Mother's Day

FAMILIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow, I can´t believe it´s already been a day since I´ve talked to you.  It was so wonderful to hear all your voices and know that everyone is doing well.  I love our family so much and I´m so grateful we can be together for eternity.  What a blessing to have the Gospel in our lives, and even though "If You Could Hie to Kolob" turned out sounding like a round, it was so wonderful to sing with you all and pray together even though we´re so many miles away.  William, I´m glad you were on Skype.  I love technology.  But not as much as you, you see.  But I still love technology.  Always and forever.

Well, my companion had another capacitación this morning, so I´m with Hermana Bytheway again, and we got permission to take our waiting time and write our families.  My English is a lot better after having talked with you all yesterday, and today Hna. Bytheway and I were talking about all the funny things about Ecuador.  Dogs roam the streets at will, modesty isn´t really a thing, people are so honest, people don´t get offended when someone calls them gordito.  It´s just great.  Definitely a big change from the United States, but I love it.

The thing my companion and I are having a hard time with is getting people to come to church.  Everyday of the week, they say "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I´m going for sure!" and then Sunday comes around and they´ve mysteriously disappeared, or are sick, or are busy, or something.  It´s definitely frustrating.  But we have two people with baptismal dates (the other 5 fechas have fallen through over the past week because they didn´t asistir a la Iglesia), and they´re both strong.  One is for this Saturday.  His name is José Miguel and we found him two weeks ago because he works in the Cyber where we write.  He had listened to the missionaries about a year before, had a Book of Mormon and everything, but never went to church, and apparently didn't even know there was a church close by.  He is so great and the only problem he had was that occasionally he liked to drink coffee.  But that was easy for him to give up.  Thank goodness!  We have been having the hardest time with people accepting compromisos, but he´s doing so well.  Compromisos are the only way people can make changes in their life (aka repent), which is why they are so important.  He has accepted everything, and we´re hoping and praying nothing will impedirle a bautizarse esta Sábado.

I know the church is true and it´s so vital that we always do the little things: pray, read the scriptures, and go to church.  If we do these things everyday, we will stay strong and never fall away from the church.  That is a promise.  If you don´t read your scriptures everyday...DO IT!  If sometimes you skip church...STOP IT!  Go to church!  Read your scriptures!  Pray!  These things are so easy and yet we receive so many blessings for doing them.  Thank you so much, mom and dad, for setting an example for me and helping me know the importance of these three things.  I am so blessed to have parents who have brought me up in the ways of the Lord.  I know that the Gospel is key to our eternal salvation.  What greater gift do we have?

To answer some of your questions, yes, we eat with members every day except for Monday.  I don´t have control over soda, so sorry, Mom.  Here, you have to take what you get, and the only other meal we eat is breakfast.  I buy bananas, apples, and oranges, so that´s pretty good, right? haha  I feel like my Spanish is so much better than when I started, but still I have a ways to go.  I just need a bigger vocabulary I think, but I understand pretty much everything, which I am grateful for!  We´ll find out in July about the mission changes.  Hermanas don´t go to the Galapagos, though, unfortunately.  That would be so cool!  That would be great if you could send me more GummiVites. :)

I love you all and I´m praying for you.

Con mucho amor,

Hermana Ayer