A Record of Elder Eastman's Missionary Service in the Quito Ecuador Mission

A Record of Elder Eastman's Missionary Service in the Quito Ecuador Mission

Monday, December 29, 2014

Happy New Year!

Hello Family!

All is still just fine.  I actualy havnt opened that cereal yet.  I dont have milk right now.  But ill open it soon.  
Wow i think i remember when chelsea said that!  (referring to Chelsea saying that she knew that she would be serving the Lord every single day of 2014).  Well this next year is definitely going to be a good one!  So 34 more to go means that you can get it done in 34 days right?  (referring to finishing the D&C)
A few weeks ago my zone had a zone conference thing and a dinner at the Presidents house.  So just not with all the missionaries.  

So yesterday we got our changes!  And they werent very exciting.  But still good!  So i am staying here in Guamani and so is my comp elder Bryce.  So now we get to stay together and finish the things we started last change.  So we decided we are definitely going to have a better change this time than last time.  
Also yesterday we contacted a reference that we got a while ago from a different missionary and even got a nice family out of it.  His name is Freddy Florres and he is super cool.  He doesnt remember how old he is so i think he might have some type of a learning disability.  But hes super nice.  And his family is quite good too.  there is 6 of them.  But two of them live out side of our sector so we can only baptise 4 of them.  And i think they have a pretty good chance at being baptised.  

Oh and today i got the umbrella!  thank you!  And thanks for the other stuff inside too!  

Well i think thats pretty much all for this week!

Elder Eastman

Hello my Father,

Well im pretty sure that the christmas call didnt mess me up.  So thats good!  It was just reall cool.  So yep im doing alright! Thanks for the advise about success!  This last change was a bit tough with that.  Alot of people didnt want to listen to us or just werent home.  So our numbers for alot of the week were pretty terrible.  And my companion occasionaly had a bit of a hard time still thinking that we had any success at all.  We definitely tried as hard as we know how to do and tried our best.  But sometimes the bad numbers would just get a hold of my companion and make him think that he was a bad missionary and doing something wrong.  So i tried to keep myself away from that and stay positive and think of the little successes that we did have.  And at least my companion is always trying to improve and become a better missionary.  I just think that sometimes he just listens to the wrong voice.  Because that is what satan tries to tell us, that we are worse than we really are or tries to make us feel bad about ourselves.  So yeah im going to try really hard and not base my success of of just numbers but think of the effort that i have put into it.
Well thats pretty cool that youll be teaching the little niños!  There is a super good talk that i have been listening to lately by David m. mcconkie called Teaching with the power and authority of God.  So you should look that up.  Its really good.  
Love you too!

Elder Eastman

A picture of my zone that actualy just changed a bit, me roasting marshmellows in our fire place, me, elder bryce, elder memmott, and elder hayrond, and me with mator (from the movie cars)






Thursday, December 25, 2014

Christmas Day Skype



We sure love this missionary!  We are so grateful that we could talk with him, and as a bonus... we could see him too! He skyped in at the end of Hermana Chelsea's phone call, so they were able to say hello and say a few things in spanish to each other.  "I love technology!" (sing it like in Napoleon Dynamite)

Monday, December 22, 2014

Rough Pre-Christmas Week

Hello Father,

Well Christmas will defintely be very different this year but im glad im here too.  
Wow a primary teacher!  I definitely would never have expected that!  But thats super cool!  Isnt there like 206ish primary kids in that ward?  

Hahaha ceviche is super duper popular here! Shirmp ceviche is the best of them all i think but i still really dont like it.  There is just so much onions and weird stuff in it.  But ya ive had ceviche a bunch of times so far.  I dont think i have told you this but ive also had the wonderful opportunity to try chicken foot a few times.  Its always just thrown into soup.  So if they have chicken foot at that place i would recomend that you try it.  Because its super super gross.  But not as bad as pig skin or cow stomach.  

Love you too and ill see you on Chistmas!

Elder Eastman


Hello everyone!

So i think we are going to skype around 5 our time.  Which i guess would be 3 your time.  
Well sounds like you guys are just having a super wonderful time over in Utah!  That south american restaurant sounds pretty cool! 

