April 22: Another week in Ecuador

We had another fun week here in Ecuador, I think it's rained about every day here since I've arrived. The people here really don't celebrate Easter which is weird.  It's not a huge deal here. Even in church they didn't discuss Easter which I was surprised about. But they still do Holy week so because of that, nobody here eats red meats, only fish.

This week our Golden investigator Louisa explained to us after church that she had made the decision to push her baptism off until June because she wanted her family to be able to see it. We were super shook, but of course, respected her decision. We were able to teach her later that night accompanied by a convert of the church. We could tell from the start that something wasn't right. This past week she had visited her family in Latacunga towards the Coast of Ecuador. She had explained to her family that she was planning on switching religions from Catholic to ours, and her family was not happy to hear that. The member that was with us bore a super strong testimony about his conversion. He explained that before he converted he was also Catholic, but he was Catholic by tradition, not because he knew it was true. And similarly, his family gave him a super hard time, but he testified that this church is true because he received a witness from the Holy Ghost, and that is something he can´t deny. We were also able to bear strong testimony about the importance of Baptism. I explained to her the problem of waiting a little longer to be baptized is that Satan is trying his hardest at this time, doing everything he can to prevent her from taking this new step in her life. He is putting thoughts in her head telling her she isn't ready and that her family won´t respect her because he wants nothing but bad for people. But if we listen to God, he wants nothing but the best for his children and baptism being one of the best and also, for her to receive the holy ghost to help avoid the temptations of Satan. At the end of our lesson, we re-invited her to baptism and kept her baptismal date for this Saturday the 27th. 

It is very important to focus and live our lives in a way where we can always receive inspiration from God. I wish everybody a wonderful week.

Love Elder Rich

Drunk guys here. He just came up and gave me a hug 

Crepes and waffles in Ecuador

We went to a small amusement park today for p-day.
There were only a couple of rides that we found out we couldn't ride.