Hey. Hey you.  Yeah you. No, not you! You!  Yeah you with the face!  Gonna eat that donut?

Ladeez and Gents its been a good week.  To start off, Ive been having lots of weird dreams lately, but one of them was of my companion.  I dreamt that he was in the movie Planet of the Apes and the main monkey had his face....Never gonna forget that one:)

The investigator Jessica keeps coming to church and is progressing for her date on the 27th of this month!  We are super excited for her.  Every time we ask her about her baptism she says that she is still 100% sure.  We just have a few principles left to teach her then she can have her interview!  We were a little bit saddened though becuase Melissa live literally 5 feet outside of our sector and we cant teach her...We had to pass the reference :/  She´ll be baptized for sure though.

Since we are working in two wards we get the chance to work with lots of less actives.  I think we are working with about 30 or so.  About 15 of them come to church, but because of the size of our sector we cant teach them all in one week.  March is going to be a killer month here in Comite and Collaloma.  There are some investigators that are in the process of knowing the church, so we hope to see some success there.  Oh! and we may have found the family of 4!  We found them contacting and the dad let us in after some persuading.  The return appointment fell, but we made another one for this Thursday!  Hope its them!

So the sacrifice thing we are doing is taking a toll a bit. I now know why they call it a sacrifice.  Me and Elder Ureta wake up way early and are always tired.  Somethimes I study standing up.  I also found a good use for the nerf guns mom sent me for Christmas!  When Elder Ureta falls asleep, I go RAMBO on him!  Its the funniest thing ever :)

Elder Holland is already here. Gonna see him Wednesday.  Chau Chau!

Elder Lomeli

Milk in a...bag?

Car = Our Dream

Sopapo

"Elder: Hermana ___________, will you follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized?
Hermana: Is that the answer you got?
Elder: Yeah.....
Hermana: Look, youre great guys, and spending time together to learn this stuff has been wonderful,                but as far as a baptism is concerned, I havent gotten the same answer.
Elder: Who have you been praying to?
Hermana: Im kidding, of course Ill get baptized!"

Well, if you cant find out by this little quote, we got some people headin to the waters of baptism!  Jessica is 18 and this Sunday we did a tour of the chapel with her.  We left her to pray in the sacrament room, and she was in there for about 15 minutes.  When we went in, she said that she had been done praying for about 10 minutes and started to cry.  She recieved an answer that the church is true and is preparing herself to be baptized the 27th of February.  The other investigator is Melissa who is 20.  She just moved in from another ward and was taking the missionary lessons there.  She is super prepared and determined to be baptized.  She is also preparing herself for the 27th of February.

We have also started up again this faith in February thing.  This year I have chosen to sacrifice something very important to me: sleep.  I have chosen to sacrifice 1 hour of sleep and use that hour as an additional personal study hour.  So this year, we hope to see lots of miracles in March, becuase last year there werent that many baptisms or rescues.  Itll change :)

Right now in all South America is the holiday CARNAVAL.  Its pretty much a three day long water, oil, flour, dirt, paint fight.  So we need to be in our house unless we have set appointments, but we still get our share on the fun.  We may or may not have dumped a bucket of water on some teenage boys walking home from school.  But.....we missed.  Epic fail.  Oh and I also learned the hard way this week why we should always bring our own toilet paper in our bags.  No Hermana, Im not going to us leaves you took out of the forest in front of your house. 

The Elder Holland countdown is at 9 days! 

I learned this week that in Chile the word for plunger is "sopapo".  The Elder said its just cuz of the sound it makes.  So true.

Elder Lomeli


Just ONE of the many massive hills in our sector
We make bus drivers mad and pay with 25 pennies 😏

¿Mande?

Fams and Frenz,

Kind of a long week let me tell ya!  Well to make it short, we were on our feet almost all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday looking for that family of 4.  We werent able to have too much luck.  But, there were a few investigators that came to church and we were able to make citas to go and visit them.  Lets hope that goes somewhere!  Its a little rough, but we wont surrender.

So, a little more on Elder Ureta.  He is from Huancayo Peru and is 23.  He has 7 brothers and sisters and is the first missionary in his family.  He is a convert of about 9 years.  He is always really happy and smiling.  I think its going to be a good change.  Another good thing is that he likes encebollado, so we`ve eaten that three times this week.  Not as good as in the coast, but still delicious.

