Elder Brandon Mitchell

March 1, 2010

Hi everyone,

How are you all? I am fine. Don´t worry about me. By the way if somebody doesn´t get this it is because I have their address wrong. I accidentally deleted my address book so I had to remake it and I´m not sure if I got them all right.
Yes I did hear about the earthquake. I heard about it Saturday morning. Elder Pérez´s family is fine. Sister Gamboa called all the families of the missionaries that are from Chile and then called all the missionaries to tell them that they are fine. I heard it was an 8.5 but whatever. There was actually a small earthquake here Sunday morning at 5 but I didn´t feel it because I was sleeping. I didn´t hear about the tsunami warning, but I did hear that there was a tsunami on a few islands. From the apartment to the shore it is like 5 blocks. Maybe a half mile or so. But this is part of the bay and is really closed off and calm. To the actual part where the ocean is and there are waves it is probably 3 miles. Don´t worry. Speaking of the earthquake the zone leaders called Saturday night and Elder Walke spoke with me. This is how the conversation went.

Elder Walke: How is your companion?
Me: Good, why?
Elder Walke: You know there was an earthquake in Chile.
Me: Yeah
Elder Walke : And your companion is from Chile.
Me: Yeah
Elder Walke: Is he worried about his family?
Me: No, well wait, Hey Elder Pérez are you worried about your family?
Elder Pérez: No (and he starts to laugh.)

We (Elder Perez and I) had talked throughout the day and yeah he wasn´t worried at all.

One thing I would like is a DVD holder. I am collecting a few DVD’s from the church and they take up a lot of room so one of those DVD case/holder thingys would be nice. Also I want to buy a backpack because in the bag I have right now I can only carry my scriptures, my hymnbook, a spare BoM and pamphlets. I would like to carry a few other things sometimes and it would be more convenient to have one. But I think it would be better to buy one here. Cheaper and you don´t have to ship it. As for other things I will have to think about it.

Umm teaching is going good. We taught a ton this week. I believe I wrote a letter about teaching a girl named Juliana today. Elder Pérez is cool. We get along well. I guess it is really weird to be senior companion after 2 changes but yeah I like it. What I really don´t want to be is district or zone leader. I just don´t want to do all that work. But I am pretty sure that pretty much everyone becomes one. I have a good amount of time here in Bahia so there is a chance that I might get transferred Sunday. I hope not.

You want to know how many Aaronic priesthood holders come to church here? Two. So needless to say, there are seasoned members that pass the Sacrament here too. But Fast packs just don´t exist.

Photos to come if time allows.

Elder Mitchell

February 22, 2010

Hi everyone,

How are you all doing? I am doing good. Working hard and learning a lot.
About Carnival, it seems like it was a lot worse in the past. Things have apparently calmed down a lot. I don´t think that anybody throws colored powders though. I didn´t get wet at all. But I think that we might have if I stayed here in Bahía but we had a zone conference with a member of the 70 in Manta so we had to travel to Portoviejo on Monday and to Manta on Tuesday and back to Portoviejo the same day and then back to Bahia on Wednesday. It was a lot of travel, but oh well it was really good.
Let me know about Lynn. I´m sure that he will be fine. Don´t worry. There is a quote and I’m not sure who it is by but it goes like this, “If you are praying why worry and if you are worrying why pray.” Faith is the opposite of fear and doubt. Don´t worry. He will be alright.
Here is a question for you. What is more addictive drinking or smoking? We have an investigator that does both and we want to know which to focus on first. I am pretty sure that smoking is more addictive though. It really doesn´t matter but let me know.
My scriptures are fine.
I have to go, but the pictures are of my zone and zone manta. The couple in the front is the member of the 70 and his wife. Elder Garrez or something like that.

Love you all,

Elder Mitchell

[Show as slideshow]

