Hurricane Kendra hits Ecuador: Babies, baptisms, and bumps in the road

us and the oña family before their baptism at last week's "white night"

All the converts and missionaries from last week's "white night"

THIS WEEK:

wheewwww i dont even know where to start. we had meetings pretty much all day every day (mission council, verifications, district meeting, etc) so we didnt really get too much work done.

on tuesday we had verifications for all the greenies that came in my week. they took us *gasp* out of mission boundries!

hermana muir, berret and i at the panecillo

we went to this big monument called panecillo. its kind of like the big jesus in rio dijenaro (i dont know how you spell that) but its an angel. apparently a bunch of years ago in the 60s president kimball (when he was still a 12) went to this monument and dedicated the country of ecuador to missionary work. only 3 weeks later the first converts were baptized. it was pretty powerful and the view is amazing.

the view from the panecillo

Well later on that day we went to one of our mamitas and we started to talk and low and behold her dad was one of the first members baptized in ecuador. she was also the first sister missionary to every leave from ecuador. her story is nuts but shes so cool. she also cooks like nobodies business. her and her husband got married after only one month. He was a missionary in her ward and later on they met up again at a dance. he called her a week later and asked if she wanted to get married. they both prayed and she said yes. theyve been together for 40 something years now and are still going strong. she blows my mind .

then saturday and sunday was general conference. this was the first time ive ever actually watched all 4 sessions. AND I TOOK NOTES. i know its a miracle. its crazy how exciting general conference was. it seemed like every talk had some profound message that i needed to write down and save for the future. the one black guy (i dont remember when he talked) was funny because all throughout the elders kept quoting the lion king. he sounded like rafiki. the put all the white missinoaries in our own room so we could watch in english there were only 6 of us,but it was pretty fun.

my area of missionaries after general conference

they spoke so much about missionary work and a few mentions of autism and other disabilites. it seemed like it was a conformation of my educational interests.

then sunday night after conference we hung out with a recent member and made tortillas from verde (green plantain) they were okay, but i wasnt a huge fan. this member though is SWEET. shes hillarious and i think we are twins.

they have a pretty small house but she feeds the missionaries once a week. she has a few kids and they are freaking adorable (pictures attached.)

the cutest baby in the whole wide world. we also had a casual dinner date, no biggie.

Earlier in the week we also visited with a less active sister who recently gave birth to the tiniest premature baby girl. she only weighed two pounds when she was born.

the moms brother showed up and hes somewhat inactive, but we talked about how he should start going back to church so he can give the baby blessing to his niece. it was so sweet.

her hand in mine

seriously all of the members here are so loving and would give anything for us. my new comp is named hermana lopez and shes from colombia. shes a little taller than hermana garcia but still shorter than me. Weve only been togther a few hours, but we already went and got chifa (Chinese food) and she seems pretty chill. i hope we will get along a little bit better.

hermana garcia and i cutting her goodbye
cake at the last zone conference

life with hermana garcia wasnt bad, but we had our differences sometimes. mission is definitely hardcore training for married life. (Doesn't this look like a wedding photo?) other than that ive just being going all over the mission trying to get ready for hermana garcia to leave. its weird to have her gone but hopefully this next transfer will be one for the record books.