Mothers Day in Loja (lo-ha)

It was so good to see him yesterday.  He said he's got 30 Sundays left. He is enjoying the area but he still doesn't have electricity through much of his apartment and absolutely no hot water.  He said it takes him 10 minutes to shower...9 of it is staring at the water trying to get up the courage to get in!!!

He told me how much he hates writing letters and that he's not great at keeping a journal.  He went to speak to Cierra and said her name then stopped and said, wait is that how its pronounced?  He's used to rolling his r's not a hard r like in her name...it was funny.  I found out he actually slept in a hammock for 9 weeks but sold it because it didn't fit in his luggage, plus it hurt his back.  He now owns a machete. The town that he's in is in a deep valley and there is basically only one main road that goes right through the middle. Its a bit nicer of an area than in the city.  When he goes to Saraguro they are to stay in the city limits because outside the wall is dangerous!!!  LOL!!! (there's no wall but I thought it sounded better!)  I said do they have guns...no machetes, that's how I found out he owns one!!! I think the going back and forth between Saraguro and Loja is rough and gets tiring being on a bus all the time. We talked for an hour and laughed, he's happy and having great experiences.  Much better than the Skype at Christmas where the people in the room were distracting him. All in all a good conversation and it filled up my bucket til I get to see him in December, he said that he was told his release date is Dec 7th.  Can't wait, but I wouldn't wish it to pass quickly for anything I want him to love and enjoy every minute!!!

Dear Family

So i do not know what to say this week it was a pretty long week. i am glad that i got to talk to you yesterday, but the week did not have anything eventful pass. i have the cold. and today i was lucky enough to have a flu shot. The family we are teaching was working a lot this week which made it hard to teach them all at the same time and it also made it so only three of the kids were able to attend church this week, but one of them was Jonathan who did not attend last week so at least he has now come and seen what church is like he is more excited to come next week. This saturday the apartment building in where we do our church meetings we are going to clean and paint and make it look all nice so i will be sure to take pictures because i know how much that you like them. I hope that you had a happy mothers day mom and that all the mothers out there that are reading this had a great mothers day as well. 

In my scripture study this week i have started reading about alma and amulek. how when alma first went to go teach the people and they rejected him he was sad that the people rejected him, but he continued on his way to keep teaching others. then the lord told him that there was still more to be done in that city and that is when he went back and found amulek and they started to teach the people.

I feel that there are alot of times that as missionaries or members we may become discourage when we are not finding the people that we would like to help. and we may just try to go on continuing our lives, but we need to make sure we are always listening to the lord so we can find those who are ready. Finding them was never meant to be easy. if it was everyone would belong to  the same church, but the lord always prepares people and we need to be ready to help them. So as Walt Disney has said, "Keep Moving Forward"

I love you all and hope that you have a great week and i hope every one had a great mothers day.

Elder Jesse William McCammon

So this is the entrance into Loja City.  This is what wikipedia say's 

• Puerta de la Ciudad

The gates of the city are modeled after the Coat of Arms of the city, presented by King Felipe II of Spain in 1571. The gate is on Av. Gran Colombia, and houses four galleries which show contemporary Lojano artwork, and a cafeteria and gift shop. A stunning view of the city is found by climbing the clock tower. Loja contains a number of historic churches; the city's board of tourism has approached finding them in a novel manner. Beginning at the Puerta de la Ciudad, one of the first thing a tourist will notice is a large orange stripe painted on the sidewalk. Following the stripe takes the interested on a self-guided tour of the main historic churches and areas of Loja.

He didn't say but I think this is in Jipiro Park too.

 So he told me this train is the internet cafe where he emails me while in Loja.  It looks like kind of a cool park that it sits in too, its called Jipiro Park!

The tale of two cities...Loja and Saraguro

I have not got package yet, i do have places to look at, i still have not gone and taken pictures, as for the food i do not take too many pictures of, i feel weird taking pictures of food. I do not cook too much. In the morning i have been doing pancakes with nutella, eggs and bacon. Food i normally do...top ramen but they sell pancake mix here so why not.

so this week has been better we have found a pretty cool family in Saraguro that came with us to church on Sunday. They are the Moposita family and they are preparing to be baptized on the 31st of may. You have Pedro Moposita(40), his wife maria Moposita(35), and their children Jonathan(13), Marixa(11), Miguel(10), and Erika(8). they all, except for Jonathan, came to church on Sunday. The two sector situation makes it hard to do, i am in two cities, one in Saraguro out side of Loja and i am in Loja. Monday we are here in Loja, Tuesday Saraguro, Wednesday Loja, Thursday Saraguro, Friday Loja, Saturday Loja. On Sundays we drop our investigators in Loja off at church at 8am then leave to go catch the bus for Saraguro so we can set up the room/chapel and pick up our investigators before church at 11. The church in Saraguro is weird because there are only a few members. They give prayers, they don't have priesthood, so we bless the sacrament, give the talks, lead the music, and teach gospel principles. The members in Loja of the branch that Saraguro pertains too (because it is only an extension of the branch in Loja that is why we have the both) do not go very often they think its too much church, so they just told me yesterday that i am the 3rd counselor of the branch presidency so they can have someone preside when they are not there. 

