Another week...what am I gonna write for the next 22 months?

It was another week. Great as always--long as always--tiring--but nothing toooo special!

We confirmed the Familia D (who got baptized last Saturday). That was awesome. I was really nervous because the confirmation is much longer than the 2 sentence Baptismal Prayer...but one again some how I made it through (it´s almost as if God is helping me out or something like that.... :)

Today we went to Quito to go to the Offices/Church store. I bought a sweet case for my scripts (holds Bible and Triple), that said Ecuador Quito Mission and has a sweet little world with Angel Moroni on top--and of course is hand crafted Ecuadorian patterns :) Unfortunately, while at the offices my companion asked the nurses about one of his teeth--so tomorrow we have to go back into Quito for him to get it filled. Hopefully Ecuadorian dentistry isnt too sketch!

We hit Mcdonalds in Quito today, First Burger since the states... its way similar. SO BOMB. Its like a nice place here though...haha

Also, the past 3 days Elder G has been pretty sick. Wasnt sure whats going on...just stomach pain, head aches, and shaking a bit (no biggie..right? haha). All the members and nurse thought it was a parasite or virus, but today he is feeling a lot better...so hopefully it is passed! And hopefully I dont get way sick this week...only have a sliiiight head ache right now so I think I will be fine! We worked through most of his sickness--aside from a few naps he had to take to make it through the days. But I got extra personal study which is always relaxing (not that I wouldnt rather be out there working!) We still managed to have a really successful week. Found a family of 5 (a single dad with 4 girls ages 9-22, his wife died a few years ago so he is looking for support big time), a 23 year old hommie with a wife (we hope) and 2 babies, 3 single women aging between 35-60, all who have either a dead of a spouse or a rough divorce. Never realized how much work I would be doing aside from the gospel--just trying to help people out with their personal lives. Its great though..keeps me CRAZY grateful for all the unreal friends and family I have. Also, one other family of 2 kids whos parents are right now living separate--but they both want to take lessons so we will see how this turns out. Pray for us! I could use some help from Sir Kent...hes so seasoned and wise. (but not too seasoned...that perfect amount...like parmesan cheese). 

Pizza!! There is a bomb pizza place in the Sectorof the 2 elders who live with us...so we go there here and there!

Speaking of Kent (my dad by the way...for those who dont know him, I only refer to him as Kent SOMETIMES because Dad just doesnt show enough respect for a man like him). Pretty sure half my friends only came over to see him... Duer, Mike, Manny (LOL the curb)! Anyways--heres some questions provided by my loving father!

Do they have different types of bananas? TONS, but 4 main. Verdes (massive 2 foot long green ones for cooking), Verdes Amarillo (verdes when they turn yellow lol), Platinos (regular like we have in the states), and Plantinos Chicitos (tiny, wayyyy sweet bananas.) Its like 20 bananas for a dollar here...I go hard on banana shakes (PB, vanilla yogurt....oatmeal...the works. GNC cant hang)

What do you drink at your mamita's -- soda or your own water?  Soda, juice, handmade juice. Whatever, they all know we cant drink the tap--so I think most of them dont. But all the drinks here are DELISH!

How many miles a day to you think you walk on average? NO IDEA. Tons. We take a bus if its more than like a 20 minute walk...but a good amount of hills to climb...majority of our roads here in Montzerrat are rock or dirt...yeah, I sleep well haha.

Do  you have any time to work out? Does the altitude effect either your walking or workout energy? Me and my comp started going hard again on Friday. Usually do abs/body lifts/my work out bands for about 20-35 minutes every morning. The altitude killed me first week...not toooo tough now. 

Do any missionaries have cars or bikes? None. Only President. Not even the Senior Couples or APs.

So, do I have it right that there are 6 Elders in your ward? Yes! 2 up top of the hill near our church, 2 down at the bottom of the hill, and us in between!

One of the many big catholic churches in the Quito area. Pretttty!

