MILAGROS EN LA GAUSMO SUR!

Well this week was a pretty good week!  We had some really good success and saw a lot of miracles!  I don't really know where to start.  First I will start with last night!  We have an investigator that has been an investigator for 19 years!  Her daughter is in the mission field in Argentina and her other son is a member here in the church. She´s also been a mamita (a lady who helps care for the missionaries) for 12 years and has talked with so many missionaries.  Well she never really wanted to get married, but for some reason this last week something changed! She told her son that she wanted to get married and she wanted to be baptized! So last night at 6:00pm, my companion and me, the Bishop, Elder's Quorum President, and 4 other members went to her house to talk with her and BOOM!!!!  So powerful!  We read her some killer scriptures about the blessings of marriage and then her nephew who served a mission in Mexico gave his testimony and he just started to cry so hard and then she cried, and then the bishop cried and it was so COOL!  BIG Miracle!  She will be baptized the 14th!  This week and the next we are going to help her with her papers to get married.  Her daughter who is serving in the Argentina mission is going to be able to skype us for the wedding and baptism!!!  Pilas!!!  We are so pumped!  Our goal also is to work with her husband and teach him more about the Church but he doesn't have too much of a desire yet!  But who knows?!  So that was awesome!

Another miracle we saw this week was something that started about a month ago.  We had a member of our ward who was really sick, so she went to the doctor and they told her that she needed to cut her arm off because she had cancer and didn't want it to spread.  She didn't feel good about it so my companion and the other companion who was here before me gave her a blessing and BAM - now no more cancer!  WHAT!?!?  It was crazy when we found out.  So this miracle happened in their family and now her niece is going to get baptized because she now knows that God answered their prayers and that this Church is true!

Not much else really happened this week. We are working really hard!  My companion is from Mexico and he has been super sad this week with all the earthquakes!  But he's feeling better now!  I hope that all of you are getting prepared for disasters that could happen too!  I saw a dog eat a dirty diaper this week and then next to it just sitting there were two giant dead rats, so that was pretty gross.  Lots of really dirty things this week and yeah, I kinda cried a few times using this hole that was supposed to be a toilet. hahaha  There are really good people here and one of the members took my shoes yesterday that are falling apart and said that he could fix them up for me, so hope I get to see them back soon and that they are put together!  hahaha

Get our your Book of Mormon or just look it up online and read these scriptures I have for all of ya!

1 Nephi chapter 7 and Mosiah 24:16

DON'T FORGET TO WATCH GENERAL CONFERENCE THIS WEEK!  SATURDAY and SUNDAY!

Love y'all!
Elder Hoole

 This man was selling bananas on the street with his donkey pulling the cart.

 In the church building

 Streets of Guayaquil

 Lunch time!

 The streets we walk on

 Neighborhood stores

This is how many of the apartment areas look in Guayaquil.

The Weeks Speed By!

VOOOOOMMMM

This past week was so fast!  First, we had a meeting with Presidente and all the Zone Leaders on this past Wednesday and it was so incredible and awesome!  Great meeting and I gotta see a lot of my friends AND the office has A/C so it was nice to get out of the heat for a little while!  Presidente really wants us to work better at contacting people everywhere and spreading the gospel with everyone we see each day!

So being called to be a Zone leader has been eye opening, but man is it hard sometimes! haha  But it sure makes the days go by faster to be so busy all of the time so that's cool! 

We had a lot of missionaries this week with great baptisms and it is our job to make sure that their investigators have the right baptismo clothes for their baptisms, so we were running all over Guayaquil trying to get these baptismo clothes for all of these elders.  It was crazy running errands!

 

So we just received a new Ward Mission Leader this past week in this ward and he's awesome!  He works with us everyday and it's so helpful!  They make a difference!

Nothing much else happened.... well yeah, other stuff happened but I'm gonna have to save those stories for after the mission hahaha!  I don't want to scary my mommy!  hahah!

LOVE YA!

Elder Hoole!

maxwell.hoole@myldsmail.net

Back in Guayaquil!!!

GUAZMO!

Well it's my first week back in Guayaquil and I miss my mommy more than ever... hahaha nah I'm just joking!  But I do miss the wonderful hot showers I had in Cuenca and the nice brisk mountain air!  Here in Guayaquil it is really hot and very poor.  It's pretty sad, but honestly the Church members here are pilas (awesome) and if we walk in to a member's house, BAM there is food for us!  And that is just really awesome! 