This week has been great. In my studies these past two week of the Book of Mormon in Spanish i have made it almost to Alma. one of the last things i read was about Abinidi when he was preaching to Noah. King Noah almost changed his mind about killing Abinidi and letting him go, but he ended up listening to his priests and decided no, we need to be ready for peer pressure in our lives because we should always remember who we are and what we stand for.

I love you all have a good week.

Elder McCammon

No pictures this week :(

Another Transfer!!!

sorry the letter did not get to you last week there were problems with the internet, but i will resend what i can remember from it.

Like i said that on Monday night the other companionship had changes so it was up to us to visit all of the people that they were teaching and keep teaching them. one of there investigators was at a point where he could get baptized so we called the zone leaders so they could come and do his interview and he passed as you saw by the baptizm fotos. in the week we had a lot of success and we put a lot of baptizm dates as you saw from the list that i sent to you. we also had about 10 people in the church so that was pretty great because it was a satellite stake conference to all of Ecuador and we heard from Elder Holland and Elder Scott and Elder Scott talked in spanish the entire time and Elder Holland at the beginning and in his testimony the rest was dubbed. then sunday night the zls wanted to do all of the baptism interviews because on tuesday president was planing on having an early zone leader conference because President Juan A. Uceda of the seventy was doing a lot of training in the mission this week and so president wanted to make sure all the zone leaders were ready. so on sunday they did the interview of Narcissa and monday they did the other interviews and they all passed. so that was last week, i also finished the book of mormon in spanish last week and now i am doing a speed read to see if i can finish it in two weeks.

This weeks letter:

so monday night i was on an interchange with the zone leaders and i was at their house and they get a phone call that says elder mccammon has changes and needs to be in the machala terminal at 4 o clock so at about 10:30 i got to leave the zone leaders house and come back to mine so i could pack and get going. i got to Guayaquil at about nine found my companion and we got on our nine hour bus ride to Loja. I am back in the mountains how cool is that. The only problem is that  we have two sectors one in the city and one outside the city in Saraguro and we go there two times a week, so this week i went once there stayed here one day the other day we had our training with President Uceda and saturday other meetings in the church. so we did not have too much luck on sunday with people. the other hard part about being here is because we have two sacrament meetings one in Loja at 8 and the other in Saraguro at 11 with about a two hour bus ride between the two so we have to do splits with another companionship that is here in the same ward as us but this week has been a short frustrating week. but it will start getting better soon.
In our training President Uceda talked to us how as missionaries we need to start using preach my gospel and the preach my gospel videos more, because they will help us in our teaching and we need to make sure as missionaries we are teaching the people not just lessons. he was also telling us how we as missionaries need to start working with members more and the members with the missionaries. he explained that the missionaries are here to teach not to find. Missionaries lose a lot of their mission in looking for people to teach. it is the job of the members to find people for the missionaries to teach. there is a ward in Guayaquil that is being split pretty much every year because the members find people for the missionaries. and the missionaries there have about 15 baptisms a month in that ward. About all of them endure to the end and the missionaries do not contact...ever. i thought that that was really cool. i would love to be able to see that in any ward in our mission. but so that is my week at least 15 hours in a bus this week but hey this next week should be a lot better.

love elder mccammon

This is information I gleaned from writing back and forth:

Elder Jeske (Je Ski) who was his MTC companion in Provo, is now his Zone leader, so that's pretty cool. He told me his new companion is from Bolivia but he didn't give me his name.  He likes to work hard and he said they seem to be getting along pretty good.

He said to google pictures of Loja and Saraguro, those are his new areas, very pretty and I think he'll be happier there where its cooler. He said the missionaries there before were not teaching anyone, he said sometimes life sucks...but he's going to change that! I was surprised that he got transferred again since he just barely got changed last month, so I asked and he said...i would not say too much, but that is one of the reasons i have taken out a lot of money this month because this month i have had two changes a lot of taxi and now i am supporting my companion this week because we have not gotten money yet in the month and i also bought the jersey at the beginning of the month and monopoly so that is where the money has gone, i am not good with money and the situation has not helped but may i will not take money out from the house so this next month i do not want you to put money in so i do not have the temptation. because i need to get better. i will only ask if it is an emergency. i have not got pics with my comp nor house yet but the house is huge there is a big kitchen two big living rooms to big  bedrooms and 3 normal bedrooms a laundry room and 3 bathrooms all with cold water and when we installed hot water the other day we blew a breaker and now half the electricity in the house does not work. showering in 40 degree water...great..That's a joke... it sucks. I asked if it was a lot like Cuenca there, he liked Cuenca and said it felt like home. Yes it does seem a lot like home i love the mountains and all of the beauty. i love being here in the mountains it is a lot easier to see the stars. like i said i need to start using my money better so this next month do not give me the option unless i ask please. I hope it snows here! 

