've been having a great time working with Elder Sanchez over the last week.  Elder Taylor will be missed because every single day he did something crazy that always made living in the apartment interesting.  However, Elder Sanchez is awesome and has a unique humor, I imagine however that his humor is probably similar to mine, very sarcastic.

He's from Chille, he's been a member his whole life and his parents are converts. He's been in the mission for 19 months a knows a whole lot of things.  I've learned a ton from him over only this last week.  I like to think that we work pretty well together.

I forgot to bring my camera with me today so I don't have a picture to send.  He's a little guy, one of our investigators said that he reminds him of King Julian from Madagascar, on top of that his voice sounds like Yoyo (from the Hoops and Yoyo cards) without drinking caffeine, it's kinda funny and the Greenga missionaries always laugh when they call him from a daily report.  He says he doesn't know why they put him on speaker and there's usually four of them giggling in the background, and I tell him I don't know either.  But I'm pretty sure it's a mix of his voice and his dry humor.

Things here are going pretty good, we've gone through both hard times and good times during this week as far as the work goes.  But in the end of everything, if we do all we can to do this work, there will always be satifaction.

Like I said, I don't have my camera so I don't have pictures, but I'll do better next week.

I hope all is well back home!

Love you guys.

~Cameron

Carnaval!

Hey,

This week was pretty interesting and is continuing to be interesting.  Carnaval has been a happening event here in Guayaquil: Carnaval is basically when people either 1.  Go to the beach and have a full big party.  or 2.  Stay at home with family and put out a little pool out in front of their house for the kids to play in and then drink large quantities of beer and dump water, eggs, paint, and everything else on each other's heads and yell "CARNAVAL!".

Apparently it used to be worse; from the stories I've heard; the street was a war zone and anyone was a legal target.  Now-a-days people can call the police if you assault them and people are a little more careful.

Carnaval is a big pain in the butt more missionaries because everyone we teach and half the ward are at the beach or visiting family somewhere faraway and all the stores are closed until Wednesday.  That and the streets are more dangerous. Meh.

Last night we four were looking out over our deck and a kid started squirting us with his water gun from below.

Firing first was his error.

We then got our water bottles and buckets in the house and commenced returning fire.  The rest of the kids, seeing that their friend had started something that he couldn't finish, gathered their water guns and water balloons to back him up.   It was us four against the kids on the street, however, we had the high ground and didn't get very wet.  As it got to be our bed time we told them that our house was out of water and to have a happy carnaval.

As we went inside, the phone rang, and we discovered that everyone but me had a cambio/(change). Which meant my companion, Elder Taylor's, time had come and I was to receive a new companion on the morrow.  Therefore, I spent most of my day today waiting for the three new guys who are living in our house.

My new companion is Elder Sanchez from Chile, I really don't know too much about him yet, all we've done so far is eat lunch and buy food.  I'll let you all know more about him next week.  I'll also have some pictures.

I hope all is well back home.  Talk to you next week!  Look forward to hearing about the wedding.

~Cameron

Time is Everything

Hello,

So, I'm sitting here, in a cyber... and, I don't know what I'm going to write today. hmm...

Glad to hear from your emails that everyone is staying super busy.  One of the things I learned out here is that doing nothing usually stinks.  I hate doing nothing.  Today me and Elder Taylor were thinking of what we wanted to do for our P-day, we realized that we were both REALLY tired so we made a plan to do nothing today.  Which sounded good until we got about ten minutes into it... then we figured out that doing nothing is relaxing, but REALLY boring, so we went with the normal fallback of playing fútbol (soccer) in the park with the rest of the zone.  Now we're even more tired, but at least we didn't do nothing.

Staying busy is fantastic, but sometimes stress can be a factor with a full planner.  It is well known among the Church Missionary Department that stress can be a missionary killer, so we've been given guidelines of how to recognize stress and fatigue, and what we ought to do for it.

We are encouraged to take 20 minutes naps sometimes.  We're on the lords time, but if it means that we'll be more effective after the fact we can take naps up to 20 minutes to keep ourselves working more effectively. We are also encouraged to sit on a park bench from time to time for 5 minutes. This amazingly helps a TON with giving yourself a chance to organize your brain, also, if we take one of two bench breaks in a day, we find that we aren't as burned out when we get home at night.

