Sheppert, Samuel

It has been fun teaching English class on my own. I get a little group of people each Monday to teach English to. We have been learning about cooking. That was fun cause I don't know every cooking word in Spanish like boil or season. My favorite phrase that everyone uses here is “Habla serio!”, or “Speak Serious!” So that was the phrase of the day for one of my classes. Speak serious!  I think my favorite food here is called patacones. Everything here is made from Verde, this type of green banana. Patacones is made from Verde and are really bland banana cookies. But they really grew on me fast. Hermana Coca made us some Tortilla de Yuca which was also amazing. Two Ecuadorian foods that you cannot find in the States. Buses are just “Bus” aquí. We take tons of little Trici Motos everywhere. They are basically just little go carts. I feel like I'm playing real life Mario Kart especially when they start trying to pass each other and I'm eating bananas. Two highlights of the wee...

An interesting week to say the least.  Famous words from Michael Jackson: “If you want to be starting something, you got to be starting something.” That is the goal isn't it. It has become very apparent in the mission that if you aren't starting new things every day, things will be hard. So we've been trying to start something.  I had a very interesting exchange with a brand new Elder that knows 0 Spanish. I got to teach about 10 lessons by myself. Very interesting. It really was actually a lot of fun and I'm feeling pretty confident. The restoration used to be particularly difficult with all of the tenses. But hey, its there. But also I know that tomorrow some Ecuadorian is going to bash my Spanish and turn to my Latino companion to ask if I really said ¿Cómo está? Or say that they don't understand English. Humbled every day.  We have been teaching some really cool people. I finally got to teach a guitarist and singer. He is a young famous singer in Ecuador named E...

Another one for the books. Stories galore. Ups and downs. Successes and failures. Hermana Coca. Losing the light while sharing the light.  Basically at random 5 hour shifts each day the lights go out completely in Ventanas. Often it is from 7-12 at night. We will be walking in pitch black, no lights but our phone, for 2 hours before going home. Some really amazing things happen during the dark hours. We went to visit a family and one of their brothers was there. He was going on and on about a crab restaurant that he loved. He left and returned 10 minutes later and said “That's it. Follow me.” So behind this motorcycle we walked in the dark to a crab restaurant. It had its own electricity generator so we went through a little security and got our own table. Our friend said, "Enjoy!" and got us a ton of crab and then left. We sat down, enjoyed some crab, and got to talk to the owner for a long time and he was interested to learn more about the gospel so it was overall just ...

No longer am I a padawan. I have a ton to learn, but the training is complete.  Transfers have came and gone. I'm still in the Degoba system or Ventanas! I do not mind this place at all. The members are awesome, I know the area super well, and we got some good things planned this month. Elder Anderson went to Guayaquil so I got a new companion, Elder Luengo. He's a Chileno so there are 4 Chilenos in our Zone! Which also means the Spanish is going to go to the next level. It's strange. I'm not super good but I sometimes catch myself thinking in Spanish. That's a strange feeling but it's an awesome grind. Something really cool about him is he loves rock and roll. He walked in put 4 magnets on the wall. The 4 best ones. The Beatles, LZ, PF, RHCP. My mind was blown away. I knew there would be no problems here.  We have been teaching all sorts of people this week. The young, the old, the crazy, the normal, the willing. Two people that we got to teach and baptize this...

This is the annual blessed week in the Sheppert household* and don't think I didn't enjoy it! Instead of playing 2k or Dota this blessed week, I got to be in a trio with Elder Grundy and Elder Lopez. I split my usual weekly time in half to go to their people. Although I only had half of my time I got to learn a lot of different things. I had to have zero hesitation in following the spirit this week. During my time, I had to teach a lot on my own and lead as best I could. I grew in confidence, in Spanish, and in leading for sure.  We got to baptize our friends Genesis, Alex, and Neiser. They are awesome. We first contacted them one by one. Neiser with one of his friends, then a little down the road, Genesis, then finally at the end of this dusty road Alex, and then met their whole family. They love playing soccer and eating. One day we got to play soccer with them in a part of town where everyone plays soccer every night together. We walked in as 3 missionaries and gave it our b...

It hasn't rained in Ecuador for a bit so now there are tons of outages which makes things real interesting. Shout out the September b-days especially the Madre on the 28th. On the 21st we were singing Earth Wind and Fire “September”, an important musical day to commemorate disco. Shout out to T-Church for that Mr&Ms "September" performance, never will forget that one. This was an interesting week no doubt. Once again we were put in a trio and split our time in half so we had to be super efficient and diligent with our time. Not running but really speed walking everywhere the whole time we were out of the house. I'm loving the Spanish right now, may even be able to answer questions of the soul. Facílito. In the trio with Elder Lopez and Anderson we try to meg each other with rocks while we walk on the dirt roads. There are an abundance of rocks these days to play with because they are breaking up all the roads and repairing the sewers. It smells fresh, real fresh. ...

I don't know what to say at all. Our phone stopped charging last week so we got one of the Zone leader's phones. "Thank goodness," we thought, but we were planning for the week like a diligent missionary may do when the new phone just blacked out and stopped working. I tried all methods of CPR, put it on a ventilator, and even followed my father's footsteps in giving it phone surgery but nothing worked. So now my companion and I are down 2 phones, money and communication ability.  I had the opportunity to go to the Guayaquil Temple on Friday. Wow. Everything about that trip was and still is great. This temple is particularly interesting because of its large Nephi-like stature. That temple is the house of the Lord if I ever saw it. I am so grateful for the temple and the peace, revelation, guidance, and spirit that I can be a part of inside and even outside too! My favorite message to share is how families can be together forever. Para siempre. I'm so grateful ...