Week 46 May 7-13, 2017

¡Hola Familia y Amigos!

Sooooo....

On Sunday was Stake Conference (for any of you that were wondering or care, I'm in the Colón stake serving in the El Dorado Ward) and it was pretty fantastic. President Christensen was there, as well as a member of the Area Seventy, so neat stuff.

Monday we got out of the offices pretty late, and didn't have any appointments, so we just went to contact by knocking on doors to find new investigators. I pressed the intercom of the first door, and asked if we could present ourselves. Well, turns out, a member family lived there (I felt really cool) but I didn't know it cause I've only got a few weeks in this sector. Annnnd turns out it was one of the daughter's birthdays, but they still invited us in to share a message and have birthday cake. Hahaha we totally party crashed (oops) but they were glad to have us and also gave us lots of references of people to visit, so all was well!

On Wednesday we had divisions with our District leader for a few hours, so we went with a member to meet someone at the church. The dude never showed up, but the member us to go with him to give a blessing to someone before a surgery the next day, so that was a really neat unplanned backup plan. :)

I forget which night it was, but I taught the latinos (I'm the only American out of the 4 of us) how to make cookies with a cheap chopped-up chocolate bar (no real chocolate chips here...we're so redneck) and a gas stove that only reaches 250 degrees, but it was funny cause they gave up trying to use the spatula to mix, so they just mixed it with their bare hands, but hey-they actually turned out allright.

So update on the offices...well, it has it's ups and downs, but I feel like (for now) it's been a good change of pace. Despite the calls from irritated missionaries and stuff, I feel like a few of my organization and perfectionistic attributes

are being put to good use. I also like seeing President Christensen a lot more as well as getting to constantly be around the other missionaries that work here. Something funny this week that happened was in the night- I was just on the phone doing our nightly reports and one of the other secretaries decided to kick a soccer ball at my feet. Well, he aimed way higher than he meant to, and totally pegged me in the face full-throttle during the call. Poor guy I gave him a hard time and teased him that I got a almost had a concussion. Hahaha it's so fun being with these goofballs to keep things lively.

Today we had interviews, and man, I just love the interviews. Haha to be honest, I kinda dreaded them at the beginning of my mission cause I felt like I was always in trouble, but now I just really appreciate them as opportunities to do a little check-up on how I'm progressing spiritually, and how I can do better and help others.

Well I sure love all of you, and hope this week's awesome!

Love, Elder Stolle

P.S. Today for our Pday meal we found a Chili's (there's a little bit more familiar restaurants here since it's downtown Quito).

Week 47 May 14-20, 2017

¡Hola Familia y Amigos!

First off, I was lame and didn't really take any pictures this week. Sorry, I know you're just devestated. Next week I should have a lot though!

Sunday was the skype call to the family, and that was awesome. It was kinda weird, though, cause I wasn't counting down the days like last time. It just kinda popped up by surprise, like "Hey, maybe I should tell my family what time we'll be skyping tomorrow" hahaha. But it was great to talk to the family, and I can't wait to do it again in December!

Funny little thing from this week: I had a little language blooper when I was telling the others that we needed to go buy "papel higenico" (Toilet Paper) for the house, but I accidentally mixed "higenico" with "unigenito" (Only Begotten, as in the Only begotten Son), so I was telling them we needed to go buy the Only Begotten Toilet Paper hahaha. Oops :) 

This weekend is transfers! Know what that means? Today (being Pday) we took basically the whole morning doing a deep cleaning of the house and scrubbing everything down to prepare for the big groups that will be coming through, both the "Going Home" group and the "Newbie" group from the CCM (MTC). We've been washing sheets and blankets since like Tuesday or Wednesday just for all the 18ish beds haha but we're excited to help!

A neat little spiritual experience from this week happened yesterday; We were in a lesson with an investigator, and he had brought 2 of his friends to listen to us. One was an Evangelist, and when he found out that we were "Mormons," he told us that the Book of Mormon was of the Devil and written by men and things like that. But nevertheless, he still stayed and listened to us. As we read one of the chapters about Christ's visit to the Americas out loud, they were all nodding their heads and making comments of agreement, and the Spirit was strong. It was really neat to show them, through reading, that it's not a book of the devil but really is Another Testament Of Jesus Christ, and plainly testifies of him. I know that this incredible book is the truth, and it has blessed my life so much. It truly testifies of Christ and helps us know how we can become more like him, as we read it every day and apply it to our lives.

Have an incredible week!

Love,

Elder Stolle

P.S. A little quote I liked from Elder's Quorum this week, in basic translation: "We should live at the level of our testimony."

Week 48 May 21-27, 2017

¡Hola Familia y Amigos!

Oh my goodness what a week! Where do I start?

