Elder Kyle Reynolds: Facing the Giants

Hello everyone!!!

Another week in the books! Pretty good week in Ecuador. Still no baptismal dates but we are finding and teaching a lot of people!! Contacting isn't that scary to me anymore.. Because usually it is the same response of either yes I want to hear more or no I am busy. So I just listen carefully for whether they say occupado or whether they say venga haha I still cant keep up a conversation but I am getting there. Whenever we go to a persons house to eat, I just listen to what they are saying to my companion and its almost like I am not there sometimes! lol Its not like they hate me its just they know I cant speak very good Spanish and they don't want to make it awkward for me.. We are still teaching the same people. I am learning much patience out here lol. It is so hard to just not drag them to the baptismal font and say, you will thank me later! ha But agency is what we fought for in the pre-existence. I am really starting to develop a love for the people. Even though I cant really communicate with them I just have the urge to help them in some way! I love the ward here. Everyone is so talkative and nice. I love the way they say American names too. It is really funny to me. That is probably how they feel about me! Hopefully they aren't too fed up with my gringo Spanish!

The food is good! I haven't really talked about the food but it is different but surprisingly good! I must say it doesn't look that appetizing but when you mix it all together it isn't too bad! For every meal, or almost every meal, it is soup and then it is sooooo much rice and usually chicken and if I am lucky I get some salad! I am trying to eat clean but it is hard because the members feed you so much rice and bread! What I had to get used to was that there isn't really dinner here. It is breakfast which is fruit, and then there is a big lunch and then if you want you can snack on bread or something for dinner. Pfff not for me!! Tuna is decently cheap here so I usually have that. Well if I am lucky enough to have time for dinner. That is usually when there is the most appointments. So I am surviving! haha It is hard for me though because I know I am losing weight and I can see it... NOOOO all that hard work gone. Lol The weirdest thing I have eaten so far is chicken feet and chicken spine. Not that weird but for now I am good with that... ha So I have to keep telling myself that I am not out here for me, it is solely for the people of Ecuador!

So I was doing good about forgetting about the Super Bowl.. Not many people talk about it here but we were sitting in church and one of the members say, The super bowl is today! And when he said that I was like noooooooo why did you tell me that!!! haha Forgive me, I thought a lot about football yesterday... I heard the Patriots won though!! My man Tom Brady always pulling through. It sucks that I didn't get to watch but one super bowl down only one to go! ha ¨The missionaries here count Christmases usually but I like to count Super Bowls. Only 2 on the mission and got one down! Someone will have to email me a detailed email of how the Super Bowl went haha So besides that the week was great!!

Spanish is continually coming and my companion and I are getting along, so all is well here in Quito! Still lots and lots of hills though.. What is kinda cool is I found out a very popular sport in Quito! Its called Ecua-volley. It is a really high net, 3 on 3, they use a soccer ball for a volleyball and they play volleyball! I really want to try that out! Everyone says your forearms are super red after you play but I want to try it! I've learned that you cant knock something until you try it. ¨That probably applies more to food but I want to try everything I can here! Today for a district activity we went to Mr. Joys. It is like an indoor slide place. It was actually really fun! I thought it was going to be more or less for little kids but they had some big kids stuff! ha I give props to Ecuador for that!

So some funny thing that happened this week...hmm...Oh I don't know if this is funny but I was eating at a members house. The wife was for some reason really focusing on me. I guess she wanted to know if her food was good to me. It actually was pretty good! But as I could feel her staring through my soul I was biting a piece of meat off the drumstick and all the sudden the bone just snapped in half and half of it went into my mouth! I didn't want to spit it out because I thought that would be rude... So I had to drink sooo much water so that the bone would slide down my throat without me choking to death... Luckily it did!! I have no idea what to expect this next week when it digests and has to come out.. Kinda scared actually haha. Man the things you do to be polite? I have changed a lot... haha

So the highlight of the week was a general authority came to visit on Friday! It was Elder Montoya. He is the area seventy. It was really cool to listen to him. Of course it was in Spanish so I really had to concentrate. I also got to see my MTC comp Elder Philpot! It was really good to see a familiar face again. We still don't know Spanish so I was relieved because I thought I was falling behind in my group or in general! ha But my favorite part from his discourse was he showed a you tube video of the death crawl from Facing The Giants!! So for those of you who don't know what that is it is a football movie that has such a great spiritual message. I would definitely recommend it!! So anyways there is a part in there where the coach blindfolds the player and they have to do a bear crawl thingy with a person on his back. Usually they do 10 yards and lots of people struggle with just 10 yards. But this time he wants the player to give him his very best and he doesn't want for him to see where he is at and base that off of his very best. So through a very emotional crawl he climbs much farther than what he ever thought he could! (I wont give away too much) But the lesson learned is that we put limitations on ourselves and we constantly compare ourselves to others. But really it is between us and God and only we know if we gave our very best. I also got out of it that before we came to earth I am almost positive we promised Heavenly Father that we would give our very best down here. I bet if we could remember for only a second how much we loved our Heavenly Father we would change things in our lives to align our will with His. But yes times get really tough. Life is tough! It isn't supposed to be easy. But we have to keep going. We have to endure to the end as we promised when we were baptized. If you watch that video you will definitely get more out of it than what I am telling you so pretty much just watch the video and don't read this email haha I love all of you guys. I am so happy to be out here serving the Lord. I hope these emails aren't too boring for you all! I try to make them entertaining. But I am not that funny so maybe my mom or dad can switch up a couple of words to make it sound better. I love you all! Have a fantastic week!!

Elder Reynolds