Elder Kyle Reynolds: The Green Door!!

Trying to find cheaper transportation! Bus and taxi's are too expensive haha!!

Hello Everyone!

This week was a pretty hard week to work. Not going to lie. With Thanksgiving and everything in the States and remembering back on it and describing what we usually do on Thanksgiving to my comp.. ha got me thinking about all that past life. Which isn't a bad thing, its just when I let it dwell in my mind. My companion has helped me so much this week. We both talked very openly with each other and man it has been better than ever. Usually I am too prideful to tell someone what I actually feel and obviously as a guy I don't like to show weakness. But this week I really opened up to Elder Villacorta telling him that I was struggling with staying focused and then he opened up about he too was thinking a lot about home and from there we set goals and are helping each other mutuamente(mutually).Who knew that being humble is the key to happiness? haha

We feel that our investigators are not progressing too much. So we decided to contact a little bit more this week. And like all things, when we put forth the work we will always witness a miracle! We have a pretty big sector, I think it is something like 3 or 4 hours in bus from side to side. So it's pretty hard to cover all of it and also save some money for food because we have to pay for the bus or taxi haha. So we usually always contact the taxi drivers because it's like a freebee because they have to listen to us lol (tricks of the mission). So we contacted this guy and he seemed pretty interested! But he lived in a sector pretty far and we had no idea where it was, so he just told us he lived in this area by some tanks of water. So we decided to visit him one day and called him and all was good. He was going to meet us in some place and then have a lesson. So we arrive in this unknown place and that's when it got interesting. We literally tried calling him 300 times ha but he wasn't answering. And we were pretty determined to have an appointment with him so we were like, well there some tanks of water over there lets head over there. Then we were looking around and looked at each other and were like this is going to go in the ensign haha. So we said a prayer asking that we will find this one house in the vast mountainous terrain we were in. After that we were like.. man where do we even start? So we just chose a road and took it and contacted a few houses and then contacted another family that was golden! We are pretty excited about them also. So after about 30 minutes, we were about to head home and then there was this pretty huge hill and we both thought its got to be up there..... so we walked up the hill and after we ran and battled a few dogs we were like yeah.. either we are in the exact right place or a very wrong place hahah. We still had the faith that we would find it and so we chose a house with the green door because it was green haha and we asked the lady if Jimmy (our investigator) lived there and she was like oh Jimmy lives right next door!! So we knocked on the door and we found him!!!!!!! hahah What I learned from this crazy miracle was that God expects us to work. Just because we believe in the power of prayer and have the faith doesn't necessarily mean all is well. And another thing is honestly I was expecting a sign from God like here is the house.. but it was simply because we wanted to contact the door that is green hahaha. The point being is that when we are serving God and wanting a miracle, maybe we won't necessarily have the grand aha moment this is what I should be doing, but through our work He will guide us into what or where we need to be. Some may say its coincidence, but honestly we were talking about that and really how everything worked out perfectly and a little slight wrong move we wouldn't have been able to find him. God is truly on our side and is in the work with us. I am very grateful to be apart of this great work knowing that the man upstairs is also so willing to help us.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and that we will start this new Christmas season great.and take advantage of it by sharing the gospel! Great things are going to happen here in Santo Domingo, Ecuador. Just watch! I love you all!

Elder Reynolds