Love you all, thanks for the support and prayers.

Elder Sorensen

Ecuador?

Friends...

2 weeks in Ecuador--and 2 months out here on the mish! Times flies! And goes slow...still haven't made up my mind! 

Photos from President and Sister Christensen: 

Arriving Missionaries

With President and Sister Christensen

 Kevin and his trainer, Elder G

We had a great week! First and foremost--on Saturday we baptized 4 of the kids in the Familia D. They are an awesome family, and hopefully the parents will get baptized here soon once they can afford a legal marriage! (one of the biggest problems we face out here with parents of families). The service was awesome and they were all very happy! I got to baptize J, the youngest. I was kind of nervous cause I barely memorized the baptism prayer the day before--but of course everything went well. They are an awesome family and just in my 2 weeks here I have seen changes in their hearts and lives. 

It was Elder G's birthday on Thursday! So we had cookie dough (the oven didn't work) at our Zone meeting from the Hermanas...a DELICIOUS fruit/cream cake that Elder H brought to Zone meeting, mini cakes at one of our members houses, and hostess cupcakes at night from G's parents. Safe to say it was a sweet day. ;)

 Birthday Celebrations for Elder G

We have been teaching a lot of people, and have about 4 very solid investigators right now, but about 10 more who we have received from references from ward members who we need to meet with. Everyone's work schedules are so heavy here it is always tough to find a time when the whole family is home. But its all gonna work out. Because we are opening up this sector, we have done a lot of contacting and made a ton of appointments with people, but a good amount of the time when we go to meet with them they end up being off and work. Work work work. These people know how to do it well...I just wish they could get sundays off!! Because so many people cant make it to church cause of their schedules...Anywho, the work out here is great. We have usually 1 or 2 citas (appointments) with a member family each day--to get to know them better and see if they have any friends or family who would want to here our message! Our members are awesome and allllways feed us great.

I got like 3 questions about my Mamitas..so: We have a different Mamita every day (minus Monday, we eat on our own on Pday). Most of them are families in the ward, 1 of them is a single 23 year old. They all feed us super super good. And no, we don't pay them. In addition, we often get fed mini meals when we have citas with other members at night. Ill try to start taking some pics of food to show yall!

Today was another great P Day. We found a ward member who we have become really close with. She is a single parent, a 35 year old lawyer with 2 kids, who happens to be just the greatest...who loves to feed us and happens to have a washing machine. Which is WAY rare here. So we went over there today and hung out and did out laundry (not by hand for once..which is amazing). She is also the one who gave us mini cakes on G's birthday. Me and G never wanna leave this ward because everyone is so great haha.

Our Church building (up the hill from us in Villaflora)

 We make new friends every day (cows..dogs...drunks..lol)

Well, I am way short on time today cause I had been lacking on replying to everyone personally. Thanks to you all for the updates and love.

Elder H made G take the first bite...and then snuck up behind and shoved his face into it hahaha. 

One of the thousands of soccer fields(courts) out here. Beautiful day like always.

 Standard pig the size of a cow. We are starting to teach the family who lives here.

A few answers to ?s quickly!

Email: We email at cybers...which are internet cafes with comps and pay phones and copy machines. Costs 10 cents per 10 minutes. So 2 hours is 1.20. Cheeeap!

Packages/Letters: WE CAN GET THEM! I thought we couldn't...but my comp has gotten like 5 and never had a prob. Packages take between 4-8 weeks usually... and letters about 2 weeks. Here is the address to send to. The best way is just through US Mail. And some people duct tape the packages a ton or put Virgin Mary stickers on em to prevent tampering. 

Elder Kevin Sorensen

Calles Robles E4-151 y Av. Amazonas 

Casilla: 17-03-078
Quito, Pinchincha
Ecuador

Received my first package! From G's girlfriend...he has my approval!

Food probs: Nah. If you know me you know I eat everything and love it. Haven't gotten close to sick...all good 

 Pinchos at a small vendor near out house. Pinchos are a skewer with sausage, tater, banana, and other meats. BOMB!