So the work is progressing.  We have a couple of baptisms coming up which should be great for our area. Tomorrow I am excited to be going back into my old sector to work and see my old converts and investigators! Super pumped about that!  My companion Elder Oy is from Cancun Mexico.  We are already planning on when I can visit him there after our missions!!!  So dope!

This last week was hard.  The people here can't really understand my gringo accent here and that was really hard for me to realize.  And I also had some problems understanding them too. They definitely speak a different dialect of Spanish here along the coast and it's really going to take me awhile to get used to it again!  They speak super fast here and don't say the S in words.  I feel like I forgot all my Spanish now that I live here!  They really understood my accent better in Cuenca! 

I did give a talk yesterday in church about the Atonement of Jesus Christ.  I only had 15 minutes to prepare what I wanted to say...that is always hard!  So my new calling as a Zone Leader is good but it is also pretty hard because to be honest, a lot of the time I have no idea what half of the Spanish speaking missionaries are saying when they have problems.  So I just am at the point where when they tell me they have a problem I tell them to say a prayer about it to get their answer!  (Yes I do know how to say that at least in Spanish haha). 

Not much else really has been going on...Feel free to keep on sending me mail and emails! Thanks for all of the love!  GO UTES!  GO BENGALS! 

p.s. Please eat at Carl's Jr. today!!!  That sounds so good!!!!  There is a Chili's restaurant in my sector and my companion and I are going there on my year mark so that is exciting!!!

And I am naming my first kid Guazmo!  Also...if you want to see where I live, check Guazmo Sur on Google earth! 

Elder Hoole

 Shoe shine

 All I want for Christmas

This is my Zone

Big Changes!

Big Changes!

This last week was crazy!  First off, I got to spend 3 days with my boy Elder Layton and preach this good word and it was so awesome, all because my companion had to go to Guayaquil to get his visa!  It was so awesome to chill with an American! 

Also, this past week we had interviews with the Pres. and they went awesome. He asked me how I do my personal studies and I told him that every week my parents send me a good conference talk to read and study for that week and he thought it was such an  awesome idea!  So that was cool. 

Well, last week was the last week also in the transfer and I was really kind of hoping to go to a new area and Saturday night President Moreno called me and said that I have changes to Guayaquil, but as a Zone Leader! I'm super excited and pumped!  I'm back in Puerto Nuevo!   And yes, it's still SUPER HOT!  SUPER POOR!  AND SUPER DOPE!!!!  It should be a good time! 

My companion is Elder Oy from Mexico! He has like 4 months here so he'll have changes in October!  Also I have 11 months in the mission!!!  Super crazy!!! 

Well I'm doing well!  Hope all is well back home.  I love you all and my family so much!  Tell Moose thanks for the great email and to keep killing it on the field!  It's killing me that I can't watch my team this year!  Say some good prayers for me while I'm working down here in Guayaquil!!!

Happy Birthday To Moose, Christian, and Dad!!!!!

Love y'all!

Con Amor

Elder Hoole

August 28, 2017

Well todo bien aqui en Ecuador!

This past week had some really good moments and also some downers...

First off, we went and taught the less active lady we found and her kids about the Church!  So her kids aren't members and are 15 and 14 years old!  We explained to them about the mission and taught them the first lesson, and then we invited them to be baptized and they said yes!!!  So that's super dope!!  We just gotta get them coming to church now!  The mom told us it is her dream for her son to go on a mission!  Super AWESOME!!! 

We also found the sweetest and cutest grandma this past week!  She said she doesn't like to talk to other religions because she has her religion right now, but she felt like we had a good spirit and could really feel something more with us!  She is so awesome.  Se llama Susana!  She is just a really nice person and makes me feel good about serving a mission hahah!  We are gonna work a lot with her this week with members and try and set a baptism date!!!  So those were some good things! 

Also, I gave a talk in church!!  And I felt like I nailed it! They gave me a day to prepare and I talked about the talk from the last general conference by Elder Mark Bragg!  It was a super good talk!  Y'all should read it!  

So my companion had to leave to go to Guayaquil today to go get his visa fixed so I'm with my boy, my brother, my bff in the mission for 3 days or so!!!  ELDER LAYTON!!!  He's from Utah; Draper, Utah!  And we all know the same people and yeah, now there are 4 gringos in the same house all from Utah for a few days and it's gonna be awesome!!! haha  So yeah, God answers our prayers!  It's so good to be with people from home for a few days now and then!  hahah 

I'm doing swell! Gracias por la amor y ayuda!

Con amor 

Elder Hoole