Feliz Navidad

Hey everyone!!

I hope everyone had an awesome fun Christmas! and I hope you all got a chance to attend church and have an opportunity to think of our savior Jesus Christ.

This Christmas has been the first time I have been without my family and it made me realize how much I miss them how much I miss all of you. But there is really nothing like serving others and the lord on Christmas. On Christmas day we had the opportunity to take some investigators to church, we took a family of 6 the castillo´s and a lady named Jennifer. They all loved it even though the power went out in the middle of sacrament meeting. I loved singing Christmas hymns!

We also had the confirmation of our newest convert Josue Albuquerque. He was baptised on Friday. His baptism was really crazy! We got to the baptism with him and his family at 7 ( when it was supposed to start) and there was no water in the font......even though we filled it up all the way that morning. So we had to fill it up fast with buckets . There weren't very many people at the baptism but the spirit was very strong. I shared the spiritual message (with horrible Spanish)... but every thing turned out good. Josue was baptized by his grandpa, he was very excited and happy to become a member of the church.

Saturday was very eventful we had a Christmas lunch at our zone leaders mamita´s house and we ate shrimp and duck, it was pretty good actually. Then we went back to our house with the zone leaders and two other elders and had a little bbq, we had steak and potatoes and we all bought hammocks and just laid around and watched the best two years.

I had a very fun and spiritual Christmas, and I hope you all did too.

I hope you all strive to become more like Christ everyday, think about the new year coming up and how you can improve, and become more Christlike. This is why we are here on the earth.

I love you all

Elder Jase Warner

Feliz Navidad, Christmas is coming!

Hey everyone!

I hope everyone is having a great week before Christmas! This week was a good week down here in Ecuador!

On Tuesday I got to go on an interchange with my zone leader Elder Snow, he is an awesome guy! we had a pretty successful day. Today I went to Guayaquil, I had an interview with Presidente Monolti that was cool i love my president so much.

The other day me and my comp went tracting and we passed the local fire station and saw them playing ping pong...so we challenged them to a couple games and talked to them for a bit haha it was pretty fun.

The best thing that happened this week was the finding of the Castillo family. They are an inactive family that we just randomly found and they have a daughter who is 9 named Julisa who is not baptized yet. anyways, we got them all to go to Church on Sunday. Usually we have to go wake people up for church, but when we went to their house they were already up and ready and outside, they were the first one to church!! Awesome family, hopefully we can get them to enter the temple and be sealed together forever.

As for Christmas this weekend we will go to church for sacrament meeting and them go home and stay in our house all day alone. but it is okay we need the extra rest. We will find something to do for fun.

We have a baptism this Friday for Josue Albuquerque, please keep him in your prayers!

I wish you all a merry Christmas and will miss you all!
but I am serving the lord and very happy!

Love,

Elder Jase Warner

Christmas is almost here!!

Hey everyone!

Christmas is almost here! There are a couple people here in Santa Rosa that have Christmas trees. I am loving it here so much! This last week we worked super hard! Monday during pday we found a gym to go to for a little bit. My comp has to stay in real good shape for football. Tuesday we went and knocked some doors, we went back to the monkey we found and ended up talking to the guy that owns it, he illegally smuggled it from the jungle. But we taught him and his son. They are cool, they have some believe that god isn't religion, and that everyone of our bodies is its own church of Christ. It doesn't matter what church you go to....god is love. A lot of people here have that belief it seems like. Just the effects of the apostasy.

So Friday we worked sooo hard and didn't really get very many lessons, we got like 2 lessons and walked non stop all day. But Saturday we felt prompted to go to a new area that we´ve never been to and we ended up finding a family who after talking to for like 15 minutes we found out they were inactive members. They have a daughter who is 9 who we set a baptism date for the 8th of January. And we are going to prepare their family to enter the temple and be sealed together for eternity.

We also have a baptism date for the 23rd of December with a kid named Josue . He is awesome he went to church and really liked it yesterday. When the time came to add up our numbers this week we realized that we taught 26 lessons. That's my new record. So hopefully we see some fruits of our hard work.

I love the Christmas season! What better way to spend it than by serving others and sharing the gospel of our savior Jesus Christ. Christ is the light of the world. This is my first Christmas that I have truly experienced what it truly means to give all that you have to the lord and receive nothing in return but seeing the love and peace that comes from obedience to christ´s gospel. You can receive all the presents in the world but he who serves and brings others unto Christ receives the most joy and most valuable gift of all.

I challenge all to be bold in this Christmas season. To remember all that Christ has done for you and give that knowledge to others. Through small and simple actions god works miracles. Invite friends to church, give them a book of Mormon, share your testimony, invite them to talk with the missionaries and be baptized. This is the kingdom of god on the earth. We are his hands and he needs us. He who is not born of water and the spirit can not enter into the kingdom of god. It is our privilege to let the world know.

I pray for you all, As we remember our saviors birth, may we remember what he did for us and that he LIVES he is the Christ.

Love elder Jase Warner

Monkey

Hey everyone!!

Todo bien aqui en Ecuador

Every thing is going great here. We just had the baptism of "Maria Julexi Vargas Sanchez" It was a good baptism we had a lot of members from the ward there to support her. The spirit was very strong during the service and she bore her testimony at the end , it was awesome. She has a very strong testimony of the book of Mormon.

The other day when we were out working we found a monkey! It was tied up to a tree like a pet. But it was so rad! It was swinging around an everything cool like that. We took a ton of pictures of it.

This week was kinda hard for us. All of the baptism dates we have are falling through, because people didn't go to church. Its hard to watch people make bad choices after you grow to really care for them. I cant even imagine the way heavenly father feels about all of the children he has. He really does care and love all of us so much.

Christmas is coming! i cant believe it! It is kinda making me a little bit sad to be honest going into peoples houses and seeing Christmas trees. The good thing is though that on Christmas day we will get a chance to rest a little bit. We cant leave the house except to go to just Sacrament meeting. but last last night we had the chance to watch the Christmas devotional. It was very good but in Spanish.But i loved the music so much and the cool new videos that you can go watch on the internet for free. The part they showed about Jesus birth was awesome! Its always nice to listen to the prophet speak and the apostles. They really do receive so much revelation from god for all of us here on earth. If you didn't watch the Christmas devotional, go and watch it on lds.org.

I miss you all so much. But I love it here and I love serving the lord. Serving other people really does bring you so much joy.

Christmas is an awesome opportunity to go and serve people!

I love you all

Elder Jase Warner