Well a few words of wisdom I forgot to mention last week: Pineapple juice with pitajaya and papaya in a fruit salad do not make a good breakfast mixture for an American Missionary with a not-latino digestive system. It did not agree with my stomach hahaha and sent me to the bathroom quite sick.

Also, if you live in a place where it rains almost daily, bring an umbrella everywhere you go. We were finished eating lunch one day and realized that there were super dark clouds coming our way, and we didn't have our umbrellas, so we ran as fast as we could back to the offices to avoid getting completely drenched. Well, me and another Elder tripped over each other mid-run and the collision -plus running at 9269712356 thousand mph- sent me flying to the road hard. When the nurses decided to drop by the building to work, they were very surprised to see us with the first aid kit out and the other 3 elders playing doctor, using alcohol wabs and bandages to clean me up. (I can't find the picture, so maybe I'll send it next week). It was exciting, really. So moral of the story? Don't forget your umbrella. You never know what it might save you from. :-)

Okay SOOOO, on Monday we were helping with all the missionaries ending their missions. They always have this big "You guys should use your first names and get married" capacitation (weird), and I had to go buy lunch for all of them before doing their financial interviews that afternoon. That night, we went home after working in the sector and stuff to quickly make our house a "Mundo de Los Espíritus." You see, in mission linguo, if you say somebody's dying, that means they're ending their mission. So, we decided to be a little funny and put the Plan of Salvation to practice, and made our house a  "Mundo de los Espiritus," (The Spirit World). Hahaha we put RIP papers on their beds to be their "tombstones" and dressed up in white to be the "angels" that welcomed them. We're such dorks haha but goofing off and laughing a lot together helps us not get stressed out from all the office stuff and keeps the mission enjoyable.

We also had to help with the people at our house weigh their bags and stuff, and since I'm in charge of finance stuff and my companion's in charge of flights, we were up very late working together to make sure they all had the right bag weights, calling airlines and checking on bag prices, making sure everyone had the necessary money to check-in bags and buy food and all that, making sure they got to the airport, etc. Hahaha we basically dropped dead in our beds afterwards.

But the party don't stop! Tuesday we getting things ready for all the new missionaries coming from the MTC, when we saw a weird email. It was a flight itinerary for some of the American missionaries that had left that morning (or so we thought). Turns out, there were problems with the plane that we didn't know about, and their flights were changed to the following night at midnight. We didn't know anything about it cause the missionaries didn't have phones to call us or a way to communicate with us, but we quickly made arrangements to bring them back from the airport. We got pizza for the new missionaries and greeted them and all, and rushed out to get the missionaries that should have left, got them lunch, and brought them back to the house. It was a fun little spin on things. But that evening we went to an appointment (we were both nodding off while trying to teach haha) and beforehand ​​they showed us a "Cuy" (Guinea Pig) they'd bought and were preparing to use. Afterwards we went to the church with a bunch of members to watch one of the youth get set apart for his mission. It was so powerful and there was such a strong, sweet spirit as the Stake President congratulated him and the new missionary bore his testimony.

Woo-hoo! Wednesday was just a lot of running around to help with meals for the new missionaries (they were having capacitations about the mission all day), giving our capacitation, and watching them receive their trainers. After they all got on buses to go to their zones, we just kinda let out a huge sigh (the "GO GO GO" was finally over), and went to catch up on things to do that didn't happen during all the excitement.

Friday after studies we went to the Bishop's Storehouse to help Sister Christensen and the Mission Nurses prepare emergency food kits to take to all of the Zones before the Zone Conferences.​​​​​​ We were using the sealing machines to seal a lot of bags, and after we'd figured out what the heck we were doing and how to seal well, we joked that we were ready to go be temple workers hahaha.

But the neat thing is, as I was looking back over all the craziness this week, everything that needed to be gotten done was done. It's so neat how it works out like that. I know that this is the Lord's work, and I'm so grateful to be a part of it.

Love,
Elder Stolle

Week 45 April 30-May 6, 2017

¡Hola Familia y Amigos!

Sooooo Round 3 finally came around...but I'll explain that in a minute. This week was crazy, but actually pretty fun too. A lot of running around Quito. Us secretaries had to help prepare a few meals this week.

So whenever big groups come to Quito (new missionaries, all the Missionary Leaders, etc.) for meetings with President, we have to be around to help Sister Christensen with the meals for those meetings. So on Tuesday all the Leaders in the mission came for a council, Thursday the New missionaries came for a verifcation on how their training was coming along, and Friday was our Zone Conference with President Christensen. I finally got my apron (see pics below) that all the secretaries get, which was super cool.

The Zone Conference was awesome, as usual, and there was a great spirit throughout the meeting. President Christensen is just such an inspired man, and spoke powerfully about Easter and the events of the Holy Week, and man. It was incredible and so uplifting, just makes you want to be a better person and spread the truth of the Savior's Restored Gospel.