Time is everything.  When it comes down to it, I think the most precious substance is time: we can't buy it, everyone needs it, and everyone wants it.  Sometimes it doesn't make sense to take a break when not everyone in Ecuador has received the amazing truth yet, but it turns out that if we're stressed or fatigued we wont be able to work with all of our might, mind, and strength- therefore making it very difficult to have the spirit with us.  And when we don't have the spirit with us we wont get very many things done.

I always remember the phrase I learned on the Ballroom Dance team:

"Slow is smooth and smooth is fast."

When we take things slowly we can do them more effectively, and when we're effective we get things done faster AND, even better; we get them done well.
These are principles that are very important as missionaries.  I also believe that they apply to everyone else too.  sometimes when we have too many things on our plate we feel like we got to get it all done NOW and that it's IMPOSSIBLE and that we're GOING TO DIE and I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHEN TO GET STARTED and that THAT WORLD IS OVER.

Sit down, take five minutes to meditate.  Then keep calm and carry on.

Things get done when we aren't stressed and we make ourselves a smooth-getting-things-done-kind-of-machine.

En Pocas Palabras: Take that five minute break that you don't have time for, Meditate, then kick some butt.

Also I would like to put it out there one more time that doing nothing is terrible and that without facebook or video games or books it is a bad bad idea to put on your things to do book.

And that is my rant for the day.  Amen.

Everything around here is going great.  we're doing our best to teach Jaime not to speak blasphemies and we are trying hard every day to find new people to share our message with.

My health is good, I've had a cold for 9 days but that's kinda just a result of rain season.
On Sunday we got pounded by rain in the afternoon and we had to trudge through the ankle deep river that we usually call the highway.
Me and Elder Taylor have been talking about getting us a boat for the next encounter with Ecuador's nutting rain showers.  Apparently in other cities the water goes up to the waist.

I'll write you all next week.  Imma go take a five minute nap and then get to work. (Pday ends at 6:00)

I'll talk to you all later!


~Cameron

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Hey guys!

We were meeting with a lady in her house one night.  It was our first meeting with her so we were sitting around getting to know her.  She explained to us that Ecuatoriano people are a chosen and blessed people because of their faithfulness and humility.  I nearly laughed, but I refrained.
guys, I think there's one important point to be made clear.  Humility is a touchy subject because in the very moment you boast about how humble you are, you've lost your humility.

If you want to be good and humble, do good works and never look for reward or recognition from anyone, the moment we do is the moment we are numbered among the hypocrites that Christ talks about in his sermon on the mount.

"Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven." (Matt 6:1)

As for the people who DO fast, pray, and do "good works" for the whole world to see, don't worry about them, "Verily I say unto you, They have their reward."

So, having a birthday out here wasn't all that bad.  The Zone got me and Elder Ralison a cake because his birthday was on the 22nd and we don't really have enough money to buy two cakes.  I got my face smashed into this cake because it's tradition for the one having the birthday to "bite the cake".  The other part of the tradition is for someone to smash your face into the cake while you're taking that bite.

Some members here also made me some cakes and another even got me some Papa Johns.  The people here are pretty awesome.  Tip to all future missionaries: ALWAYS let it slip to the Relief Society President by accident that your birthday is coming up.  She is usually the center of good ideas and productive gossip.  She'll let the ward know.

This week has all and all been pretty interesting:

Elder Taylor tried to cook Habaneros Empanadas and nearly killed the four of us in the process.

Jaime Testified in Fast and Testimony Meeting that he was baptized so that he could teach us all the truth about us being children of the holy ghost and be receive the holy ghost through sexual relations.

He also mentioned that in the past life he was a Christ.  If he had been born 2000 years ago the congregation would have stoned him for blasphemy...  in this case the Stake President got up after him and testified of the truth.

And... today for P-day we went bowling. That's about it.

I'm doing well over here and I hope all is going well back home.  Hope you're all having fun with the wedding plans and all that.

Talk to you all later!

~Cameron