February 15, 2010

Hi everyone,
How are you all? I am really good. I am working as usual. So I finished a cassette for you guys. I just need to burn two cd’s and then I will send you a few things.
So here is one thing that I forgot to tell you last week. When I got here they gave us shoulder bags to carry our scriptures and a few other small things. Well this bag is new to the mission. Before they used a different bag that is like a mix between a backpack and a fanny pack. Well everyone said that it was waterproof. So whenever it rained I didn´t worry. But then that day that I told you about when it rained all day I found out the truth about this bag. Definitely not waterproof. My scriptures got wet along with an extra Book of Mormon and pamphlets that I was carrying. Yeah, I wasn´t really happy about my scriptures getting wet. It wasn´t terribly bad, but yeah there is definitely water damage on a lot of pages. Mainly around the edges. But yeah that is the last time that I will make that mistake.
So right now it is Carnival here it all of Ecuador. Carnival is a three day holiday or in other words a three day water fight. It is Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. But sometimes people like to begin a day or two early an end a day or two late. Well, I have heard that sometime it isn´t just water that people throw. Sometimes it is water with sand dye smelly stuff, rotten eggs and mud. Basically anything. So far I haven´t gotten wet, but I bet I will. There are a few members that are going to try to get us wet. President Gamboa said that we have to stay in the house from about 2 until 6 from Saturday until Wednesday. This is apparently to avoid the temptation of participating in the carnival (we can´t participate). So yeah we get a lot of time to study. I am using basically all that time to study the maestro or a list of like 300 scriptures that we are supposed to memorize. I am getting a lot done.
So with Carlos we haven´t spoken in a while. He lives 45 minutes away (bus ride) from Bahía and so we can´t really go and visit him. Usually he has school and stays the night in his aunt’s house and that is where we teach him. But we think that his mom told him that he can´t listen to us anymore because she is really Catholic. We also had an investigator tell us that he doesn´t want to get divorced with his former wife and married with his current wife because it costs too much. And another said that she doesn´t believe that the Catholic Church is correct but she isn´t going to change because her family is Catholic, she has been Catholic all her life, and she doesn´t want to change her traditions. This all happened this week. Kind of sad huh. Yeah. But they have their agency and they can choose for themselves want they want to do. All we can do is teach and help. They have to accept and act. And if not we just have to move on. It is really sad because we care so much for these people. But yeah that is how the mission is.
Oh yeah my companion almost got kissed because it is custom that the women greet people with a kiss on the cheek. She was visiting from the US, Chicago and is not familiar with the missionaries and went in for the kiss. My companion was taken so much by surprise. It was really funny. After we explained. But yeah, I had a good laugh.
I must say that I have been getting more letters. So thanks. I really enjoy them. It is almost like I am talking to you guys when I read them.
Well, I hope everything goes well with you all and I hope that I don´t get too wet today.

Les Quiero,

Elder Mitchell

February 8, 2010

Hi everyone,

How are you all? I am really good.
So a couple stories. The other day it rained the entire day without stopping. And as missionaries it is just like any other day. So we got our ponchos things and left. Now I know that ponchos repel water but it isn´t 100% effective. I don´t know why but for some reason water can go through the plastic. I know this because by the end of the day I was thoroughly moist from head to toe. I didn´t use my umbrella because it is a bit annoying to use. So my head was soaking wet but I don´t really care about that. But from about the thigh to toe I was completely soaked. I might as well been walking in a pool. So here they don´t have great drainage systems so some of the streets look like ours when it floods. And then some of the streets are dirt so it turns into a gigantic mud pool. And sometimes you just have to cross. Well the good news is that I was wearing my waterproof shoes which are great. But they have a fault. There is a whole in the top. You know the hole where you foot go in. Yeah that part most certainly is not waterproof. So needless to say when you step in a puddle that is deeper than a couple inches water enters. And here is when the water proof shoe plan backfires. Because water can´t enter from the outside in water can´t exit either. So it is like walking with a pair of fish bowls on your feet. Yeah that is a bit of an exaggeration but you get the point.
Okay so we have an investigator named Carlos. He is a nephew of Amparito a new member of 3 months (the one we made a gate for). We (Elder Minga and I) began teaching him just after I arrived but after a little while he disappeared. Or we couldn´t find him because he isn´t in Bahia much because he lives about a half hour away in Las Coronas. He is really smart and 16 years old. We found him again about 3 weeks ago and began to teach him again. We had taught him the first lesson and he liked it a lot. He committed to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. The next time we visited him we asked him how it was and he said good. He told us exactly what he read and we knew that he understood it. We left him another reading assignment and the next time we visited him we asked him how it was. He said that he had read more than we asked him and that it was really good. He told us that he prayed and he got an answer that it is true. It was so cool. It made me smile so much because this is what we work for. This is what we want for everyone here. So yeah all he needs to do is attend church twice and he can be baptized. He wants to be baptized because he knows that it is true.

