WEEK 20: FELIZ NAVIDAD!

(I already told you guys about Navidad when we skyped so this email isnt going to be super long)

Hope you guys all had a great Christmas! Ours was awesome! We had a Noche Blanca. All the Elders in our stake got together and had a night full of baptisms the 25th! Ill attach some pictures in this email for you guys. It was awesome.

Not going to lie, it was hard to keep in contact with some of our investigators everyday this week. We have a goal to pass for every investigator that has a baptism date everyday..and as of right now thats 11 people. The town here was dead the 24th and 25th, it was so hard to contact and talk to new people because everyone was sleeping from a hard night of partying, or they were out of town. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day we worked until 7:30PM. And when we got back we were told to study Luke Ch. 2. So that part was the same as any given navidad in our family! Elder Diaz and I also bought a pizza to celebrate Christmas Eve, and some members brought us some really good food too. The members out here love us. We have a lot more support from them than when I first arrived here. Its been cool to see the change in their hearts. 

The baptism with Leandro went great as well. Recently we have been working with his mom and other brother to try to get them baptised. But they are always so busy working its hard to find them. Plus Sundays they cant go to church so itll be difficult for them to progress. But this coming Sunday church starts at 8AM so hopefully it will be better for their work schedules! Its also going to be great for us so we can wake up extra early at 5am so we can wake up all of our investigators! We are literally going to have to go around to all of their houses and pound on the door to wake them up because sometimes we help the missionaries with early church do this too. 

I love this gospel! Everyday I have to share it my desire to share it grows stronger. I know as you guys share the gospel with the people in your life, so will your desire to share it with more people! 

I am still waiting on your guys packages! Holy cow COLE is HUGE. When did he get so tall? Hes like the iron giant! 

  

Love you guys!

Elder Solari

WEEK 19: A HOT CHRISTMAS HERE IN ECUADOR!

Hey everyone!

This last week was great! We got a lot of work done and were able to get some new people prepared for baptism dates. We are teaching a couple families and working with some part member families. It is the last week of the year so we are working hard on getting baptism dates set for this week. So far we have one, his name is Leandro. We have been teaching him for awhile, and he is from a part member family. His sister has been a member for awhile and he has been coming to church with her often. We are preparing him for this Saturday! What a Christmas gift for him and for us to be able to be baptized at this time of the year!

Other than that, the heat has been picking up, and for the first time (surprise) I have been getting sunburnt. The sun has been brutal the past week, and since I am done with the training we get to leave the house earlier everyday when the sun is stronger! 

We have been teaching the family Aguilar these last two weeks. And just the other day we had a really cool experience. We were talking with them about bringing them to church and everything. And she shared her testimony with us. That she has been receiving so many blessings in her life since we have started visiting them. That her Dad sent them money for Christmas, they were able to get a free fridge from a friend, all of this really cool stuff has been happening to them. And she told us that she KNOWS its because of the gospels influence in her life. And she shared with us that she knows the church is true! We are preparing this family to be baptized the 23rd of January so keep an eye on that!

We had a cool zone meeting today. We got together and had pizza and played some UNO for PDAY. I guess thats what all the missionaries here usually do on P day. So it was pretty fun. We also now have 2 hermanas in our zone. They were sent here to die (meaning they both only have 2 months of their mission left). Not die literally. So now we have 12 missionaries in our zone and in one of the other sectors there are 4 missionaries working. This is also our last Sunday at 3pm in the afternoon, after the new year the church is going to start at 8am. I am not sure how good that is going to be for the ward haha.

As far as skype. My comp and I are going to be doing our calls around 1 or 2PM Ecuador time the 25th. We probably are not going to call the day before to confirm because it costs a lot of money so just have skype up and ready! But if for some reason there are problems we will call Christmas Day to make sure everything is ready to go. I think that we are 2 or 3 hours ahead.

I wanted to bare my testimony about enduring to the end. Because we have a lot of inactives and less actives out here in Ecuador. We need to be baptized and get on the straight and narrow path. And after this, the work never ends, we have to progress and perfect ourselves in everyway that we can. Its called Enduring to the end for a reason! We need to be 100% committed to the goal of eternal life and inheriting the kingdom of God. If you know or have friends that are struggling with this, help them out! We cant let anybody slip away! We need to do everything we can to help them or we will be held accountable as well 

Jacob 1:19

And we did magnify our office unto the Lord, taking upon us the responsibility, answering the sins ofthepeople upon our own heads if we did not teach them theword of God with all diligence; wherefore,by laboring with our might their blood might not come upon; otherwise their blood would come upon ourgarments, and we would not be found spotless at the lastday.

I love you guys! Merry Christmas!

Elder Solari

WEEK 18: CHRISTMAS TIME IN THE SUMMERTIME!

Hey family and friends! Not sure if all of you know this or not but its summer time in Ecuador! And its super hot! And its almost Christmas which is weird but awesome!

