Merry Christmas!

This week was awesome!  Can't believe it is already another PDAY!  

This week - on Saturday all the Zones in Guayaquil got to have lunch with the Mission President and his family and play games.  It was awesome to see all the missionaries here!  After that, we had our first baptism in our area.  It was awesome!  I had the awesome opportunity to baptize Ricardo and it was a great experience!  He really has faith and loves the gospel.  And he knows English so it was awesome to get to talk with him! 

Crazy that I have now finished my 1st transfer in the mission!  It was sooooo hard but I have learned so much! Spanish is hard and it is hard to be away from family and friends but I know I will be blessed and that the Lord is here with me and helping me! 

The church is true!  God loves us and knows us! 

Alma 38

Con amor,

Elder Hoole

PS. Skyping the family was awesome!  I love them so much! Can't wait for Mother's Day haha!

 With missionaries from zone

 Ricardo's baptism day

 Elder Alvarado, me, Ricardo, family & friends

 Baptism day

 The trunky dollar bill!  A missionary tradition here!

 Lunch today!  Pizza!

 Elder Hoole has lost 15 pounds...he needs to eat that!

 Happy elders

Parque Samanes

Wow, this week was great!!  So our church puts on a Christmas festival each year here and it was this last Thursday-Sunday.  All of the North, South and West Guayaquil missions were invited to attend!  It was great to see so many missionaries! We had some missionaries dress up as the 3 wisemen and a sister missionary as Mary and I took pictures for people.  After taking their photo, we would get their information and we are going to reach out to them with their pictures, and also you know teach them about the gospel of Jesus Christ!  It's a great way to spread the gospel!  I took well over 150 photos of just new investigators!  It was an awesome experience.

Sunday morning we walked into church and BAM the Bishop told us we had to give a talk that day in Sacrament meeting and that i was first!  Well, it was so bad hahah but I did my best and talked about faith and enduring to the end!  Well, that's about all this week!  Church is true!

Yes, it is hot here!

We have a baptism this weekend and we are super pumped! 

All is well!  Merry Christmas!

Con Amor

Elder Hoole

It's Hot As Heck Here!

Well this week was interesting haha!  I spent a day in a hospital this week.  (This part has been edited for TMI - just keep him and his digestive issues in your prayers! :) - Ann) The doctor was a great guy who is also LDS!  Also my toenail was having some problems so a member performed surgery on her front porch for me and well, all is well with me now!  So the members here are great!

I also finally ran into Elder Roberts here at a zone meeting! (Went to Alta High School) He gave me some great advice and man, has he grown up haha!

A family we are teaching here told us they don't want to hear from us anymore. They like coffee too much.....so we are invited and going back tonight to their house and we are going to do our best to get them to have faith!

We are also teaching this great guy who is 23 and is awesome! He was curious about life on other planets and he asked me about it.  As you know, my spanish is so bad but I pulled up a scripture that I couldn't remember having read before in Moses chapter 1 and it was awesome! So he's doing great and right now he is getting baptized next Saturday! (Christmas EVE) It's going to be awesome!

The work here is hard.  It is very unorganized and it gives me headaches but I've just gotta deal with it!
 All is well!  It. Is. Very. Hot. However, my Spanish is coming along everyday!

The Church is true!

Con amor,

Elder Hoole

All is well!  Keep the prayers coming!

Zone Conference

Eating lunch with the Torres family

Enjoying Chicken and Rice Tacos

The food is pretty good!

A fun lunch with his companion and a member family.

The members here are so kind!

Fun P-Day Island Visit and Pictures!

Hello! 

This week was great!  All the zones met up and went to the temple and it was great to see my old MTC companion and so many others!  The temple is great!  It is way crazy that I have now been on the mission for 2 months!  That was way fast and way hard haha!  Spanish is still hard!  I don't understand people and when I talk they don't understand my English accent!  Anyways it will come with time.  The Lord is just really testing my faith and patience! 

We had a family we are teaching come to church!  It was awesome!  I also bore my testimony and my Spanish was soo bad but it felt good!  So a family in our area is getting my companion and me PIZZA HUT!  We are so pumped! 

Sorry this update is way short.  We have a new rule in our mission.  We can only email for 30 minutes! So if I don't reply to you I'm really sorry but just know I'm always way happy you emailed me!  If you do email me, just try and do it by Sunday night.

Also, for P-day today we went out to an island and it was so cool and beautiful!  However, I got eaten by mosquitoes!  Hopefully I don't have ebola or something else now!

Love you all!

Elder Hoole

Mosiah 24:15-16

***I really do love to hear from all of you!  Again, sorry if I can't always reply now!!!!!

 Apartment

 Temple Day

 Meeting up with the zone

 Visiting the Island

 On bikes

 It's humid...lots of mosquitoes in these areas!

 Loving life in Ecuador!

 A different kind of investi-gator! :)

An island house