IMBAYA

Hi Family!!!

We all say hi from Imbaya Ecuador!! Really, I think I’ve showed our family picture to more people here than I have in my entire mission. They all seem to get a kick out of seeing a big family of blonde haired people together. It’s not a very common thing here. But I sure do love you guys. It makes me really happy to talk about you… whenever I can.

This week I saw a change in Imbaya… or maybe in myself. Or maybe I just opened my eyes a little more and saw all of the blessings that the Lord is giving us. Hermana Israelsen and I focused a lot on gratitude these last few days, and you know what? It really does make a person a lot happier. Even if they still are hiking mountains and eating mountains of rice. We’re starting to overcome those mountains and see sunny skies through the hard. At the beginning of last week we decided that we need to do SOMETHING different.. so my companion started asking me about all the things that make me happy and the blessings that I saw during the day. And although that was what we made ourselves do at first, its became our go to conversation, and has really brightened our spirits.

Some of my favorite things about being here in Imbaya…

-We are meeting some of the HUMBLEST members

-I’ve been able to learn a LOT about faith and hope in the Lord

-I’ve learned how to eat anything and everything and love it

-We haven’t gotten sick yet. (That’s a miracle… you should see how they cookJ)

-Laughing is good for the soul

-We have NO homework and classes to worry about!

-My bed just seems to feel more comfortable every night

-I’ve gotten better balance from crossing rivers on thin logs

-I get to live with one of my best friends and learn from her example

-I’m learning another language.. pagie pagie kiakama

-It’s my calling to ride buses to the middle of nowhere in hopes of finding a new person to get to know.

-I can guess half of the peoples names before I talk to them. Maria or Jose. (haha we get a good laugh about all the Mary and Joseph couples)

I truly am lucky to be living in the middle of the purest Lamanites that there are on the earth. And although rejection still is a very common thing, I’m starting to fall in love with it here. Again. I’m starting to realize that enjoying the ride is a lot more important than having a perfect ride. As Hermana Israelsen and I talked a lot lately, we both felt like we’ve needed to work more with the ward members to see the work progress. So we had the idea of putting on a ward activity with members and nonmembers to get them more excited and ready to share the gospel. We made invitations and all week we’ve been passing them out and telling people about the activity that were going to have in one week. We’re really excited and I think the ward really is too. We’ve also focused a lot on little acts of service that we could do throughout the day, we’re trying to leave little thank you notes with the members at lunch and we give out some of our American candy to the ward council each Sunday (shout out to both of our moms for sending great packages!) I saw them really open up this week.

One lesson that we had this week was really cool. I guess it was just a big eye opener to see how some people live. We rode a bus like 20 minutes out into the boonies and from there, just started walking down a dirt path and up a mountain to try and find a less active. After walking for awhile we found a little village… of about 20 houses and people just outside playing or talking with each other. As we taught this family a lesson the mom was trying to make lunch which included about 30 minutes of spinning corn in a bowl, then she had to go out and cut wood with her saw to be able to start a fire and cook their soup. They have no electricity and there’s about nothing. You could tell their clothes were old and falling apart and I’m pretty sure the sticks and dirt were their favorite toys. It’s sure humbling to see how the rest of the world lives.

This week we also saw one of our investigators start progressing really well. She’s been reading the Book of Mormon, she actually sleeps with it now and has been praying to know if it’s true. One night as she was sleeping she had a dream where she was in our church, but she said it was bigger and more fancy and sparkly and someone was giving her a blessing. She told us that she feels her spirit being drawn to our church and wants to go this Sunday.

This same investigator got sick at the end of this week so we went with a member to go give her a blessing. It was a really cool experience and we were especially amazed at how willing the member was to walk a long time, hike a mountain and leave his family to help us. As we were leaving he turned to us and said, “ok Hermanas, I have to run. Its my 2^nd anniversary and I’m sure my wife is waiting for me at the house. See ya”. We just turned to each other like… whhhat? Man, we felt bad, but I know the Lord blesses  those who sacrifice for his work.

A line that I read from one of my studies this week… “You will hear faith promoting stories about others. That will inspire you. You will see the Lord’s hand working wonders in the lives of others. That will encourage you. But, I witness that the saving kind of faith in Christ is a very personal, sweetly private, first person kind of faith developed only in the process of personal involvement in life’s challenges.” I know that all that I go through on my mission, or all that we are going through in life is because the Lord is smart enough to know how developing faith works. We aren’t allowed to see the end always… because that wouldn’t require us to completely rely on the Lord. I know that He loves us and knows exactly what we need to help us grow.

I hope you have had a fantastic week! Les amo much!

Love,  Hermana Yorgason