We had 2 baptisms this week! The cool thing is that Ive been here to teach them both every single lesson with my papa Elder Tomlinson and my padraste Elder Diaz! The first is Jesus Molina, and he was a reference from our ward mission leader. We have been teaching him for over two months and he was baptized on Saturday! We are working on getting him the priesthood and he is going to baptize his wife in the next several weeks! Its been difficult because her mom that they live with is very catholic and does not want her daughter to be baptized. But hes 23 years old so we have been working hard to make her excited about it. The other baptism was Hermana Olivia Peralta! Her we found though our own efforts. And it has been a long way. We have been working with her almost since I first arrived here. And her challenge at first was that she needed to feel prepared. And she finally was ready and I got to baptize her! They are both going to make such strong members. They were also both confirmed yesterday! 

We have been doing a lot of tracting lately. There are so many inactivos, so we have a directory of the ward and have been finding these people, and getting references and finding more new people to teach. We are also working on reactivating some families, but its difficult because one of the main reasons are inactive is because they are upset at someone in the ward. Or they were offended by something someone said. Its honestly the worst reason to be inactive. People out here are weird in that way. They need to understand that its the doctrine of the church thats perfect, not the people.

P day today was pretty cool. We have been having a lot of success here in our sector so we got permission to go to the mall for an hour or so! Pretty cool because usually its hard to get permission for the mall. I bought some ties, a watch, and some McDonalds and Cinnabon of course! 

As far as your studying with Preach My Gospel, keep a study journal. We have a saying in the mission ´Whatever you dont write down youre going to forget´´ Thats roughly the translation, its sounds a lot better in Espanol. Its hard to write you guys in English because I havent spoken it in over 3 weeks hahaha. But I guess thats a good thing because I feel semi fluent in the language! 

About calling you guys on christmas, were going to be skyping at a members house! So I need the skype username you guys are going to use. And my companion is going to call you guys the day before to confirm at what time were going to call. So I also need a phone number we can reach you on on Christmas Eve. Better practice your Spanish mom! And it is only one hour, the mission is pretty strict on that...but I am excited to talk to you guys for a whole hour! And its all going to be in Spanish!

Nate and Aria are engaged? I saw that one coming. Thats cool to hear about how the ward at home is growing fast, and how there are so many future missionaries in the ward!

Theres a new really cool video the church has on lds.org. You guys should go watch it! Its about Jesus Christ, and his birth. I know there are a ton of well made videos of the new testament and His life also. I wish I could watch them but you guys need to! He is our Savior and Redeemer! Every single one of you guys! Be grateful during this season and spread the love and the gospel!

Love you mom!

Elder Solari

WEEK 17: TEMPLE TRIP

This week was really good out here in the field. We got our Christmas present from the mission this week. Tuesday we got to go to the temple with the other 4 zones here in Guayaquil. We did a session and it was great. I really enjoyed it because I feel like it made us a lot closer as a zone. Because before Ive been through with just family. I know that we were blessed in the work this last week because of this trip to the temple. And President Torres was also there. We went to the store there on the grounds and I bought some stuff and we had lunch in the cafeteria there. And i ran into my papa! (E. Tomlinson) So that was fun. We also took some zone pictures while we were there at the temple

Then Thursday we had a Christmas devotional in the stake center here with the mission choir. There was a cool program and we sung some songs too. The President also was there and brought all the missionaries a card from the first presidency and a cool holder for our temple reccommend. There was some candy in it as well.  It should be on the mission facebook page, the video of the devotional...and I should be in it. Its funny because Im the only person that has a navy suit. You should find it and share it on the blog and on facebook.

This week we worked real hard and were blessed. This coming week we have 2 baptisms and several more baptism dates set up. Jesus and Olivia. We have been preparing them for some time. The cool thing about Jesus is that we are preparing his spouse as well. We are baptising him about 2 weeks before he wife so he can baptise her! How cool is that! He is so excited to have this opportunity. Once again, we are working hard with the references. References are great, especially when the family helps prepare them before they hand the reference to the missionaries. You guys should try to think of someone you can prepare as a reference for the sisters in our ward. 

Every P day we go and eat Chinese food with our district. Its this place here called Chifa Canton. We go with our district for lunch and get this huge place of rice (surprise) chicken and vegetables! And cola of course. I am also starting the last week of the 12 week training program! I am almost done being a greenie and am ready to go out and be a senior companion! The mission is awesome I am absolutely loving it. 

(Can you make it my facebook cover picture) Picture of our zone, Elder Diaz, my companion is on the far left. The pin everyone has is the mission pin. After you finish your 12 weeks training program, the President gives you an exam, and if you pass it you get the pin to wear on your suit coat! The two Elders on the far right are my zone leaders as of right now. Theyre great guys.

Tell Fred to send me an email! Id love to hear from him and about BYU football and how his workouts are going! 

And remember during this Holiday season the real reason why we celebrate Christmas! Its not about the gifts, the food, the family that is visiting...Its about the birth of our savior Jesus Christ. I challenge every one of you to serve this Christmas and help other people feel the Love of the Savior in their lives. I love you guys! Merry almost Christmas!

Elder Solari