I was studying a lot this week about the attribute of Chist: Virtue.  The famous scripture of virute is in D&C 121:45-46 and that has been my ponderizing scripture for the week.  We need to strive to have clean and pure thoughts always and to be worthy to stand in the presence of God at all times.  If we are virtuous, we will have confidence in the presence of God.  

Sorry this is a short letter, but not a whole lot happened this week.  We need to go on a treasure hunt to find Jessica and Ricardo becuase we havent seen them in forever.  The hunt begins!

Elder Lomeli

Me and Elder Ureta

Cotopaxi`s gettin hot

I Wanna Kick It

🎶Mini missionary here born and raised,
And I think its about time to set the world ablaze!
And all I ever wanted to do, get a suit pair of shoes,
And leave for TWO!
If Im in the North Pole o` someplace sunny,
I`ll give Amulek and Alma a run fo their money! 🎵

Well peeps, another change has come and gone.  We finished our last cita and it was raining last night.  We call the district leader and he told us to go home and wait for the changes.  What does he do?  Comes at 5:00 in the morning!  We thanked him by throwing a water balloon at him while it was still dark.  Dont worry though, the rain had him more wet than the balloon.  My new comp is Elder Ureta!  And you guessed it! He is from PERU!  Woohoo another one.  Elder Roney stayed in Quito, just to a part with more malls and things to buy.

We have been contacting and looking for families all week, and still we havent found "the one".  We are getting close though, I feel it.  We do have an investigator named Jessica that has a date for the 6th of February.  She is progressing very nicely.  Ricardo on the other hand, hasnt been keeping his committments so we had to drop his date.  We wont give up on him though.

So this week me and Elder Roney threw tons of water balloons at dogs (we are prepping for carnaval) and we got some good reactions.  And we always see this  dog with a bloody, pussy, popped tumor on it hind end.  Its gross.  No such thing as neutering dogs here.  They have the hippy motto.

We had another week of terrible food choices.  They were delcious nonetheless.  We bought a burger every other night and made coconut chocolate smoothies at home to go with it.  A member served a mission in Mexico and made us a plate called "discada".  Its basically a taco with beef, pork, bacon, ham, chorizo, and hot dogs.  It was heavenly, and yes I have the recipe :)

Ok time to be a little spiritual.  This week in sacrament meeting a speaker said a quote that I like a lot.  He said "God wont give us revelation until He is sure that we are going to obey it."  That is very true.  We a lot of times ask for help from God, but our hearts arent willing to obey quite yet, so He witholds it for a time.  Gives a new perspective to fact that God answers prayers in His own due time.  I know that God answers prayers.  I know that sometimes we need to be the answer oursleves.  I know God loves us and will always be there to guide us.

Have a great week! Oh and BTW Elder Holland is coming to the mish soon :)

Elder Lomeli

Only the best English Tutors bring banana splits for Latinos when they pass level 11 :)

Discada

Burger with cocochoco shake :)

Where's the Beef?

Herro erryone!

This week was pretty dang good let me tell ya.  We are still going pretty well with Ricardo, but he has some trouble reading and praying.  The exact opposite of the rest of the investigators I have had on the mission.  They normally dont come to church.  We just have to try to help him have real desieres to accept the Gospel, and not come just for the girlfriend....We are optomistic though.  We still havent found the family of 4, but we will not give up the search.  We might have to put an Amber Alert out here in Quito for that family haha.  But we WERE able to rescue a family of 4 this week!

So we had a special training this week from President Richardson, and he talked about how to resist temptation.  He called it 30 Seconds of Courage.  There are temptations all around us, all over the world, to every one of us.  He said to 1.Stand up 2. Breathe deaply for 30 seconds 3. While breathing think:"Who am I? Where to I want to go?  If I do this, will it take me closer to my goal?"  So I echo the advice of President and invite all to use this when we are tempted.

We also had a special conference with Elder Godoy of the First Quorum of the Seventy.  He changed a lot of things up in the mission and put a lot more responsibility on the shoulders of each companionship.  He also told us to not focus so much on the appearance of the people and just think of them as children of God, who need the Gospel.  Another thing he said is to focus on the things that really matter to to make sure we share the "meat" of the Gospel.  "Wheres the Beef?" was his theme for the conference.

Elder Godoy asked Elder Roney for an interview after the conferene...lucky.  Elder Godoy is from Brasil and asked me in english where I was from.  Of course out of habit I responded in spanish from Cedar Hills, Utah (Factory).  He knew right where it was! Said he`d come visit some day haha. I was able to see lots of good friends and old companions this week to it was fun to joke around with them for a bit. 