Ok, so Round 3. On Thursday night we got a call that we'd be having emergency changes (my 3rd time in the mission), so Elder Nichols left being a secretary and went to the Chillogallo Zone to be a good ol regular missionary (which, frankly, he was quite excited about), and I'm now with Elder Espinoza, the secretary in charge of Flights/Baptismal Records. He's from Peru, and we'd already been getting along well just living in the same house, all 4 of us, so I'm stoked to be with him now.

To be completely honest, this time the changes weren't a surprise; we were actually anticipating them. One of the secretaries is about to end his mission soon, and needed enough time to train someone in the ways of the Force and to take his place before he left. So obviously when President Christensen, a few weeks prior, gave me a big hug and told me "Learn fast, Elder Stolle," we started figuring things out. Hey wait a second...2 plus 2 equals...HOLY COW, 4!!! Well, I'd only had about 3 1/2 weeks in my training as a secretary, but I guess President mistakenly thought I was ready or something, cause I'm now flying down the hill without training wheels. But it's good, and I feel like Elder Nichols did a good job helping me learn. We had 4 missionaries go home within the past week for health and other reasons, but I did their financial interviews and all was well, so here goes.

Now we have another Latino secretary, so I'm literally the only American out of the 4. But I'm actually super stoked, cause now I hope I'll be able to go full throttle on practicing and refining any rough spots with the Spanish. We all have a lot of fun together.

Today was a good Pday though. We had a pretty chill morning, and then found Carl's Jr. for lunch! I didn't even know that place existed in Ecuador! After that we went to an investigator's house to make donuts (they wanted to try the fried American version), and they seemed to be a hit.

I hope you guys have an incredible week!

Love,

Elder Stolle

Week 44 April 23-29, 2017

¡Hola Familia y Amigos!

I'm on a little early cause our Pday's being cut short due to a ward activity we have to go help prepare for. Yayyyyy.

So, to start off, last Saturday after writing you guys, we had to go to the church to help prepare and set up for a Baptism for the other Elders in our ward. (I had a few free minutes beforehand so I recorded the piano part of an arrangement  of "Abide with me Tis Eventide/Lord, I Would Follow Thee" that our District made/sang back in the CCM (MTC)...I don't think I ever sent it to you guys but it's attached below.) For the Baptism me and 2 other missionaries sang a neat arrangement of "Yo sé que vive mi Señor" (I Know That My Redeemer Lives) while the other Elder played the piano. It was a really awesome baptism, and neat to see how excited the family was to make that sacred promise with God.

We had a couple nights recently where we've had missionaries come from sectors outside of Quito and stay the night, due to medical appointments or Visa problems or things like that here in Quito, and since we live in the "Mission Hotel," we get to be the hosts haha. I kinda like it though- it's fun to talk to the missionaries that I haven't seen in a while.

The offices has been an interesting change, but not too bad. We had to stay the whole day one day just to finish a report for President, so we didn't even get to go to the sector. But we've still been working hard whenever we do get to go to the sector, and have been finding new people to teach, so that's good. We have several great investigators/families right now, the biggest problem is that most of them aren't married! But we set goals with them for a marriage date, and have 1 investigator wanting to be baptized on May 13, so if all goes according to plan, than the progress will be doing pretty decent!

Something funny from this week is that we were in a cita teaching lesson 1 to a new investigator, and we had just gotten to the First Vision (that would be the most spiritual part, right?), and well, as we were reciting Joseph Smith's experience, the Star Wars theme song ringtone started to play from someone's cell phone. I wonder if that's how Joseph Smith felt as the light started to desend and save him from Satan. Hahaha no but despite the funny interruption, the lesson went pretty well and they seemed receptive the whole message in general, so we're excited for our next one with them.

Love,

Elder Stolle

P.S. Here's a cool pic of a spiral mall we went to the other day on Pday. I hope all the attachments work!

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Week 43 April 17-22, 2017

¡Hola Familia y Amigos!

Well, a few little cool things from this week:

On Saturday night we got a call from the Assistants, telling us that all 8 of us in the offices (the 2 assistants, 4 secretaries, and 2 nurses) had been invited to go eat Easter Dinner at President Christensen's house. So, on Sunday after church and proselyting for a little bit, we met up and went. It was actually kinda fun, just to be able to talk about the Savior and enjoy a yummy meal around the dinner table, rather than in a giant group of people. It was super nice of them to invite us, and made the Easter a little more special.

We had a few very small earthquakes throughout the week...nothing big, but a few of them I felt just as slight vibrations. Always good to keep things exciting hahaha.