Two pictures, He didn't clarify whether this was Loja or Saraguro
[Loja]

He made me laugh, his companion told him there was a place with a lot of windmills and he thought it was cool to go see, so him and Jess went there and Jesse said, "there's only 11?!" He said they are much smaller than the ones here too.

Guess its a picture only week!

Not sure exactly what happened. Chatting with Jesse for a few minutes, he told me he had to go but he just sent to separate emails, 1 with all the people they are teaching and trying to prepare for baptism...there are 16 and another that was his letter.  I still have yet to recieve the letter it disappeared.  He was writting it, I saw it in the drafts, but now its not anywhere...not to me, not even in his sent items folder, nowhere in his email anywhere...its stuck in cyberspace somewhere!!!

Here are the pictures he sent me though!!!

The other set of Elders in his area left so they finished of their baptism of Keven P., the gentleman in this picture is the 2nd Counselor in his ward Hermano Peralta

 This is one of his lunches...Chicken and Rice and Beets with Potato

 These pictures were taken down at the ocean port.

A call to Repentance!

This week has been a long week but at the end of it all we have four people preparing for baptism. Graciella Cheme, Narcisa, Jasmin Arsel, and Emily Arsel. they are all preparing for baptism on the 26th of this month. my and my companion have been working hard everyday. We have been doing our exercises, working hard, and doing our best to be perfect with all of the rules and I am completely tired, physically, mentally and spiritually and all I have to say is thank goodness its P-day. I feel this week is going to be even better and that we are going to find a lot more people. The mission experience really is great. A lot of times it has its ups and downs some times your mad sometimes your happy but in the end your know it is all for God all of the work here is for a good purpose so there is no reason to waste it. There are those here who have been chosen to help the world know the truth with only two years to do it!!  In my studies i have been reading in ether chapter 11, and I read how the people are wicked and the profets come, the people repent. return to being wicked and the profets have to come again. It bugs me how often the people are to return to their sin. We all need to repent and stay repented. So repent ye repent ye and have a good week.

Jesse had them make him a Japanese name tag...that's what he's pointing at.

 Jesse's sleeping...I think his companion must have snapped this one...why did I bother sending sheets???
[The red sheet is actually the curtain. There was only one mosquito net and that was the next closest thing]

 I think he must feel tall there...I keep thinking he's grown but he tells me he's still only 5'8"

 Look Ma I got my haircut!!!  He also said the sun seems hotter in Machala and he's been dealing with a sunburn on his face.  This picture was this morning in the Internet Cafe.

Back to Machala

So this was a fun week Monday night i got a call for changes, i get to go to Machala again... yay!!!!!!!!! I am in a different ward this time, Los Esteros. Its out of the city and there are a lot of dirt roads and houses made of bamboo sticks. My companion is Elder Otazu he's from Peru, he has 22 months in the mission, he is pretty cool. So Tuesday morning fun 3 hour bus ride to Machala and when i got there i got to do an division with my zone leaders for the first day and then we get back to our house in the night are just starting to get relaxed and then we get a phone call telling us to pack up three days worth of stuff because of the tsunami warning and we went to the city of Santa Rosa for what only ended up being one night. I got to sleep on the floor of a house with 20 other missionaries. yay. The good news is this Saturday we did have two baptisms which was great. Carlos Cheme and Maria Loisa Serrano. My companion has been in this area for 7 weeks (6 when I got here) I hope everyone enjoyed conference and has a great week. I got to watch all of the sessions of Conference and in Spanish, I've never got to do that before. 

Time Flies

So this week was a pretty great week, no changes, but it contained the baptisms of Julio Espinoza and of Jesus Anzules. it was a pretty great week, the only thing that could of made it better is if we got to change houses this week, but the new week we should change. This week was great because i got to see Julio stand up in sacrament meeting and bare his testimony. This week of his baptism he had a lot of problems and challenges confront him in the week. problems that could have occurred with the Word of wisdom and the law of chastity, but he held firm to his goal of being baptized in the church of God that he avoided all of it just so he could be baptized. others would drop their baptism at the first opportunity but he stayed strong and i loved to hear his testimony. as well the other two missionaries that we just had put in our ward got changed and they had a single mother of 22 years, tatiana caravache, preparing for baptism. if you can all pray for her that she can get baptized this Saturday that would be great. we have our first visit with her tonight at 7:00. this week we have not had too many lessons we have been focusing a lot with Julio and Jesus and time flies by like none other.  I hope that everyone has a great week and enjoys General Conference.
Love elder McCammon

Elder Aliaga, Jesus, Jesse, Julio...ahhh my sweet smiling boy, but I think he needs a haircut!! (and a hug from his momma!!!)

 Jesse and Julio

 Elder Aliaga and Jesus