Quick Take

NEW YEARS

I thought I would be in worse condition, in terms of homesickness, after calling you, but I didn´t really have any problems with it. I was just happy to be able to talk with all of you and hear
what´s going on in your lives because you basically know what is going on in mine. I am jealous of your computer I can´t wait to test it out. Computers here are nicer than I thought they would be but they aren´t iMacs.
Looking back on this week as a whole it has been the saddest week of my mission. I didn´t get to study at all, the missionaries I mentioned went home, our baptism fell through and won´t be happening any time soon, and I ate all of my Sour Patch Kids in one sitting, but I am still happy. I still have my goal in mind. My goal is that at the end of my mission I will be able to go to the temple, I will be able to ask our Father in Heaven if my sacrifice was worthy and accepted. When I think of this goal it is easy for me to stay happy, it is easy to remember who I am working for, and it is easy to make the right decisions.
This week we practically taught no one, and I was feeling bad because our numbers were really low. Then last night I had a lesson that changed all my thoughts on numbers-- for I hope the rest of my mission. Last night we taught a man that has suffered more in the 30 years of his life than I can ever suffer. He has seen and done things I could never imagine. He is tortured by his past everyday of his life. After the testimony of Elder Miranda, he asked if I could share something. Alma 22:18 came to my mind. I read it with him and bore testimony unlike any other time in my life. We cling to our sins, we hold tight to things we think are important when really they are all that is in the way of what is of true importance. I spoke of the redemption of our Savior with words I know were not mine. I promised a new life for this man, a life free from the memories of his past, promised blessings I know will happen through his faithfulness. I felt more love for that person at that moment than perhaps any other person at any other moment of my life. I knew at that moment I really was filled with the true love of Christ. I was there only to serve him.  I realized that big numbers only matter because they are made of 1´s. Each person is so valuable. Each time I have the opportunity to help another, it should lead to a memory of a time I felt the Spirit. After my mission no one will ever ask how many lessons I taught, no one will ever know what leadership positions I held, it won´t matter to anyone how eloquent my speech was. What will matter, and what I want to remember, are the people I helped, the testimony I gained, and the obedience I showed to the Lord.
I am not quite sure what else to talk about. This week on New Year´s we can´t leave our house. Supposedly they have these huge paper statues all over the city and around 12 they start burning them and everything that is flammable. I am so glad that you had a Merry Christmas. It isn´t really what matters but you should tell me what everyone got for Christmas. I hope that you will have a happy New Year´s.
If you can find the email or address of Dan that would be great. I actually have not handwritten a  card since I got here so I am going to try and fix that because there are some people that I need to write.
I hope that Sister Vomocil had a Merry Christmas too, I found out after, that it is allowed to call her on the mission but I won´t have another opportunity while she is on the mission.
Thank you so much for your prayers and all the support. I hope that I can be a missionary that you are proud to have known and I am working hard for all of you.

Love,
Élder Vomocil

CHRISTMAS TIME

Christmas Time 2




First off again about food. Yes I take a vitamin everyday and I only eat that much because I am full for the rest of the day. I will try and mix up my breakfast schedule to be more healthy but I don’t really think that I can eat more. Parasites are a big problem here so I will keep my eye out for any changes in my health. If you want to send shoe inserts that would be good. My feet don’t hurt yet but I am sure with two years of walking they will.

Thanks for sending me all the letters of people especially Grandpa, every time we talk about family I always think of him. I have never heard that story before. I never really thought about our financial situation when I was younger because when you are young it seems like you have a lot of everything. Not going to lie, I will miss caroling because, not to be mean but, no one here can carry a tune. About the call I guess I am just going to call whenever, my question was for when you wanted me to call but it doesn’t really matter. It is going to be really cheap; calls to the US are like 4 cents a minute.

