Hello mi friends!

Hello mi friends...

This week was an okay week... first off I'm done with rice haha!  I don't know how they eat rice every  meal everyday!?!  Very thankful for different types of food in the US!  

But yeah anyway...this week was tough... a lot of people told us to stop coming by and that they didn't want to hear from us anymore...and that's always super sad and tough.  So we started this past week with 4 really good investigators with baptism dates and we ended with 0.... haha that's the missionary life I guess!  But then last night something really cool happened!  

It was like around 8:30 and we took a taxi home.  We still had about 30 minutes to be outside so we decided to track the houses around our house (we thought for sure every missionary before us had done it, but we thought we would still give it a try!).  So we knocked one house and nothing came of it and then we knocked another house and the lady came out and we started to talk with her and she told us that she was a member!!!  She said she hadn't been to church or active in 15 years but she used to be a primera tacher and all that good stuff!  WE LIVE 7 HOUSES FROM HER AND SHE'S LIVED THERE FOR 4 YEARS!!!  What has been going on here!??  She told us she has 3 kids that are 15,14 and 2 years old and that she is divorced and none of her kids really know about the church and that none of them are baptized!  She invited us to come back tomorrow!!!!  So yeah, we were so pumped!  Right by our own house!  Then she said she always has seen the missionaries but has been too scared to talk to them!  It was so crazy!! So yeah, that was super dope!

Not much else to share!  Thanks for the love and support everyone!!!

Elder Hoole

maxwell.hoole@myldsmail.net

Working and Preaching in Cuenca

Another rapido week here!

This week was so fast!  We started off by helping some guy move a pile of rocks to another pile of rocks and it was a super waste of time haha but it's good to serve...I guess haha. 

This week, we also worked a lot better with members and with them helping us by coming to lessons!  It was awesome!  Our convert, Hermano German from the DR who has been a member for 4 weeks, came with me and then my companion went to a different lesson with the Bishop.  So my lesson with Hermano German and me was sooo awesome!  I started to talk about our faith and the gospel and then German just took over and just started to preach like he'd been in the mission for 3 years and it was so dope!!!!!  I just sat there smiling!  It was so great! Such a powerful convert and not only that he also taught Elder's Quorum this past week about the Priesthood and it was awesome too! So that was really cool!

I had a really powerful experience with my companion this week too. He's new in the mission and only has been out here 8 or so weeks, and this week he told me that he didn't really have a testimony about the church. So yes, I was pretty shocked... and at first I didn't know what to say and do....I just sat there for a few minutes, and then BOOM I just started to preach to the kid and pulled out scriptures for him to read, and I was like, "Dude, you need to go pray and pray like the Prophet Enos in the Book of Mormon!"  It was so awesome and powerful and then yeah he did that and went and prayed and after he did it, he told me that he got an answer! It was awesome!

It reminded me of my mom when I told her that I wasn't gonna play football my Junior year in high school and she really preached to me that I should!  Man, moms are awesome!  GO mommy!  I love you! 

That's about it for last week!  We have a family home evening tonight and they want us to teach about Marriage... can you say TRUNKY!!!  haha But yeah, it should be fun and also really funny haha! 

This week we are blessed to have Zone Conference again with President!  He wants us all to come prepared and having read Alma 31, 32, and 33!  Maybe y'all can too!

Thanks for all!

Con amor

Elder Hoole

maxwell.hoole@myldsmail.net

A Walk Up the Mountain

Hello mi Friend!

Well, this was a really good work week!  (finally)  We talked with a lot of people and 1 person finally came to church!  It was awesome!  We also started the week with 1 baptisme date, but we ended with 4 people that have committed to get baptized in the coming weeks!  It was awesome!  It was way hard work this week, but we also had some fun.  

We (well, I) decided to walk up the mountain in our sector this past week and it took us 2 hours hahah!  I was telling my companion to always remember this moment because we are the first missionaries to walk here ever, and then I told him when we arrived at the top that we were also the last because there was no way we were going to do that again hahah!  It really was so hard!  I was dying and so was my companion haha!!!  The best thing was that we found at the top of the mountain a nice lady who was like 100 years old who had her own farm with a ton of ducks and dogs.  So we decided we had been sent there to talk to her about the church... she couldn't read but she had so much faith in the gospel message!  It was so dope!  We started to talk to her about how God knows her and that she will live with Him again and after we talked with her, she started to cry so much and it was so sad but also so cool to teach her!  But yeah, I really don't think we will be going on any more hikes to the top of the Ecuador mountains.  However, it was super cool and the lady was super nice and said we could come back whenever we wanted to. So yeah that was an awesome part of my week! 

It's also way more fun living with 2 other gringos that lived 20 minutes from me back home in UTAH!  It's great because we all know the same people and we are such good buddies.  The weather here really makes me think of home and then I ate Captain Crunch cereal this week and it made me miss home a little bit too!!! hahah

The work here is going really well!  If you have some time this week, please read Alma chapter 48 in the Book of Mormon.

Thanks for the love and support!

To my friends heading out on their missions:  good luck to all the new missionaries going out!  You'll need it haha lol!!!

Con Amor

Elder Hoole