Catamayo...And More Success.

Note:  Due to the flakiness of the editor, I have gotten behind on the blog.  I will be posting older emails received over the past weeks, but here is the latest.  Hermana Arnold has been transferred to Catamayo, which is in the Mountains and is in the province of Loja.  It sounds like it is a bit safer than the big cities of Guayaquil and Machala.  Thus she has been able to take a few more pictures of the area without the fear of being labeled a tourist and thus becoming a target for muggings

So first off, I know that you may not understand the way things are done in my mission, every mission is different, but there are lot of interesting and cool things that we do.

Overlooking Catamayo

We have planners where we record everything we are going to do, we have our weekly plans and our weekly goals, we have these things called key indicatores, the key indicatores are lessons with members present, other lessons, references and contact, new investigatores, and also due to the circumstances of our mission we add other key indicatores like how many Books of Mormon we give out, how many people we have the reunion sacramental, how many people we invite to be baptized and these little papers called plan of assistance ( these little papers help people to remember to go to church and we have to have members with us in order to for people to be committed to going to church)

Every Tuesday and Friday we meet with our district and our zone to have a meeting, of what we are going to do to help our sectors. We always try to plan to have a certain amount of people go to church and then we make a goal as zone that this is amount of people we want to have by this Sunday.  (I hope this helps people understand a little better, what we do as a mission)

This Sunday, we had about 6 people come to church, and we have 2 baptismal dates for September. There names are Guiermo Lozano and Anthony Cueva. What is great is that there both in  part member families. We also have other investigators who came to church named Mauricio. He's 16 and his mom has been inactive for 25 years. His dad isn't a member...but they are all a really special family, and their next door neighbors are even more family, so if we work with them they can have support...and they all can be converted.

We have been working on Nancy Jaramillo and her family. Her parents have plans to be married the 25th of August!! and on the 30th, Nancy will be baptized with her parents. I know that this will come to pass, and I really am so very happy for them, and I know it is because of our faith and diligence and to help them...I hoping with all my heart!

This week I have learned the importance of charity, the spirit in companionship, and discipleship and that in order to love someone we need to be able to see the way they see, and we need to be able to forgive. At times it is hard for me to do this, but I know that because the Savior forgave, I need to forgive. The lord forgives me for my sins, thus I should forgive others for what kind of things they do to me.

I was reading a talk by Uchtdorf about how we need to enjoy the moments in our life, because this life is short, especially for me, on my mission. He said something about discipleship and he said, ''Let us resolve to follow the savior and work with diligence to become the person we were designed to become. Let us listen to and obey the promptings of the Holy Spìrit. As we do so, Heavenly Father will reveal to us things we never knew about ourselves. He will illuminate the path ahead and open our eyes to see our unknown and perhaps unimagined talents."


I know that this true, and if try to take day by day and try to be like Christ and serve others with all my heart, might, mind and strength, I know that my goals and my gifts can be realized and that I can take every good thing that I learned out of my mission and apply to life. I am really grateful for these experiences. There really is no other place that I'd rather be.

Until next week,

Hermana Arnold