Noche de Hogar y Caridad

¡HOLA! Buenas tardes. ¿Cómo le va? :)

Wow another week come and gone, and now we are into May! Can you believe it?? I now have more than 8 months in the mission. How time flies! :) I remember this time last year... i was out of school and getting ready for my mission, and now here i am in my mission... in Ecuador... speaking spanish!!! i never would have imagined a year ago that i would be here today. really. i have learned so much, and have had so many great opportunites up to date. i am so grateful to be a missionary here in ecuador serving the Lord! :)

This week was actually just a little hard. we had a good week.. but are still having a litte bit of a rough time finding new family investigators to teach. But we are still teaching the family Gabriela y Luigi Bucheli and their little daughters Piorina y Nicole. gabriela is a member, but her husband and 2 little daughters are not.they are a sweet family! this past week we had a noche de hogar with them and watched the jose smith el profeta de la restauracion with them. even luigi the dad was there and watched with us. we have been having a hard time having him be there and teaching him because he usually gets home late from work. but he was there and really was paying attention to the movie! :) he even answered the questions that his 12 year old daughter had about the movie himself without our help. it was cool! :) Piorina has a baptismal date, but we are working on having the dad luigi accept one too. they are an awesome family and i know will be so blessed to have the Gospel in their lives.

On friday we had a ward activity.. haha well an activity that the missionaries saved! haha. ok it was kind of a nightmare. but its a good thing that as missionaries we learn to just improvise on the spot! haha! so it was supposed to be an activity done by the relief society and leader misional and ward missionaries. but there were some problems and at 7:30 when the activity was supposed to start... it was only us 2 as missionaries and investigatores and members of the ward! ah!! no leaders!! i was just a little freaked out! what were we going to do?? the leaders had the message that they were going to share and we had only planned a game to play! so we decided to start the night with a song and prayer, and then all of the sudden i just started talking with my companion and we basically taught a lesson on faith, repentance, and baptism... but it was SUPER COOL!! not gonna lie. i thought it went great. but not because we were prepared. but because we followed the Spirit. there was NO way we could have taught a bunch of people, in a fun way, on the spot with literally 0 planning without the Spirit. After we were done my comp said that she didnt even remember what we said. all we know is that we were definetly helped and guided by the Spirit. after a while, a couple leaders showed up with the message and the refreshments, and they finished the night off. But i learned that really anything is possible with the help of God!

Also this week we recieved a cool training about charity and love from the assistents to the president. its in preparation for the apostole that will come in june! did i tell you our mission is going to hear from an apostole live!!!??? yep!! we have know for a couple months, but didnt know who, but now we know... in june Elder Rasband will be coming 1 of the 12 apostles!! our mission, mision oeste and another will be there listening too! :) im way excited! AND as part of this i get to participate in a choir that is made up of about 20 elders and hermanas from our mission and mision oeste!

but anyway.. the training was really neat. i learned a lot. i learned that it doesnt matter who we are. it doesnt matter our differences, our cultures, or our backgrounds. because we all are Mormons! as members of the church we have SO many similiarities that outweigh the differences. we all have the same goals, the same principles, the same Gospel, the same Savior. as i studied this past week about charity i was reminded of the great love that Jesucristo has for each one of us. He loves us, no matter who we are, or what we have done. we are always loved and He is with us to lift us up. I know He lives and loves us.

Cuidese mucho!

Les amo,

Hermana Warburton