WHAAT!

April 15, 2019

I can’t believe it! The week started normal, working and working, and we get a call from the assistants! (both from Arizona, btw)

“Elders, there is going to be a meeting tomorrow at 9am. Be there with the whole zone. We don´t know for sure what it is going to be about but we think that president, is going to join the two zones together”

So we head off to the Kennedy stake center very early and, my old zone Orquídeas and my current zone, Samborondón got joined together! We are no longer the zone leaders. To this point, everything was chill. Then President, looks towards us and says, “Elder Wilhelm, you can sit with your new companion, Elder Brinkman (from California). Immediately, I hugged Elder Swain (who was a great companion of mine, lo máximo) and I turned and hugged Elder Brinkman. “Elder Wilhelm, your new sector is Samanes, you are going today” President said. — I started my mission there!    

So a couple hours later, we head back to pack up my stuff real quick. whew! We changed our lunch to the Ordoñez family because this would be my last lunch there. We only told them that there was some news we wanted to tell them… We arrive at there house with all my bags. They were all sitting on their front porch, as we walk up, they looked at us sideways, confused why we had my bags. We told them the news and basically the whole time they were all in shock. No one saw it coming. Thanks to Elder Swain who is so great, he kept them all laughing and good spirits because Hna Ordoñez said the moment we would leave she would cry a ton, because she is like a mom to us. So Hno Ordoñez helped us out with the bags to take them to Samanes. Gracias a la Familia Ordoñez y a Elder Swain

And from that point, the week has flown by like the blink of an eye. Wow! Btw, I am District Leader of 4 sisters and 2 other Elders. So that is why you’ll see that I am interviewing people.

Wednesday: Got to know Saidy, from Venezuela, and the daughter, Mayte from the Familia Plaza, who are preparing to get baptized very soon. 

Thursday: We got to know many people that are preparing to get baptized too, like Eduardo and Dayana, Carla (The mother of Sahiana and Gabriel from more than a year ago.  And Guido who loves to talk and loves the gospel even more and is going to get baptized the next week!

Friday: Sharon, who is interested in the gospel. And also Francisco, who is the son of a recent convert from Venezuela. Also Carlos from Venezuela.

Saturday: We had an activity on how to do indexing on familysearch.org in Spanish, given by the Tobar Family! It was super cool to meet up with them again.

We went to LA JOYA because RICHARD and his FAMILY got BAPTIZED! I cannot explain how happy I am that they we able to get their visas, get married, and get baptized!! Apparently there was a lot of opposition for that baptism. Like there was no water in the original church building to fill the baptismal font. So they went to the Pasquales ward. And WOW! The whole family is Richard, Claudia, Rixabet, Narylé, and the baby Míavictoria. So the 4 of them got baptized! And I was able to be a part of Claudia and Narylé´s interview (I think I mentioned that last week) 

Also on Saturday, we were able to go to the Manyelis family, from Venezuela, who live in the exact same house as the family Galindez (from a year ago, remember Reina and Yésica who got baptized, them hehe). I couldn’t believe it because in the family Galindez, there was a mom, the 2 adult daughters, and a man.  And with the Manyelis Family, there is a mom, 2 adult daughters, and a man (their brother). I was astonished, same house, same family, different people. (even the same chair was still there hehe) Anyway. They live really close to the chapel, and they are all working, so we are going to be working with them so they can get baptized. 

 Also on Saturday, there was an interview for the sisters in Guayacanes that I had to do. His name is Anthony. (on first glance, he looks like someone sketchy) but he is one of the most prepared people I have ever interviewed. His testimony was so strong and he knows like half the ward by name.

Sunday: Testimony meeting, I got to say hi to almost everyone by name and everyone was happy and surprised that I was back. The testimonies were amazing, and Elder Brinkman and I also participated. The bishopric is quite excited too. There were many new faces. } 

 We visited a lot of people, too many to mention, we left with Sergio, who is preparing to leave on the mission here pretty soon. He is powerful. He helped us out with many appointments. And he has done a lot of family history. We went to an appointment, and the family didn’t seem too interested, it was very tense. Then we spoke that God blesses families, even extended family (because they take care of the the great grandma and her brother) Somehow we were talking about family history and their family tree, and all the tension went away, they got really exited because they love searching their ancestors. Sergio shared many amazing stories of his family tree about historically significant ancestors of his. They asked how they can search more, we are going to return with a family history consultant soon.

Monday: We went to do interviews with president, he wants me to help the other sectors have success, I will try my best. 

 Elder Brinkman likes cooking so we are going to make some stuff!

If you got to the end of this, you really are awesome! Thanks for the read and until next week! 

Elder Wilhelm