With the hymn Placentero nos es trabajar stuck in my head, (it is a song that is really good but It is not in English, only in Spanish)

Elder Mitchell

February 1, 2010

Hi everyone,
How are you all? I am pretty good. My mission without Elder Minga is a little different. Or I guess a lot different. First of all both Elder Pérez and I are really young (in the mission). So there are some times when we just don´t know what to do. Oh yeah we both started our missions on September 2, 2009 but because he didn´t need to learn Spanish he has one more change than I do. Also he doesn´t know anybody here so I have to do all of the planning and talking. When Elder Minga was with me he always made the plans and I would just follow him. And I am senior companion but that isn´t really important. It seems like I am more of a missionary now because I am thinking a lot more about our investigators because I need to make plans for them.
So we are teaching several people. The there are two problems right now. Our investigators are all really good but it is really hard to get them to come to church. We had about 8 people committed to come yesterday but only 3 came and that is after we went to bring them. Also we make appointments with them and about half the time they aren´t in their houses. Oh well. That is how the mission is.
On to answering questions because there were about 50 today.
Investigators:Fransico Panta Concepción, Ingrid, Gabriela, Luis, Carlos, Karen, Roxana, Tito…
We are going to set baptism dates this week for two to three weeks out on about three or four different people.
Baptisms to date: 4
I love the mission. Sorry but right now I don´t miss you at all. It is just like everyone says. The members become your family.
Because of the rain everything is a lot greener and the mountains are really pretty.
I can send letters another way but it costs about triple and the mission charges you even if you don´t use the pouch. So I might as well use it.
Elder Pérez is definitely different than Elder Minga. He reminds me of someone I went to school with. I didn´t really like this person but I get along fine with Elder Pérez. We work harder too I think.
I knew that you helped set up that mission and I told him that. I will tell him that you worked in those cities.

Yeah, I have 5 months in the mission as of tomorrow. That is weird to think about. Time goes by really fast.
One random thing. I realized this week that I can understand about 99% of Spanish. It is really awesome. It is really cool when you can talk without thinking in Spanish. I still am learning a lot and I can´t speak as well as I can understand but that is fine. With time. Sometimes I forget how you say things in English. In my letters do I ever use phrases that sound strange because I am pretty sure that I do.
I will make you guys a couple CD’s and send all of my pictures to you sometime. It will be a while though. Maybe two or three weeks out.

We work almost completely off of references which is good. It is a lot more effective than knocking doors.
In this branch there are 350 members but only about 60 attend church. Pretty bad huh. Everywhere it is like this. I think that it is normal here to have 1/4 of the members attend church.
Yeah I haven´t gotten really sick here. Maybe a cold or two. Oh I was sick with stomach pains for about two days two weeks ago. Elder Minga and I think that this is because we ate something or drank something bad at a members home that lives in the mountains. It wasn´t too pleasant but we still left the house to work.

Elder Walke, yeah he is funny, not extremely just you know the normal amount. And he looks a bit different too.

With a Stomach full of rice,

Elder Mitchell

[Show as slideshow]

January 25, 2010

Hi everyone,

How is everybody? I am doing really well. On to the main event, changes. Christina asked how much time Elder Minga has left and if I am with him anymore. Well, he only has six weeks left, and a matter of fact, as of this morning he got transferred. He now is in Quvedo and I am still in Bahía but with Elder Pérez from Viña Del Mar Chile. I was pretty sad to leave Elder Minga. We had a lot of good times together. But yeah in the last about 24 hours I have traveled about 12 hours and I have yet to get to sleep in a bed. And sleeping on a bus gives me terrible headaches. So it is like a lose lose battle. Be extremely tired or extremely sleepy. Right now I think I´m in the middle of both.
So last Wednesday we had a FHE in the church. We have it every Wednesday there and yeah I know it is a FHE but it is in the church. Kind of an oxymoron I know but that is how it is done here. Afterwards, we played hide and go seek. It was interesting to see how they play it here. It is better here. There is a designated place where if the hider touches before the seeker the hider wins and vice versa for the seeker.
Nothing more, really just the regular. Teaching and finding. I have had four baptisms. Anita, Luis, Ranaldo, and Kevin. The cool thing is we might have a baptism in the ocean or river in a few weeks. There is a family that lives in San Vicente but they also live in Pedernales. There is a little girl in the family that is not baptized. Since she lived in both places she can get baptized in either place. And Pedernales doesn´t have an official chapel so the baptisms are done in the ocean, river or pools. That would be really cool.
Oh it is winter now so it rains about every other day. The trees are super green and there really isn´t hardly any spots on the mountain that are not super green. This is what I thought it would be like here.
I also have meet Elder Walke. He is the new Zone Leader. He asked me if I knew him and I said yes. Apparently a lot of the Americans know who is because of his blog. I wonder if it will be the same with me.
I really don´t have much time to exercise. I have maybe 10 minutes or so. The problem is that getting ready cannot be done in exactly 30 minutes and it seems like every day there is something random to do. So yeah I do 40 pushups and 50 sit ups every day if I have time. We had an exercise thing that had bars on it for different types of exercises. It was stored in lobby thing of the apartment but the owner took it away.
I think that I will get transferred in six weeks. Elder Minga had one companion for 10 months if I remember right but I believe that is pretty unusual. I think two or three changes in usual. Elder Minga didn´t want to be transferred but some things you have to do thing that you don´t want to do. After he goes home he is going to come back and visit. So I might see him again. Or I might not. That is definitely an advantage of living in the same country as your mission. It only costs like 20 dollars and you buy a ticket to go and return for a visit. Not too bad huh.