Mean stories: No one is mean to us. Just the occasional drunk who tries talking English to us. We just reply in Spanish and act clueless. Classic.

 Charles Darwin was on to something...the greatest country in the World.

Most spiritual experience: Definitely the baptism. Its awesome seeing people with such rough backgrounds find God and make changes in their lives and immediately receive tons of blessings. Also, working with less actives and recent converts is great. Just getting to know people's stories is awesome.

Love MUCH,

Elder Kevin Charles

PS-RAW RAW RAWRAWRAW GOOOOOOOOO COUGS!!!

PSS--- elderkso.blogspot.com (KT Rose should be posting tons of pics!)

 The awesome view of the valley we have every night

¡Los Chillos Norte!

< elderkso.blogspot.com >

First week (kinda) in Ecuador: DONE! I have so much to tell you all and not a ton of time or a large English Literature backround--so pardon the hecticness of this email. But here I go.

My companion is Elder G, from Idaho Falls, Idaho. He turns 20 on Thursday and has been out for 8.5 months. Hes a homie and has real good Spanish, especially for 8.5 months! We get along great and are connecting with the members and people in our area super bien!

We are opening a new sector in the Los Chillos Norte Zone. Basically the Ecuador Quito Mission is split into 12 Zones, spanning 250mi X 400mi. And with in those zones are districts, and within a district is a handful of sectors. My district is only 3 sectors, so 6 Elders. But there are about 22 Elders and 2 Hermanas in our Zone.

 Panoramic of Quito with the statue Panicio on the hill in the middle {click to make it larger!}

ANYWAYS, we are about a 45 minute bus ride outside of Quito, on the side of a mountain that seperates Quito from Conocoto. Our sector/where we live is a small area called Montzerrat. Our sector is super poor, but the people are super generous and freindly and a ton of people we meet are really open to hear the gospel. The members here are great too! We have a mamita (a women/fam who cooks us lunch) every day except Pday! Our ward is Vista Hermosa (about 120 members), and is at the top of this mountain that seperates us from Quito. 2 of the Elders in our Zone (A and T) are at the top, near the chapel. And then the other 2 elders (Cr and Caj), are below us. We see these 4 guys a ton (and live with Cr and Caj for now).

 View from our kitchen window

We live in a cool apartment with 2 other Elders. Elder Caj was just companions with Elder G before this, and he has 13 months and is from Lima, Peru. And Elder Cr has 8.5 months, and is from Paraguay, he speaks Spanish and Guaranese (an Indiginous language). He spent most of his mission in the Oriente (Jungle) before now. He has some sweet stories. They are both sick guys and force me to practice my Spanish all the time when we are with them. (Not that me and G dont usually speak spanish...its just nice to speak a lil English when we can haha). The 4 of us get along way well...our apartment and set up is dope.

The climate: The weather here is perfect. During the heat of the day it gets a bit hot because we are like 9500 feet closer to the Sun than in Davis...but its not bad at all. On a clear day we can see 4 Volcanoes from our Kitchen window.....its beautiful. Our casa/sector overlooks the valley that Conocoto and San Rafael. Just about half a mile from our house houses end and its just massive Ecuadorian mountain and trees. Every direction there is a dope view. All the Elders I have talked to said I am way lucky to be starting out here, everyone says Los Chillos is awesome--and so far I agree!!!

 Pano from out living room window

Food: Food here is bomb. We eat at our Mamitas house for lunch every day, and walk down to the Paneria / Frutaria most mornings to get some AMAZING pastries and fruit (for like 15 cents a piece of fresh bread and 5 cents a banana). We can't drink tap water so we buy big jugs of water (we have a little make shift stand with a open/close spot for a 5G water jug) and then we drink lots of juice and soda. We also eat cold oatmeal with milk and granola for breakfast...really whatever we want that is relatively cheap. The milk and yogurt comes in bags, and almost nothing here needs to be fridgerated which feels strange--but we keep all ours cold after buying. Dinner isn't a thing here...people eat breakfast and then lunch at 2 and maybe a little tiny meal or snack at night. So we don't eat until walking home or till we get home at 9, and usually are still full from the massive plates we eat during lunch. I really like everything I've had here.... Especially the breads..so bomb!

