OTAVALO!

IM GOING TO OTAVALO!!!! i have to be at the bus station in a little bit so i dont have much time to write now, but ill try and get back on later. If not BYE and ill probably spend some more personal cash because its colder there and thats where all the indeginous people are that make sweet hand made ponchos and stuff.... sorry not sorry..

(7 hrs later)

just got to otavalo...its amazing. its totally green and a nice mix of farmland and old looking city. but with modern commodites. my new companion is named hermana aquino and shes from bolivia. she has one transfer less than me which means im comañero mayor...what is that in english? senior companion? i dont really know. anyways, our new sector is wayyy small compared to my old one. you can walk from one end to the other in like 30 minutes. apparently our ward is like half kichua half spanish so im PUMPED to learn some kichua. 

as far as the skype call is concerned, i dont know exactly what the rules are but president more or less said you have 45 minutes. if you wanna call mulitple family members go for it. but you still only have 45 minutes..... other than that the last few days have been more or less normal. it was pretty hard to leave the members and investigators but im sure i will come to love the people here in otavalo just as much. apparently its a challange to not gain weight here either so we will see how that goes.

the only memorable experience we had this week was that we had somewhat of an eternal investiagor named rosa. she wants to get baptized but isnt married to the father of their 12 year old child. they have been living together for like 14 years or so but this last month he FINALLY got  divorced and, being a long time member of the church, had his rights taken away because he wasnt divorced and living with another woman  (again, dont know what its called in english) basically one step above excommunicated.  a few months ago they changed their living situation so they could comply with the law of chastity and thus be baptized, and we called mission president to get permission to baptize her. he said yes and we were so excitied she was FINALLY going to get baptized. butttt the day before her baptism the bishop went over and basically said no you cant get baptized because you need to get married first. but he never told us that he cancelled the baptism and the morning of the baptism our mission president called us and said she wanst going to get baptized. it was basically  a giant bummer, but she didnt seem to upset about it and hopefully they can get all their papers in order so they can get baptized. definitelyh the first time a bishop has cancelled the baptism a day before...

other than transfers and the cancelled baptism there isnt much news. my camera is being alittle sketchy right now so ill send some pictures next week. 

BYEE

Editor's note: We had a nice Skype call with Kendra on Christmas Eve.  Although we had some technical difficulties it was fun to see and mostly hear her.  
Here's a link about Otavalo with some cool pictures.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otavalo_(city)