Oh well, I got to go now. I got a few letters from you this week. Thanks. It is always great to hear from you. I love you all a lot and I will see and talk to you sooner that you know it.

Elder Mitchell

January 18, 2010

Hi everyone,

I am really good. How are you?
Yeah we totally went paintballing. It was soooo muddy. It had been raining all night and all day. My shoes were soo covered in mud. It was fun because of the rain but it actually turned out to be worse. The problem was that the paintballs would get wet and thus weaken. It was more like paintspraying by the end. It was fun because at the end we played all against all which was the codename for all against Elder Xec. He got hit like 5 times or so in twenty seconds or so. It would have been worse but just about nobody had balls left so yeah. It was funny. Afterward they pushed him in the mud. It was all right though. It was cool. Elder Xec is really cool. He taught me how to make empañadas and torillas. He leaves Tuesday. How sad. Oh well. The mission is really short and in no time i will be in his position.
Yeah there have been a few pranks. Maybe I will tell you about them if I have time.
Time goes by way fast. Yeah I knew that it is about 1/4 over. I don´t have much time left so I got to go.

I love you all,

Elder Mitchell

January 11, 2010

Hello everyone,

How are you all? I am pretty good. Man, that takes a lot of time to get letters. I don´t know if it is just the mail service here or if it is the office that is slow. I have heard that sometimes the office will wait until the final notice to pick up packages before they go and get them. Maybe they do this with letters too. I really don´t know. But yeah there is probably like five more in the mail. One random thing concerning callings, I think that I am the unofficial chorister of the branch here because in almost every meeting they ask me to direct the music. Yeah at first I was pretty bad but know I’m pretty good. Except yesterday there was a 6/8 song. That was weird so I just converted it to a 3/4. Much easier.
We might go paintballing again today (with the elders from Portoviejo but it rained last night and it still is right now so the field is all muddy. We still might do it but I´m not sure. It depends on if the business lets on play. If we do we are going to play a game called all against all at the end but instead on all against all it will be all against Elder Xec because he leaves in two (days?). This is to ¨kill him¨. It should be pretty fun. Paintballing is a lot like airsofting. I thought that the balls would go exactly straight in paintballing because they are heavier but no it is about the same. I won the first game and second game but after that people started to catch on to how to play and so it evened out.
The family is good. If you want to find out where they live it is a little town (if you can call it a town) called Barlomi Grande. Check it out of the internet. The mom is really good and we think that she will get baptized next week. The dad drinks so he is going to have to let that go but after that he should be good too. They have three kids. One already a member and the other two are too young I think. They are family of Amparito, the person who we helped build a gate.
I saw my blog the other day because the Pazmiños were using a computer and I told them to go to it. Good job guys. It is really good.
So the Soy Elder… was kind of funny. We went to contact a reference we had last week just after prep day ended. Elder Minga introduce himself and after I went to introduce myself. I usually point my nametag at the person so they can read it. So I did this at the same time as I said Soy Elder (I am Elder…) But as I said this I realized that I didn´t have my nametag on. I had left it in the house. So yeah I was like I am Elder Mitchell but I don´t have my nametag. But seriously I´m a missionary and my name is Elder Mitchell. It was pretty funny. Elder Minga told me that in his two year he never forgot his nametag.
We were buying some pan de chocolate (chocolate bread) on prep day last week too. This is really good. It is like the shape of a croissant but tastes like a roll. But inside each circle is a layer of melted chocolate. It is soo good. Anyways when we were buying it a lady asked me where I was from. I said of the US. She told me that I look like the boyfriend of the daughter of Pres. Obama. She asked me if I was him. What? Okay. I just said no. But maybe next time I will said yes and she if I can give someone my autograph.
I am trying to learn how to make the tortilla and empañadas here but so far it isn´t going too well. I need to have a member show me how to do it. They just told me how to do it. Also Amparito knows how to make pan de chocolate so I asked her to write it down for me.
Geovanny was in using the bathroom in our house the other day and he wouldn´t leave. I don´t know why. He was talking on his cell phone to someone. So we decided to help him leave. We decided to hook up a hose to a spigot and shoot water into the bathroom through the window. But to make sure he didn´t leave we tied the door shut by tying shirts from one door handle to the other across the hall. When I say we I actually mean Elder Minga because I was just watching. But for some reason the water pressure was like nothing so we couldn´t do it. So Elder Minga grabbed a fire extinguisher and shot in through the gap at the bottom of the door. Yeah. I have never seen what a fire extinguisher does but now I know. It shoots out this white powder. Geovanny promptly existed the bathroom all covered in white dust. The entire bathroom was covered in dust. Yeah it took a whole hour to clean it up. It was so funny though. We have pictures of both Geovanny and the bathroom.
That is about it this week.