In other news we are now in a trio. Our new Elder is Elder _____ . He loves to talk and is very converted to the gospel. Out of his whole family he is the only member and he has been a member for 4 years. He is brand new in the mission so Elder Miranda has been giving me plenty of opportunities to help train him. I am sure that nothing happens by chance and that with this opportunity means that I will probably be training soon. President Montoya (the First Counselor and acting president) loves, along with President Sloan, to put newer missionaries as trainers. This week has been amazing, more amazing than I could imagine. Each week I think I know what’s going on. I think I know basically how things work and then something happens that changes my mission and changes my life. In numerous blessings and other occasions we always hear that there are specific people waiting for you, or in this case me, in your mission that there are children of our Heavenly Father that need your testimony to open their heart to the gospel. I think I believed that before but after this week I know my testimony of the truth of that statement was nothing. About three weeks ago I went on splits with my old District Leader, Elder Periera, from Costa Rica. He showed me the house of an old investigator (this was his first area). About a week later when our appointment had failed we said a prayer that we could do what the Lord wanted with that time. The reference came to mind, we went to go visit and she flat out rejected hearing the missionaries again. So we were walking to visit a member when Elder Miranda stopped to talk with a family. After about 5 minutes of talking another woman showed up, the cousin of that family, Maria. She invited us to her house the next day so that we could help with some service. The next day, after helping, we found out that many family members had died recently so we taught a little about the Plan of Salvation and left the pamphlet. We didn’t really think much about the family until the next Sunday. They showed up for 30 minutes of Church. We visited Maria again and felt that we should teach the Restoration instead. We taught it with Elder Samayoa, our new Zone Leader, and it went really well. That week she attended our baptism and church. And I will finish this letter in about 30 minutes. We have to drop Elder Miranda off at the terminal he is going to Quito for a training of District Leaders.

Love Elder Vomocil

Christmas Time 2 Part 2


Well some sad news. After we dropped off Elder Miranda at the terminal Elder _____ said he had to talk with me. He told me that he needed to speak with the president about something. I won’t talk about it but more than likely he will be going home. Repentance is a hard thing but you always feel more love and joy after true repentance. The hardest thing is he is the only member in his family. He wanted so badly the blessings he knows a mission would bring for his family.

Picking up where I left off in my letter. After church she invited us to teach again. We felt it was time to share with her about the First Vision. After an explanation about the Great Apostasy I began to teach. I was explaining about Joseph Smith when she stopped me mid-sentence. Maria is a person of many dreams most she feels are just that dreams but some she says she knows are different. She told us that she had a dream, that Elder Miranda and I were teaching her, and that in the dream I said the exact words that I had just said, after she heard that in the dream she was jumping up and down for joy because she knew that she had found the truth. I was shocked. Many times I have felt that I need to be teaching more with the Spirit because I feel that my words are guided. What a testimony of what the Lord can do. But what she said next was even more surprising. She said that from the first time she met us she had felt that she had know us for 6 years. 6 years because, 6 years earlier she had had a dream, a dream in which I, specifically me, met her and became friends with her. She knows it was me because she doesn’t know any North Americans. There are people who are waiting specifically for the special testimony that each missionary has. That thought and this experience have changed everything. I can’t allow myself to become discouraged; I can’t allow myself to ever teach without the Spirit. I keep thinking of all the chain of events that had to happen for me to find and teach Maria. I know that Maria has found the truth.

This weekend we will be baptizing Evan. He is the father of the family in the picture I sent. He went through more trials than I could ever imagine, and he came close to falling but with the Lord all things can change.

This gospel is so real. I have had too many experiences to ever deny the reality of our Supreme Creator.

I can’t wait to talk with you on Christmas I will probably call around 11 Florida time for however long I can. I love you so much and hope you can feel the spirit of Christmas. I hope I will be more organized to write more next week but until then all my love.

Élder Vomocil

FIRST CAMBIO

December 14, 2009

I have survived my first cambio (change that happens every 6 weeks when the new missionaries arrive.) Every six weeks someone will change but not everyone, normally the mission president changes whomever he wants, whenever he wants. News on President Sloan, he is no longer President Sloan. He is going to be recovering in his house until February we think; right now his first counselor is running the mission.
For Christmas I might buy some new pants but in Riobamba we only wear suits on Sunday so I don’t think I really need one right now and if my pattern of weight loss continues in a couple months it wouldn’t fit anyway. For Christmas we spend it in our house. We can go out for one hour to eat with a member then we have to return to our house. It is the same with New Years but I get to call. I am supposed to determine an hour that is best for you, normally I think before 4 o’clock Florida time. There are a ton of Christmas trees here but they are all fake. Pine trees don’t exist here. There is also Papa Noel the Spanish version of Santa Claus, commercial activity isn’t as bad as the states but it is pretty big here too.
About food, we both receive our own money and buy our food separately for me it hasn’t been to weird. Remember the Nesquik cereal that was discontinued? Yeah, not here, and it makes the milk not taste so funny so that is all the food I buy. They give us $91 every 2 weeks for everything. After the second arrival of money I had $40 extra dollars so I sent it to the mission home like we are supposed to.