We just got back from going to the offices today becuase Elder Roney recieved ANOTHER pouch.  The buses and troleys here in Quito are nuts and there is no room to move.  You get the picture.  You get poked, squeezed, licked, or grabbed whether you want to or not. Its gross.  Other than that our week went pretty normal. Getting ready for changes next week.  

Hags,

Elder Lomeli

We just taught him last week 😭

🎶Party in the city where the heat is on!🎵

Hello!

DIstrict Leader: "Elder Lomeli, how was your day today?"
Elder Lomeli: "I threw `bunch Elder Roney`s love mails off the bridge".
District Leader: "Elder Roney, how bout you?"
Elder Roney: "SHAKE`N`BAKE!"   (Ricky Bobby)

People of the world that are reading this letter today will be happy to know that we have a person with a baptismale date!  His name is Ricardo and he has a date for the 30th of January.  He is 20 and has already come to church 3 times, we just havent been able to go teach him.  He is willing to learn and we are really pushing him to read and pray about the Book of Mormon.  We still havent found that family of 4 but we keep looking and are grateful for your prayers!

So I dont know about you guys, but our sector is the mother of all hills.  I am losing weight somehow.  My pants were tighter two months ago and I think I am going to have to send them in to get fixed AGAIN.  Oh Im going to be a toothpick when I get home.  I have NO IDEA how its happening becuase I kid you not for the last week, Elder Roney and I have eaten icecream and chicken nuggets for breakfast.  Dont freak out, but when you are poor and still wanna party, you arent going to ask about healthy food :)  I will eat better from now on Mom, dont worry!

This week as a mission we are going to have a special training from President Richardson on Tuesday, and then later in the week, Elder Godoy of the Seventy will come and address us.  Gonna be an action packed week with the Spirit.  We will let you know how it goes, because this is the first time I will meet a General Authority while on the mission.  Im pumped!

Nothing much happened this week.  We just go really wet everynight and had to run up and down hills to make it home as dry as possible.  Just the missionary life and its awesome!  All is well here in Quito and the work is moving foward!  I love this work and love being a missionary!  It has been the happiest time of my life!  I know this church is true!

To conclude, I will share with you Elder Roney and Elder Lomeli`s battle cry!:.............................."Woo I`m white!"

Have a great week!

Elder Lomeli

Zone volleyball and tacos acivity.

2016

"C`mon investigada, where ya hide?" "Mmhmm....Lomeli and Roney....gett`n it"

Woohoo New Year 2016!  Bring it baby!  We gonna baptize da whole world!  So first off Ill tell ya how we spent New Years.  Yes, we were obedient and were in the house for LOCKDOWN at 5:00.  We totally redid our area book and went to be like any normal companionship.  But, we set our alarm for 11:50 so we could be up and celebrate the New Year with the rest of the world.  Holy cow is it awesome here.  Tons and tons and tons of fireworks all across the city (we can see maybe 1/5 of the city).  And at 11:55 people take out their dummies and bash them with sticks.  At midnight they light em up and the whole street had fires all over.  It was awesome.  The music and fireworks lasted until like 6:00 in the morning.

With the holidays and stuff it made it a little bit hard to find people to teach, but we are ready for the coming week to make it awesome.  We have recieved a ton of references so we are going to find our family of 4 here soon!  

So on Sunday one of our wards decided to continue with the holiday celebration.  Instead of water in the sacrament trays, they decided to be fancy and put Guitig(carbonated water) in the cups.  They didnt have bubbly I guess, but it was a shock nonetheless haha.

Today for Pday we went as a district to a volcano.  The one that is about to explode!  Just kidding...but we went to one that is "dead" and there is a town inside of it! It was crazy, but we could easily establish a branch INSIDE a volcano!  Find something new everyday.  Oh the taxi driver totally ripped us off for the color of our skin.

Life is good.  Especially Cinnamon life with extra milk.  Oh and missionary life is good too.  I am learning tons about the principles of the Gospel and now I just got to apply them.  That is my New Years goal.  I love being a missionary.  I invite all to read Isaiah 41:10 this week.  Gonna be a good year!

Elder Lomeli

Step into my office

The street is on fire!

Inside the volcano :)

Turned into a Bob Marley dummy