Here's something cool that never happens that happened this week. We were knocking on the door of someone we were trying to visit, but they weren't home so we just stayed there for a second looking at our agenda and trying to decide what would a good backup plan. Then a lady came up to us, asked if we were Mormon missionaries, told us that she had been listening to the missionaries before the big earthquake in April last year but had to move when her house was destroyed, asked us to come visit her, and when she could be baptized. *Jaws drop and eyes bulge out* We just kinda were like "This. Is. Insane." Hahaha but it was super neat! She often has to go back to the coast to check on the rebuilding of her house, but we're super excited to see if she'll progress and actually become a member of the true Church!

Well, the other really cool thing from this week (probably the coolest thing from this week) was a last minute multi-mission conference with an Apostle of the Lord. We got told on Thursday during our Zone Meetings that it was going to happen. Basically, Elder Christofferson was going to be in town for various meetings, had a little time on Monday morning, and decided to set up a conference with both the missions in Quito! So we excitedly all got up and met with missionaries of the other mission in a chapel, and then Elder Christofferson and his wife showed up! One of the Members of the Seventy, Elder Fallabella, was also with him. Basically both the Mission Presidents and their wives bore their testimonies, and then Elder Fallabella spoke, then Sister Christofferson and Elder Christofferson spoke to us! What was really cool, was that they all spoke to us in Spanish! I didn't even know the Christoffersons spoke Spanish, but it was super neat to still understand them and hear from them in a different language than what we usually hear in Conference! They even did a Question and Answer session afterwards, so that was neat too. 

Hope your Easter's were awesome and full of the Spirit as you remembered the Savior!

Love,

Elder Stolle

Week 42 April 10-16, 2017

¡Hola Familia y Amigos!

Now I can finally tell you about life lately! Woot woot!

So, first off, I'm lovin' the offices! It's really fun to be with 3 other elders practically all the time. Our house is the "Mission Hotel" cause all the missionaries that come and go stay there, and it has like 15 beds, but it's really close to the offices so it's fun to get to know this part of town. 

Learning all the things I need to has been like drinking water through a Firehose (like how to stop house owners from stealing money from the mission), but I know it'll come with time and practice. I'm especially excited because I'll be able to be here to help with the New Mission President transition here in June or July when President Christensen leaves and the new one moves in, so it'll be a great opportunity to help him and his wife adjust.

I like it here. It's definitely warmer, but it's kind of a cool, downtown feel. I forgot to tell you guys but like 2 Sundays ago, Ecuador had it's second round of elections for President (the first ones in Feburary went undecided) but the guy who won is named Lenin Moreno. A lot of people were upset about it and, there's even been a recounting of votes due to suspicion of fraud. We've actually had protesters walking right by our house in a giant police-led parade and blowing horns and carrying flags just about every night around 9:30pm-ish. It's kinda funny cause sometimes we'll just watch from our building and we'll see members we know that will tell us to come and join the march. I'm just grateful that none of the protests have gotten violent yet.

So I do have to include that before the transfer, the Familia Torres (see pic below) came to church again! We were so excited that they're finally starting to progress and see the fruits of our labor. I'm really going to miss that family. The mom didn't really seem to trust us the first lesson, but recently she'd been making us promise to call her just to make sure we got home safely after the lessons. 

And now we have a great family here in my new sector who just needs to get married, but are very ready for baptism! Because our sector includes a big bus station in the middle and the area can sometimes be a little dangerous, the Mom and kids walk us down to the bus station after the lessons just to make sure we get there safely. I'm so grateful, first off, for wonderful humble people that are willing to change their lives to comply with the truths of the Gospel (their faith literally amazes me), and also for their love and concern to watch out for and take care of us missionaries.

I just want to finish by talking about a little tender mercy from this week. So one night we were all pretty tired and sleeping well, but then we woke up at about 1:05am to see one of the missionaries standing in the middle of the room and making panicking noises. We flipped on the lights and quickly realized that he couldn't breathe, so one of the missionaries did the Heimlich Maneuver, which seemed to open up something in his lungs. I'm not exactly sure how he started suffocating like that, but I'm so grateful that Heavenly Father preserved his life. I know that Heavenly Father protects his servants, missionary or not, and that he loves each and every one of us so incredibly much.

 I'm also so grateful for my Savior, Jesus Christ, who we will celebrate especially tomorrow during Easter, and the sacrifice that he made for us. He is the Son of God, and I know that he not only saves us physically through the resurrection, but also spiritually, and because of him, we have a way to return to the Father's presence. Also because of him, and what he did for us, he knows how to have empathy to help us on our good days and bad days, and to help us overcome our trials that we have in this life. When we put our faith in him, we can have Peace and happiness through the difficult things we live through, cause we know there's someone who's already lived through them, a Prince Of Peace.

Have an awesome week and a spiritually renewing Easter! Love you guys!

Love,

Elder Stolle

P.S. Here below are pictures from my old zone and new one. During Zone Meetings we were talking about the new #PrinceOfPeace video, and we all put our favorite names for the Savior.

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