Elder Miranda was made leader of our district which basically means for me that I have 2 more meetings to go to and I now have splits with the zone leaders once a week.

This week of work has been amazing. First was our first baptism. Andy Manzano, a 17 year old was baptized, and it was the last Saturday before changes, which is a rare thing to have a baptism your first change. The service was incredible. I got to give a short speech on the decision that he was making and the change that would occur if he accepted the fullness of the gospel in his life. I never could have imagined my joy for someone else seeing him enter the waters of baptism.
This week both of our zone leaders changed. They both had a lot of time in the mission and President Sloan wants the most help he can get in Riobamba. He sent another pair of missionaries here. This is important because I went on divisiones with Elder Samayoa, the new Zone Leader. I learn so much with him. I felt for the first time in a lesson, in the parts where I taught, my mind was completely blank. I didn’t have to think about talking Spanish, I just talked and they understood and the Spirit helped me know what questions to ask and what points to emphasize.

I think these are of Allow (that is not how you spell it but that is how you pronounce it) and of Evan. His story is a sad one but at the same time one of hope. His family was found by the sister missionaries about a year ago. His wife accepted and was baptized about 7 months ago with one of their sons. Evan has a testimony, he feels the Spirit each time we teach with him and he has seen about 6 pairs of missionaries come and go but still he can’t accept to be baptized because of his problem with alcohol. It literally has control of his life. He has tried to stop, he has tried to join professional help groups, he has been taught methods to stop, he has been taught all the blessings that will come, and still alcohol has him. His family is depressed they feel there is nothing they can do to help him and he fights with his wife a lot. It is so sad to see something that brings no lasting peace, joy, or fulfillment utterly destroy the life of Evan. The hope we have for him is that he has been consistently reading and attending church. With time I hope that his will power, with the help of the gospel, can overcome this problem. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. This scripture makes me think of the life he can have, he just needs to change.

Ok well I hope that you figure out what I just did because I am confused. I think I put the scripture and description in the main letter so I will pick up the main letter from here.

Also this week we found Lourdes again. She was the lady that stopped us in the street and asked about what we represent. She was gone for three weeks but she is back and I don’t think I have ever seen a conversion to the Book of Mormon as strong as hers. She said that she was praying the day she found us, praying that a knowledge she knew she needed would come to her through some means. After praying about the Book of Mormon she said she knows that we are the answer to that prayer. All things in the Book of Mormon just seem to make sense to her. She said she had always felt that God would talk to all of his children including the ones here in the Americas. All we need to do is teach her about the Sabbath day and the opposition that will come and she will be ready to be a member.

The other awesome experience was with a reference family. Santiago and Diane had their 7-month-old son Aaron die about three weeks ago. I am not sure if I mentioned it but I gave two blessings of comfort, one in Spanish and one in English. After we gave the blessings they gave us a reference to a family that was very special to them. We found out they lived really close so we went and taught them. They were interested in what we taught and the help I could offer in English to their kids so the accepted to let us come back the next day. We left a Book of Mormon during the second visit and made plans to come back during the weekend. When we came back the feeling was a bit different. We weren’t sure what had happened. When the family had gathered, they told us they didn’t want us to come back to teach about religion. We could come over any day in regular clothes to do regular things but no religion. We asked what had happened. They said that they had read in the Book of Mormon. They said that they respected us but didn’t want to continue. After some more questions we found the real reason. They had read together, they had felt something powerful, something that told them to follow this book but they are afraid. The have a very comfortable life and don’t want to change. The mother asked us, "What is your purpose here, my house is sacred. All the other missionaries you can imagine have visited our door and we have never accepted them. But when we saw you we felt we needed to let you in. What are you doing in my house?" As a response to this question I poured out my heart to this family. I told them we are representatives of Christ. “We are here because we love you. We are here because if we truly believe that we have the truth, and without a doubt I know we do, we want the best for the rest of our family. We are here because we want to give you the opportunity to marry in the temple to become like God is.” The mother asked if she had to be a member to have these blessings. They gave us another chance, we have a meeting with them tomorrow our supposed last meeting about religion.

