Creepy Taxi Encounters, Rainstorms, And Power Outages

Hola hola!! Como están?!

This week was a bit interesting to say the least haha. Basically to start, Ecuador is in a massive drought, like huuuuuge, so they decided to save power they could start cutting the lights, electricity, and water. So fun right?? Ya usually it wouldn't be a big deal but let me tell ya right now, it's a huge deal for us missionaries usually we don't have light or electricity from 9:00-2:00 and 6:00-8:30 which means during those hours we can't call or contact literally anyone then at night if we want to cook, too bad so sad we have no electricity doesn't help that our apartment legitimately has no natural light like at all and it's FREEZING all. the. time. Definitely something I didn't expect coming to Ecuador is to be cold... you'd be surprised at how cold it gets with the rain but anyways ya we found out that this whole "no light" situation might last until December...wanted to shed a tear when I heard that. Praying every day thats not the case

☆we had two more HUUUGE fires this week in the mountains super close to where we are and I don't think I've ever breathed in so much smoke in my life but I'll survive the sky was literally all smoke for a solid day and then the next day there was another fire and apparently lots of animals died and 2 houses were burned

☆IT RAINED WOOHOOOO you guys I don't care that it's absolutely freezing, you have no idea how much we needed rain and all week I've been praying and thanking Heavenly Father for this gift. Seriously such a blessing for this countr 

Creepy taxi story!
Ok we were heading to lunch the other day at a members house we'd never been to and as we were waiting on the sidewalk outside the apartment a sketchy taxi with 3 men sloowwyyy drove by and stopped right in front of us and my comp looked at me and said "vamos". Not gonna lie I was so clueless as to what was happening haha my mind was not there in that moment but we started walking the opposite direction and THE TAXI STARTED REVERSING LIKE WHATTTT?! We started walking faster and didn't see it for a second then across the street was a park on a little hill so we decided to go there since we saw people. So we're at the top of the hill and can see the street surrounding it and we literally see the taxi come around again and stop and just waited...staring and we felt sooo uncomfortable and my comp was super anxious, and then there were people eating there food so we went up to them and basically asked if we could stand with them for a few minutes until the husband of who we had lunch with came to get us. It was actually so funny but like not at the same time haha the taxi drove around the park AGAIN super slowly and just stared every time and thankfully we were safe and booked it to the house with the husband of the member hahah. I'm grateful for the spirit and how it warns us in those types of situations! When we got in the members house my comp showed me a video that I hadn't seen and said that this is why she was so nervous about the whole thing that happened. It was a video of a street super close to our house and a lady who was walking by herself got kidnapped by 3 men in a black car my stomach turned a bit when I watched it. Basically this is why us sisters can't be in the streets past 6:30 here in Chillogallo...just a bit dangerous. Don't worry mom I'm following the spirit

☆this random 20 yr old messaged us on Saturday thru Whatsapp and asked what time our church meetings are so we had a video call with him that night and wowww he has so many good questions and GUESS WHAT?! HE CAME TO CHURCH. Literally a miracle for this week because we didn't have a lot of new people bc of the light shortages and not being able to contact so literally Alejandro is a miracle. He found us thru Facebook and liked the love he saw thru social media I guess? We ended church yesterday and he had so many questions and asked why we take the sacrament only one time every month and I was like woah woah woah where did u get that idea jk no I was like nope we take it every week. Then he explained that in the Catholic church they only take it once a month and he always thought that was super weird. But he really liked sacrament meeting yesterday! For sure was a bit different ngl because we didn't have power, so the speakers had to talk really loud at the pulpit haha and the hymns were accapella...let's just say the people here don't have the best voices so it was a little interesting lol

☆had my second zone conference this week which was so good and much needed for our zone! Some things I took away were 
1. that we need to work with the members wayyy more
2. ask spiritually guided questions during contacting and lessons! 
For all my missionary friends I challenge you to do these to things with me this month!!

Pretty sure that's it for this week! CAN'T WAIT FOR CONFERENCE YOU GUYS!!!!! Literally so hyped you have no idea. Get to watch it all in spanish so much that my mind might explode with information in another language but "there's no comfort in the growth zone, and there's no growth in the comfort zone" right??

Really quick wanted to share something I learned from this week! A lot of times when we say "buenas tardes" or asked people how they are, they usually say "estoy muy bien gracias a Dios". I don't know why but this really caught my attention every time this week. Because these people really are grateful for everything they have and they know who God is. Another thing is in some of our almuerzos this week in the blessing of the food, they said "gracias por la comida en nuestro mesa" which also touched me because they are so grateful for the food. It's something so simple but for some here, it's they're living and they're grateful they had enough food and money to help feed us. Those two things stuck out to me so much and taught me to appreciate more the things I have. How can we show our Heavenly father our gratitude? How can we thank him every day? What are some things in specific that we can appreciate more this week in our prayers? I challenge you guys to notice things this week that you take for granted in your day to day life and I know that you'll be able to see so many more blessings! Also I challenge you to all go into conference this weekend with 2 questions! I talked with comp this week about how it's amazing that when we bring questions, it's incredible that every person and member can receive a direct and personal answer from our prophets! 

Love you all so much!

Xoxo
Hermana Jones



















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