week 7 (first week in Ecuador)

Hello all-

I´m here! This is crazy and so unreal. I wish I had more time to write all about it.   I´ve appreciated so much the sweet emails, and while I´m not able to respond today, I hope to be able to soon. If not, please know how grateful I am and how much I enjoy reading them. Thank you!

I´ve had such a cool week. I heard before so many times that the first few weeks were going to be mostly hanging on for dear life, but I´m having a blast! Seriously, this place is amazing. I love being a missionary, it´s so much fun. My companion is awesome—she’s a native of Bolivia (and doesn’t speak any English- which is going to help the language come along quicker for me—although she told me I’m learning “Bolivian Spanish”)  I am grateful for her and know I will learn a lot.

My desk area in Imbabura

kitchen

 bedroom

I’ve been assigned to an area in the North Andes called Imbabura- it’s beautiful. It’s about 3 hours from Quito by bus.  It sits at the base of a volcano.  I haven’t had a change to really see very much of this province yet, but I’ll attach a photo of my view outside my kitchen window. 

There are only 6 missionaries in my district, my companion and I, and 4 elders.  Just one of them is from the United States- the rest are from South America.  I have no idea what my district leader is saying yet- he’s from Columbia and speaks super-fast.  But I’ll figure it out soon enough. 

Pday with the district: My Companion, Sister 

A lot of people speak Spanish and the Quechua language.  Some people only speak one or the other so that’s interesting.  I have had to eat a few interesting things—but no chicken feet soup yet, thank goodness.  Almost everyone here has brown eyes and straight brown hair, so they comment a lot on my blue eyes and wavy hair.  It’s funny.  We walk a lot and take the bus- which I’ve learned doesn’t really stop, just slows down so you have to kind of hop on and off while it’s still moving- so far so good.  We´ve already met two people this week who we are now teaching. The key has been the Book of Mormon, of course. Some of these people have never even heard of it. One woman said, ¨why didn´t anyone tell me that Jesus Christ came to the Americas, that´s amazing!”

The culture is different and I’m enjoying Ecuador, but I can´t wait until it feels like home.  It rains almost every day and the clouds come in low in the morning and surround the mountains--It’s so beautiful and the people are wonderful. It´s a great day to be a missionary!!