Well this week was pretty rough.  We are really trying not to base our success off of the numbers.  Because this week the numbers really didnt show at all how hard we worked and how much we tried.  They were super terrible.  And pretty much worst of all our golden investigator Hna. Teresa didnt show up to church on sunday which means her baptismal date fell.  So now itll be on the 3rd which is next change which means me and elder bryce might not be there.  Or possibly only one of us.  So that wasnt very fun.  We still have to talk to her to figure out the reason why she wasnt there.  So i guess patience is a big thing that we can learn from this.  

Well i think thats pretty much it for now!  I can tell you more things through skype on Christmas. 

Elder Eastman 

Monday, December 15, 2014

A Dream

Hello Father!

Well i'm a bit jealous that you get the cold and snow! It might not ever get very hot here but it can sometimes feel hot when it's a clear day.  Maybe becuase we are a couple miles closer to the sun.  I think the place i'm at (Guamani) is about 10,000 feet high.  

Haha i really like what you said about the light bulb and Thomas Edison!  That is a super cool analogy.  

Well everything is going pretty good here!  It's still hard to find people to teach but we keep working hard.  One of our best investigators got a cool answer to her prayers a few days ago.  I'll explain it better in the other email to you guys.  But she said because of this answer she is for sure going to baptised!  That made us super happy and excited.  Her baptismal date is on the 27th.  So that will be my first baptism in my mission.  
Well have a good week Father!

Hello Family!

Well first off i have some good news!  A few days ago a got a few packages.  One from the Wright grandparents, one from you guys, and another one from you guys.  So im guessing that means that both of the packages you sent made it here!  One is in a box and the other is in a padded envelope.  I'm waiting for christmas to open them (except the one from grandma and grandpa, i already opened that).  Also i want to send you guys and some other people some letters but i didnt get any time today to write/send them.  So hopefully i will have time next p day.  

Thats a pretty sweet 12 weeks theme!  PMG is awesome.  Also cool about Hayden and all that military stuff.  

Yes i know what the Share the Gift thing is.  We have pass along cards that say El es la Dádiva.  Which pretty much means He is the Gift.  On the back of the card there is a link to a video on the church website that we tell people to go to.  
Well here i dont really think christmas is quite as big as it is in the states.  But its still pretty big.  People dont have big trees here (real or fake) like they do in the states.  They are just small little fake ones (like maybe 3 feet tall normaly).  Also not very many people put lights up.  And when they do its just a very small amounts of lights.  Other than that stuff though i havnt really noticed much else.  

Well the fruits of our labors were definitely more visible this week.  Mostly just with our one really good investigator that we have.  
So a few days ago we taught this investigator of ours named Hna. Teresa the word of wisdom.  And we found out that she really really really likes to drink coffe.  Like alot of the people here.  But we talked to her about it and all that good stuff.  And she said that she will pray to get help with over comming this and that she is going to try really hard to stop drinking coffe.  So that was really good and so far she hasnt drank any more coffe.  Then a bit later on in the lesson she told us something super duper cool.  Well first she has been really trying to figure out why this church is the true church by asking us and also by praying.  And during this lesson she said she got an answer to her prayers.  So what happened is she had a dream.  And in that dream she saw me and my companion.  We were dressed in white and the space around us was really bright.  She then looked around a bit and saw that the space around us wasnt quite as bright as it was around us.  Then she noticed that we were calling after her.  I guess we were telling her to come to us.  She said she was a bit hesitant to come over but she did anyways.  Then when she got to us she saw a foutain with really really clear water in it.  And that was the dream she had.  After this dream she said that because of this she is for sure going to get baptised.  So that was super super cool!  And will be my first baptism on my mission.  Her baptismal date is on the 27 of this month.  

Well i dont have anymore time for emailing.  But today we went up that cable car thing they have here called the teleférico.  It was super cool and fun.  I have some pics.  

Well have a good week everyone!

Elder Eastman






Monday, December 8, 2014

Slow Going

Hello Father!

Everything here is just fine.  The work is still tough and going pretty slow.  Probably most of the citas (appoitments) we make fall.  Mostly just because the people arent home for some reason.  So that can be a bit frustrating.  People are still never in the steets so contacting can be difficult too.  Lately we have been just knocking doors.  Alot of people say either they just arent interested, they are busy right now, or they say ok but when we ask what day would be best for them they say they work all the time and have no free time.  And alot of the time when it is a street contact they say they would like to talk more but then when we ask where they live they give somewhere super far away or somewhere super general, so we ask for a street number and house number and they say they dont remember it or they dont have one, so we ask for a phone number but they say they dont have one.   And then sometimes we get lucky and they actually give us a time and place when we could teach them.  And then out of those good ones very few are actualy home when we come over at the time we set.    So yeah that can be a frustrating sometimes.  But i guess all that really matters is if we always keep trying.  And we have been trying hard lately.  So thats good.  
Me and Elder Bryce have been getting along well.  We both want to do the best we can and always be obedient.  Sometimes it can be a bit hard to know what we need to do like when a cita falls because we are both super young in the mission.  But we are definitely learning and trying to get better.  
Well thanks for being such a great dad and teaching me well!  