We walk a lot but also take a ton of busses. The bus system here is crazy big, and FAST. The rides are crazy...literally feel like were on the bus from Harry Potter most of the time. They barely stop for people to get on and off (unless its a small child or old person). No matter how far you bus its 25 cents. So we can take like a 40 minute bus ride into a town and it still be 25 cents...pretty nuts. Because we live right in our sector, its really not that much walking because its all relatively close. But there are some gnarly hills and other than right next to our appartment there arent a ton of nice roads. Most are dirt/rock. Some shortcuts we take feel like I'm straight up in Lord of The Rings cutting through these hills with houses scattered about. I love it...everything here is still so new everything seems exciting/interesting.

 Pano of the Valley of Conocoto/SanRafael from an investigator's house, about 5 minute walk from our house

There are TONS of wild homeless dogs. Like hundreds. One night at like 8:30 we were contacting and while chatting with a family at there door about 12 dogs were going crazy barking and all around us, so I manned the dogs as Elder G taught. All you have to do to keep a dog from coming after you is quickly reach down like you're picking up a rock...even if there isn't one....and they all jump back or stay away. Its so sad...they're honestly everywhere. The kids here aren't phased by them tho...kids will be playing soccer at like 9 and dogs going crazy but they don't even notice haha. Different lifestyle out here for sure.

Well...thats all I have time for / mental capacity for right now. Make sure to check out my blog (that KT is running awesomely!) to see pics and stuff.

Love you all!

Elder Sorensen

Safe & Sound!

After a long, long night of traveling, I MADE IT TO ECUADOR! The flights were amazing (had window seats both times), and our President and the Missionaries here are amazing. President Christiansen and his wife are honestly the best...I can not wait to serve for/with them!

Here in Quito at the mission home/chapel. We arrived in Quito at 12:30, drove an hour into town down, had lunch at one of the church buildings (amazing taco salad from the members), went to one of the apartment buildings for a 2 hour nap, and am now here at the chapel again for Dinner and a few meetings. I will be here in down town Quito until Thursday, when we get our new trainers/companions and find out our first area! All day tomorrow are orientations and all the important stuff we need to know about the people, our mission, and safety. I am here and I am stoked!

My P Days are now Monday...so talk to you all in a week!

Love, ES

¡Listo o no, aquí vengo!

I will start with the most important and most exciting--yesterday I got my flight plans...and in 5 days I leave this beautiful ´´compound´´ for good and head to Ecuador!! I leave here late Monday night, fly from Mexico City to Bogota, Columbia (4.5 hours), 2 hour layover there, and then from Columbia to Quito, Ecuador (2 hours). I should arrive in Quito around 11 or 12 in the morning. Let´s gooo!

I need to give a couple shout outs before I start:

SHOUT OUT to KT ROSE SORINSIN for ¨Graduating¨ from BYU!!! She has 2 small classes to take this fall...but she walked this past week and she is da best. Although, now I guess I gotta actually graduate from college in order to keep that whole tradish going...

SHOUT OUT to Nick D for going HAM on a half marathon (dont even ask how I know Nick..., ;) Straight beast tho. Forrest Gump status. 

SHOUT OUT to Kent R, for rocking a beautiful beard these past few days. 

and SHOUT OUT to Duer for calling out me to the ´´Ice Challenge´´...´´you have two years´´. Classic. LOL.

 

Standard, post haircut pic of your boy. For mama/gma/mike ;)

 

Well, 

Another solid week. I finally feel old here. The fact that no one here at the CCM has been here as long as us feels weird...every once and a while I have déjà vu to my first day or two. Time is weird out here on the mish...people weren´t lying when they told me that. 

