Week 12 - Cotacachi - The Week of Excellence

Hello everyone!

The first six weeks of my mission have come to a close. It has certainly flown by many awesome things have happened within those. My first baptism, my first contacting, and many many other things.

This week was much better than last week. It started out with a miracle. We were walking to catch a bus for our district meeting and this lady stopped us. She told us that she had met the missonaries in the coast and already had a Book of Mormon and would love to meet with us. Being the smart missonaries we are we set up an appointment that day. She was super interested and was taking notes as we shared scriptures with her. We were also able to teach her son which was great! We set up a baptism for them in November. However, with the new investigators comes the new converts, and we found out something sad with our Familia Rienoso. Hermano Rienoso had a smoking problem before and apparently does now as well. This was evident when we visited him yesterday and saw a pack of cigarettes. We are praying to found out how to help him best because he hasn't opened up and told us about this problem. We are thinking that we will just have to be a Jeffery R. Holland and, "get in his face a little. Just enought to singe his eyebrows". 

We had a baptism this last weekend! Her name is Sami Tamayo and she is nine years old. She wasn't baptized when she was eight (which I will never understand) so we helped her prepare. It was so awesome to see how much her testimony and knowledge in the Gospel has grown as we have taught her. She was excited herself. She had the priviledge of having her father baptize her as well. We have another kid who is ten that will be batized on the 28th as well. 

A lot of crazy things have happened this week as well. We found out that Quito, the capital city, got snow. I asked if that was normal and they said no. We saw snow here on our volcanoes, Imbabura and Cotacachi. Guess it must be getting colder or something :). We had lunch at the stake presidents house. He actually works in the States. He sells jackets up there, so he had a lot of American tourist items in his house. It was very interesting to see. He also had many different pictures or engravings of different temples around the world. They were all so awesome.

This week I had my first intercambios (companion exchange). I went with Elder Fillmore, our zone leader, to his area while his companion went to mine with Elder Alvarado. It was actually kind of nice to speak English to someone and ask all my clarifying questions. We were able to teach a lot of families and meet some new people along the way. Come to find out, he is also from Logan, Utah. We actually went to the same high school. He was a senior when I was a sophmore so we actually didn't know each other, but he knew my dad! It was fun getting to talk about the people we both knew. He is such an awesome person and missionary.

My companion and I are "Excellent Missionaries". This may seem high-headed, but there is reasoning behind it. This last district meeting our zone set "Standards of Excellence". We planned goals that we wanted to achieve as a zone every week. My companion and I took it upon ourselves to make those our companionship goals as well. We were able to accomplish some and exceed others. It was awesome to see how we were able to receive opportunities to meet these goals. There is absolutely no way that we did not have divine help. 

I hope this week has gone as good for all of you as it has for me. If not, I hope this week goes better! Love you all!

--Elder Ogden--

This was our district celebration for my birthday. They try to shove your face in the cake, but I'm too smart for that

Lunch and Baptism: Tuna Sandwich Lunch from our American missionary with chips and German chocolate cake. And yes, your eyes do not decieve you, that is Grandma Sycamore bread. I only point that out for my family :)

Pictures from the baptism. That is not all of her family but a good pictures nonetheless. 

My new bracelet for my old District

 found the perfect way to make a PopTart now

Traintracks

Breakfast