Elizabeth's Baptism

Hey everyone in the blogosphere,

This week really has not been the most productive of weeks in every aspect, because we were focusing on one of our investigators Elizabeth Merchan. This week she did end up getting baptized though, but it was a pain. We went over to her house Monday night to get permission from her older sister who did not want to give it. Her sister is 23 and she is 15. Her solution was that we let her call her dad who lives in the states that they call once or twice a month, but other than that Elizabeth has never met him. We decided to come back Tuesday so she could call, but the dad did not answer. The same thing happened Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday she got a hold of him but right before she got the answer the line cut out. We still planned on the baptism for Saturday, just hoping she could get a hold of him in the morning. She did, he said yes and everything ended up working out, but it was a very stressful week. Today we had a fun time with Profaizer and Fa´asa and walked up a hill. it actually had a real cool view of the city, but man it tired us out. The best part about today is it hailed on us...hard and the hail stones were the size of  peas pretty much and it hurt. But that is today and this week, sorry it is not much, but other than that it was pretty much some contacting and not much more.

I love you all and look forward to next week,

Elder Jesse William McCammon

  Mirador De Turi which said it’s the best view of the City

 Elizabeth's Baptism Day

 On their hike up to Mirador de Turi

Ok so this USU shirt used to fit snuggly around my boys middle...now there is plenty of room on each side!!!  He's wasting away!!!

Full week of Teaching

This week has been a fun week of lessons. we have had to do pretty much no contacting for the past week we have just had strait up appointments. It is great the only big let down is that we have two people who can be baptized this Saturday, but one, Cesar, still wants to postpone until the 22 of June, but elder Christensen and I think that we can get him moved up to the 8th of June. The other, Elizabeth Merchan, wants to be baptized this weekend and all we need to do is go get permission from her sister tonight and we will be having another baptism in Barrio Tarqui this week. I am so excited! It always seems like there is so much time that passes in between baptisms it is ridiculous, but this week has been great. We keep having investigators that keep showing up to church and that we can start teaching. We just had two more show up this week so we have more lessons coming our way. We are doing good and the success is coming along pretty darned good.

I will have a longer one next week I just don't have my agenda in the cyber this week or I would go more in depth. I love you bunches mom, beat dad in golf!

love your favorite elder,

Elder Jesse William McCammon

The family that we made cake for on mothers day

 Lunch we had one day because our Mamitas daughters husband works for a sea food place.
We had fish ceviche, fried squid, fried fish, and fried shrimp.

Elder Christensen eating a mini fried octopus that was in our food tray

Our talk on Sunday was nice with Jesse, we didn't talk a long time his call was only 50 min and he said he had to go.  Its amazing how fast that time went, its also nice to hear his voice. He talked we talked but didn't say much of anything I don't think.  His health seems to be fine, we'll keep praying that he's healed so he won't be sent home though!!!  Here is his letter from Monday.

Funny story to start.
Monday- we had a fun p-day and hung out with some other missionaries and had some tacos that we made with them. After we had a visit with two of our investigators Ana and Elizabeth Merchan. Elizabeth wants to hear the message, but her sister Ana is too indecisive to say yes. So we committed them to pray and we would come back on Friday and talk to them about how their prayers went. as we were leaving we saw a car that had driven up on a rising barrier that separates two lanes and there were like ten people trying to push it down, because the tires were not touching. It just needed the lords help to get it off, because once we got there it came right down.

Tuesday- Started off today with a district meeting which went the same as almost all the others, "how many baptisms do you have over the next four weeks." Then we went and talked to a friend of Elizabeth who lives in the ward to see if she could help the process of wanting to hear the missionaries. She said that the last time she talked to Elizabeth she was really excited to be talking with the missionaries again, but was worried that her sister would not let her. We ended up setting up an appointment in the friends house for Friday  Then we went and had some dinner with one of the members who comes with us to visits.

Wednesday-Today we got chewed out by our zone leaders because we had low numbers last week along with four other sectors. then we went to visits that we had set up, we got stood up on a couple of them. The one we expected to be the best was with an old investigator who had a date for baptism, but it was hard to find times to teach, but her schedule is a little more free so we had a visit with her and it lasted almost 5 minutes because she had to go, but we did commit her to church.

Thursday- Today we ended up going on splits with the zone leaders. I went to their sector and they came to mine, because one of them wanted to help put some baptism dates in our sector. Not much happened when i was in their sector just a lot of proselyting  they did end up putting a date with the person they wanted. It turns out that he was a catholic missionary, but he loves the church alot, so that is pretty cool.

Friday- Weekly planning and we actual had stuff to plan because we had some names this week. After we went to Noelias house to teach Elizabeth and she almost accepted a date but wanted to talk to her sister first. After they both decided to come to a lesson that we had with a recent convert so they could invite her to an activity in the church. so we got to teach Elizabeth a little bit more. After we proselyted for a little bit then went to Elizabeth's house to talk to her sister Ana, but nobody was there, so we just proselyted on the way home.

Saturday- Today we had a late lunch so we did not get out for a while.
when we did we pretty much just proselyted until 8 when we went back to the house of Elizabeth and Ana and they were there this time. We ended up getting permission from Ana for Elizabeth to be taught and baptized but she does not want anything in her life right now.

Sunday- We had six investigators in church today, four of which we did not expect so we set up appointments with them for this next week. Then had lunch with some gringos from Canada that are in our ward.
Called our families and then helped the member that comes with us cook a cake for his mother.

That is the week of Elder McCammon in Cuenca


He finally sent me pictures of his apartment...this one seems a lot nicer than the last one, although it still looks like there isn't an oven.

Doorbells, mics and electric fences...oh my!!

Dear Family

P-Day. Today we had lunch with some other missionaries in our district. After we went to this church which is like the biggest and oldest church in Cuenca. It was really cool. Only one room though and it was giant. I attached a picture of the outside, the front on the inside. The other picture is of a modern art museum we went to today as well. The picture i sent is of a fork and spoon made out of forks and spoons. So far today has been pretty good. Now to recap the week... This week has not been the funnest week at all. This week has been straight ringing doorbells and talking to microphones. In this entire week we rang over 500 doorbells. The upside was that by Saturday we started to actually find people and we have names in our agendas again. Then last night we finally put two more baptismal dates for May 25th. Hopefully we start having more baptisms in the up and coming weeks. But I love Cuenca. The mountains everywhere are beautiful it is a nice type of weather here and not overpowering heat like Guayaquil. The hardest part about Cuenca is that everyone here is Catholic, and not Catholic like my parents attend church Catholic, but real Catholic. So we work hard here, but without references the mission here is really hard. Here is my funny story... So as we were contacting this week we ring the doorbell on the house. We had heard people in the house so we thought maybe they just did not hear the doorbell, so we rang it again. The next thing we knew the electric fence had been turned on and started to buzz. Somebody was terrified enough of the missionaries to turn on the electric fence... or they wanted to scare us off, but it just made me chuckle. With mothers day i do not know yet, for some reason it is believed that it is a better idea for us to know Saturday and call you for all of two minutes to coordinate a time. I do not know where that logic comes from, but whatever. This week has been a great week for me and Elder Christensen to talk though, due to the lack of teaching, but we are pretty good friends.

I also lied last week about the picture of the city, that is Cuenca not Guayaquil.

That is the week of Elder McCammon in the Frio ciudad of Cuenca. I ended up getting a cold so i did end up having to buy a sweater. I actually liked the cold, but i do not think that my body did.

 So I found this on google and added it so you could see the whole church.

 The rest of these were taken by Jesse.

I love and miss all of you, but until next week love Elder McCammon