This week me and Anderson taught our first 2 REAL INVESTIGATORS. That was way sweet. It got real...and to my surprise it went very well and I could understand sooo much more than the first few weeks talking with Elder Estreya and other natives. On Thursday we taught a friend of Hermano Palma (our night teach), who was pretty interested and was a way cool guy to talk with. Like always, spent the first 5 minutes talking about the World Cup--which made our lesson time a little tight, but his comfort level much higher. On Saturday, Hermano Ortiz brought 3 of his friends...who we later discovered were his Wife, Mom, and Grandma, Me and Andy taught his mom, who hasnt been active in the church for 12 or so years...so the fact that he trusted us to teach her was awesome. She really enjoyed our lesson because we mainly focused on familie, which is the most important thing in her life. Overall, teaching these 2 real lessons made me WAY excited to get into the field and start teaching the people of Ecuador. First weeks/months are gonna be a huge challenge, but I think I´m ready for it.

Been playing Rugby almost every day. We have between 8-12 guys per team and typically play on the football field. Forgot how much I loved that sport... Elder Mann (homeboy from NZ who will hopefully come play at the Y after the mish) has motivated me to get back on the grind. The first 5 weeks here I had lifted 2 or 3 times...and other than playing soccer not done much--thus, yes..I have gotten pretty dang small. But, this week I have been getting up at 5:30 to hit the weight room with Elder Mann and a hommie from his district Elder Night, who is playing football for Southern Virginia after the mish and is one of the fastest kids I have met. Small dude...but Wes Welker fast. It feels GOOD to be back working out and doing something I love (even though the last 3 months of being lazy werent half bad), and playing some Rugby...even though Elder Mann and I can never play on the same team cause then it becomes a clinic hahaha. My toe is way better, running is a bit painful, and can never kick with my right foot, but it is much much better.

 

Anderson, I, and our Hermanas. P days...aka random pics just because. This ones outside of the Tienda. (Jarritos on the daily)

 

Today was another great Pday, Cam´s Pday was switched from Friday to today because on Friday we have all sorts of meetings for those of us leaving the CCM this week. So we got to hang out a lot and play a solid 1 or 2 hours of cage soccer. Had many handfuls of set ups for each other to rip shots into the goal (me with my left, of course). We went hard...had a little nostalgia to 3rd grade AA baseball. C2K for life... 

Quick Q&A from Carebear and Kent... :)

What are you most excited about as you head to Ecuador? (less repetitive schedule, meeting sooo many new people, and the scenery...cant wait to see the volcanoes and city and who knows what else)

What will you miss most about leaving the CCM? (the people. Cam...Anderson...my district...my teachers...Kemish...all the other dope Elders who ive met out here who are out here for all the same reason.)

What's been the biggest challenge (besides learning Spanish!) so far? (Patience/trying to focus in a noisy room haha. A lot of Elders are right out of high school, and remind me a lot of myself right after I graduated highs school. But regardless, these are my DUDES.)

How are you sleeping? (Sleep like a baby. Hit a solid 10:45-6:30 every night, or 5:30 when i lift. Like a rock)

What do you weigh? (210. Was 202 before the past week of working out. Little boiii...)

Are you using your retainer? (yes, every other night. LOL kept this one in there for a chuckle...thanks mom<3)

Have you spent all your pesos? (Nope, but I will at the airport...gonna go ham on some American food and 711 slurpees one last time)

How's your toe? (much better! Wearing real shoes again for a week...running around, feeling aite. Just a little painful haha)

 

Our District taking our going away pic for the Devotional slide show this Sunday 

 

Because of the short week and travel plans, I will most likely be back on to email on Monday during the day before I head out. Love you all and hope all the homies who are heading off to college in the next couple weeks the best of luck!!!!

Para siempre,

Elder Sorensen