Ecuador is amazing. The people here are amazing. I know that I have been so blessed in learning the language. Many other missionaries have told me that I talk as if I have been here for more than a year. The Spirit that I have felt and the opportunity I have had everyday to study ways to better myself and help others has already been life changing.

A few requests before I have to go. If you can send some candy that would be awesome, Reese´s specifically. A letter takes about 4 days from when you send it for the missionaries to get it and then I normally get it the next Thursday. The letter you sent on the 3rd I got on the 12th.
Thank President Smith, Sister Jurgatis, Erin and Nathan for their letters.

I love you all and hope that you have a Merry Christmas.

Until next week.

Élder Vomocil.

P.S. I knew there had to be a way to change that jutter, can’t wait to see how it looks.

I figure that eventually I will have to stop numbering the weeks so it might as well be this week

Time here is very similar to the MTC but faster. I wake up very early, too early, then study for while, have some amazing experiences, eat my one meal, more experiences, blink, then do it over again. Time seems to just blend and to go and seems to be going faster than I would like at the moment. I don’t want to miss any experience.

About fruit-- we had a lesson with a family we contacted in the street, and they gave each us of this huge bowl of fruit salad. It had papaya, kiwi, cantaloupe, and banana. Dang was that amazing! Kiwis here are so good. I had never really eaten papaya before. It is delicious and the cantaloupe was probably the best I have ever had. Still the banana was normal but I will keep searching. Most of the bananas here are from the coast so they come here green and not ripened from the tree.

You can send music if you want. I am not sure that I will really get into the Christmas spirit the same as it was at home. Right now it is 70 degrees, it will be 70 degrees probably for every single day for the rest of my time in Riobamba. I don’t know, there is just something in my mind that says that there needs to be snow and cold for it to be Christmas.
About Alma 5, there is some awesome stuff in there, verse 17, can you imagine that situation before God with all of your guilt? This chapter tries to put the fear of God and the fear of sin into us. I also love the statement, “Come unto me blessed, for behold, your works have been works of righteousness”. It reminds me of the movie The Testaments, at the very end when the Savior has come and the blind father is overjoyed that his children get to see him but he has faith enough to not need to see him. Then the Savior walks over to him, He calls him by name, He heals him of all affliction then gives a look of absolute love, absolute understanding.

At times I think I have too much of an eternal perspective, at times this life seems too easy. God has given us these commandments, some might call sacrifices, I would call opportunities for blessings. He knows that if we follow them we will be happy. Things are easy to sacrifice when we look at what we really want. Things are easy to believe when we go to the source of all belief. At times this life seems to have a fault of reality like we are just waiting here doing things that we are supposed until we get to where we are really supposed to be. That is my goal, to have the Savior call me by name. “Mark, come unto me thy works have been works of righteousness.” Then He will give me a hug and I will know that understands me completely and loves me completely. I still don’t think that I have completely reached that goal of being spiritually born of God, of having His image in my countenance, having experienced that mighty change of heart, but I am working at it. I feel like Nephi, “I sorrow for the sins that do so easily beset me.”

About the devotional, we saw about 3 minutes of Elder Uchtdorf’s talk, then the song, and about 3 minutes of Elder Eyring’s talk, before the signal went out but it is online. If I have time I will go watch the prophet’s talk. We have lots of people that are progressing, people that have been seeing the missionaries for over a year are finally starting to really make changes, really come unto Christ.
I get to call you on Christmas I am not exactly sure how it works but I am pretty sure that you don’t have to send me anything for it to work.
I hope that Nate is doing better in the last DearElder I got it sounded more than serious.
Once again sorry for the shortness of the letter, these last two weeks we have had problems with timing. The pictures I sent I think are of me at the only McDonalds in Ecuador, me in Pungala, a small city outside of Riobamba, me with the bread I made, and me in the beautiful Ecuadorian countryside, I have a lot better pictures of the sites without people but you always said you want people in the pictures.
Until next week, all of my love.

Élder Vomocil