Elder Eastman


Well happy birthday mother!  43 isnt super old!  Just a little :)  
This week was still super hard.  Finding new people is really tough but we did have a bit of success with this.  We found 3 new people this week.  But im not too sure how well they are going to progress.  2 of them are super catholic i think, and we only got to teach them the first half of the Restoration so far because of time.  The other guy is pretty good and accepted baptism but still didnt come to church yesterday.  So I dont know.  Hopefully they will be good.  And none of our other investigators came to church yesterday either.  So everyones baptismal date fell and will have to be pushed back at least week.  
No i didnt get to watch the Christmas Devotional.  We were only aloud to if we brought an investigator.  And we werent able to do that.  
So far i have been too tired and lazy to do any exercising in the mornings.  But we just bought this long stick for $1 and we have a bunch of water jugs that we are going to tie to the ends of that.  So we are going to start using that to exercise.  
So for Christas we are aloud to skype.  So be ready for that.  Would 3 o'clock for you guys (4 o'clock here i think) be good for you?  I think that is what my companion can do.  
Well i think that is pretty much all for this week.  Sorry i dont have more.  

Elder Eastman

Oh i forgot to tell you that yes i do email my president.  But theyre not nearly as long as chelseas.  Theyre just short and boring 

Monday, December 1, 2014

Service Really Can Do Some Good

Hello Father,

Things are going pretty good here!  I totaly forgot it was Thanksgiving on thursday last week.  Yeah they definitely dont celebrate it here.  Most people here dont know who Joseph Smith is so I havnt gotten that question yet.  
Well sorry i dont have much else to say.  This week was a bit on the non exciting side.  Not to much happend.  
Well have a fun week at work and with the fam! 

Su hijo,
Elder Eastman


Hello Family!

Yes i got the advent calendar a few days ago.  Thanks for it!  I like it. 
We do laundry and a members house.  We get fed by members for lunch almost every day.  Normaly nobody gives us dinner though.  So for dinner we normaly just make some eggs at the house at the end of the day.  
Yes we have to drink bottled water.  The water from the tap is unsafe.  Im fine with just normal water.  (I asked him if he wanted flavor packets)  We drink juice alot of the time too so its not always boring.  
So far the dogs have stayed some what away from us.  There is only a few who will actually get close to us.  Most are all just bark.  But still super annoying.  
Thanks for ordering the same umbrella!  I really liked that umbrella.  And i havnt bought a new one yet.  

Well this week was a bit unexciting.  I think all of our lessons that we had planned with the new people that we have contacted fell.  And most of the lessons with members fell too.  So we really didnt get to teach a whole lot of lessons this week.  For some reason just nobody is ever home.  Which is weird because theyre not in the streets either.  So im wondering where everyone is.  Guamaní feels like a ghost town sometimes.  A few days ago me, Elder Bryce, some other missionaries and a bunch of ward members helped clean this house of some recent converts who havnt been coming to church lately.  Wow their house was quite the mess.  Tons of cockroaches, dirty clothes outside with flies all over them, stuff like this.  So there was a bunch of stuff to be cleaned.  A bit gross but still a good experience and a good oportunity to help some people out.  And what was really good because of this is that this sunday they actually came to church!  So service can really do some good things sometimes!
Also a few days ago i bought a speaker and a little 8gb flashdrive to put music on.  The speaker says Beats on it but its not a real Beats speaker because it was only about $20.  But its still a good speaker.  And now i can actually listen to music.  Right now i only have a few talks and a bunch of motab from the church website.  But ill try and put those cds i have on it too.  

Cotopaxi!  One of the great views from our house.  On a clear day like this we can see 3 awesome looking volcanoes from our house.


Me and Elder Bryce.  Sorry i forgot again to take a picture with him until just now, so we took one here in the internet place.



Well thats pretty much everything!  
Have a good life!

Elder Eastman