With the bathroom still smelling like the white fire extinguisher powder,

Elder Mitchell

[Show as slideshow]

January 4, 2010

Hi everyone,
Happy New Year. So let see. What did we do this week? On New Year´s eve we really didn´t do anything as well as New Years day because everyone else was doing other things. A day or two before New Year’s we helped the Pazmiños make añoviejos. Basically they are just full sized dolls made out of paper mache that the people burn to say goodbye to the old year. The ones we made were just pants and shirts sewed together and filled with saw dust and newspaper. I have pictures so if I have time you will see them. On New Year’s eve we were invited to go burn the añoviajos and eat dinner at 11:30. I don´t know if we should have gone, but we did. And yeah they do put firecracker inside the añoviajos. But the ones we made were just normal they didn´t look like political leader or anything. Some other traditions here are to carry your luggage around the block so that you will be able to travel a lot the next year, eat twelve grapes (I don´t know why), and wear yellow I believe. Weird huh. But cool. I ate the twelve grapes but that is all.
On New Year’s Day we went on a cleaning spree in the house. We cleaned for like 5 or 6 hours because we didn´t have anything else to do. And the house looks a lot better but probably Mom still would want to clean more.
So guess what we did today. We went paintballing. It doesn´t say anything about paintballing in the manual misional so it must be fine. That is one way of thinking about it. But yeah. It was crazy. The entire time I was thinking of the video game we had. It is almost exactly like that. It was 5 dollar for one hour and 90 balls. And it hurts a little bit but not a ton when you are hit. We went with the Pazmiños. We are planning on doing it again next week but with two other elders that are in Portoviejo. One of them Elder Xec from Guatemala is going home in two weeks. Sometimes missionaries call it ¨killing¨when a missionary goes home. So next week we might kill Elder Xec by shooting him with paintballs. Cool huh. Way better than just saying goodbye huh
You all have such bad luck. You should have burnt an añoviajo. Next year.

We are teaching the family that lives 3 hours from here. The same family that we helped water the plants. We hope that they will be baptized in a couple weeks. The problem is that we can only teach them once a week because it takes most the day to do it.

Love you all,
Elder Mitchell

 

[Show as slideshow]

 

 

December 29, 2009

Hi everyone,

So Christmas was good.  I really liked presents but I really liked the cards and letters and photos.  I especially liked the tape and tape player.  At first I was like how does this work.  I worked on it for a few minutes because I figured that you would have sent a message on the tape but I couldn´t get it to work.  The next day I told Elder Minga that I got it but I could not get it to work and he said let me see it.  So I did and he got it to work in like 2 minutes.  As it turns out all that needed to be done was to rewind it.  I thought that it was already rewound. Oh well.  It was really good to hear everyone and hear how everyone is doing.  I think that this was my favorite Christmas because one I could focus on the true meaning of Christmas and two I could realize how much I love you all and how much I miss you all.  For me I don´t get depressed when I think about you.  Yes I do miss you and I do want to see you but it makes me want to work.  Not to forget you but because I know that I love my family and that all of you love me and I know that there are so many other families that do not have what we have.  So you all are my motivation to work.  Plus when I come home I want to be able to say that I have worked hard for two years.

Today I was in Guayaquil to get my visa again.  There I saw two people juggling in the street but the funny part was that the one was standing on top of the other. 

Love you all and Feliz Año Nuevo,

Elder Mitchell

 
[Show as slideshow]