Hola familia and friends. This week was good until saturday night, then it turned not so good. The earthquake was massive over here. It was only like a 6.5 magnitude where I'm at, but it leveled the coast. There are 3 cities that got rocked pretty hard but none are in our mission. Esmeraldas got hit pretty hard as well, but not anything like Portoviejo or Manta. All the missionaries are doing well in both missions, so that's a great relief. Nothing too bad happened in Compañia. We definitely felt it loud and clear, but nothing happened to us or to our house or anything. Lots of prayers out to the coast though. I have a lot of friends out there, so I hope they made it out just fine. There are hundreds of dead and wounded, and an entire mall went down on top of everyone inside in Manabi. They still haven't been able to do the count on the dead there but there will be lots. It's a sad deal. The country is pretty shaken up right now. It could have been a lot worse though. Had it hit directly on Esmeraldas, that city is not in any way shape or form ready for a 7.8 earthquake. It would have been desolated completely. Portoviejo is a little more advanced, so it took it better than Esmeraldas would have. Keep up the prayers, Ecuador got rocked pretty hard this week. Other than that, we had a decent week. Our investigators went to church and then we found a family of 17 who is super awesome, so we are happy. We were in Quito most of the week so we went and visited Narcisa, the one who got baptized last July in La Luz. Her and her husband run a hotel and restaurant that's pretty expensive. Profesional soccer teams stay there when they are in Quito sometimes, and we were eating lunch with them on Thursday and a pro soccer player who is in the national cup right now walked in and sat down at our table. He was from Esmeraldas, so I got a long with him well after having been there, so we got to talking, and out of nowhere he just says,"Hey you guys are Mormons right?" We were like "Ya we are, we are missionaries." He then said," answer me one question, why are there so many churches in this world." So we taught him the restoration right then and there and he said he wanted to get baptized on the 14th of May. It was awesome. He was a super cool guy; he just needs to live in Otavalo instead of Quito. The missionaries in that sector were really stoked when they heard hah. We got to put a baptismal date with a professional soccer player after having lunch with him haha, guess that doesnt happen everyday. It was a good week. We are hoping for success. My time is about gone. What we have right now is everything for me so I'm gonna be workin like crazy too see miracles before the end. It should be fun. Well that's about it for this week. Keep praying for Ecuador, lots of affected people in the coast. I love you guys. Talk to ya next week.
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AuthorThis blog is dedicated to Easton Nielson's mission to Ecuador Quito North Mission. Archives
March 2016
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