2/29 19: New Companion

Here´s a short summary of my week! On Monday I got my new companion arrived from her area in Libertad, Hermana Quispe. She´s from Peru and is so sweet. We´ve been doing the usual- walking and teaching! We met one lady named Rosa when we bought bolos (like homemade otter pops) from her and everything she says has so much emotion, its hilarious. And then there´s Francisco who is ready to be baptized this Saturday! I don´t think there´s anything that could stop him from coming to church, he´s a stud. He had hsi interview yesterday and is all set. We started contacting in a different area this week to find new people to teach and there are lots of small streets (callejons, I dont really know what to call them in English?) with houses and we found one woman named Cheri and she lived in Canada for awhile and moved back to Ecuador where shes from a few months ago. We´re going to teach her more this week. Everything here is going good, love you all, CHAO!

2/22 18: Still in Portoviejo

Guess who´s still here in Portoviejo! Yo! We had cambios yesterday but Hermana Espinoza(Chile) and Hermana Pugh(Utah) are the only ones in our sector who had cambios so they left early this morning. So it´s just me and Hermana Mancuso for now and our new companions will be getting here later today. By the end of this cambio I´ll have more than 6 months in the mission and I will have had 4 transfers here in La Paz. But I´m excited I get to be here in Portoviejo for the baptism of Fransisco and help him prepare for this day! Some highlights for the week, Hermana Espinoza and I saw fireflies on this little path and I think this was the first time I´ve ever seen them? so cool! Also, we didn´t eat cake for an entire week, how bout that?At the district meeting we have each week we read the letter from the mission president about deciding to be happy and after one of the zone leaders called me up to stand in front of everyone and told our zone to ask me questions and no one asked me a question for a solid minute and so I was just smiling because it was kind of awkward, and after someone asked me a question the zone leaders told everyone to be happy like me haha, cue the song Happy by Pharell. People here will have shirts with sayings in English, and they´re usually all really weird...my favorites are ¨ I am me´´ and ´´Your mom will love me´´..This week´s been great and I´m excited to find out who my new companion is! Oh, and last week I mean }t to type Helaman 3 27, not 3 7 haha. Have a good week ! CHAO CHAO!

2/15 17: Carnival

This week was Carnival! (carnaval?) We were inside all day Monday and Tuesday so what did we do...we ate a whole chocolate cake in under 6 hours! To be hair it wasn´t THAT big, but we live so close to a bakery so why not. We also had meals that didn´t consist of rice. Hermana Mancuso cooked chicken alfredo and macaroni and cheese (from scratch) and used the turmeric that mom sent in the package,haha. Then Hermana Espinoza made completos (a hot dog in a bun, with chopped tomatoes,guacamole,and a little bit of ketchup and mayo. We also had time to do...face masks! We didn¨t really know what to do with the free time we had, it was such a weird feeling! Then we had a conference with the zones from Portoviejo and Manta with President Dennis and Hermana Dennis Thursday morning and it was really great and we talked about Alma 26 and Helaman 5. And Francisco Velasquez, our investigator, is doing great! He´s so excited for his baptism on March 5th and it´s so cute. When we ask him how excited he is for his baptism on a scale from 1-10 he always say 20, but his face isn´t that expressive so it´s kind of funny haha. Because we have cambios this coming Sunday and dont know if we´ll be here in Portoviejo, we´ve decided to try food from all the places we´ve been oogling(is this even a word..?I think so?) for the past few months THIS week. Our favorite is Arte Pan (they have the best baked everything) so we¨re going to expand our horizons this week. Here´s a scripture I like that I read this morning - Helaman 3:7. Hope valentines day was good! The members who we ate with yesterday gave us cake for valentines day and always insist we have two pieces , "con confianza!" they say,haha. Love you, Chao!

2/1 15: Pizza and English

This email´s going to be shorter (than usual..) this week , but here it goes!! This week included visiting the Guillem family from our ward and the father made us pizza!! I miss pizza so much. And the mother is the new Relief Society president so we chatted with her and her family for awhile. Also, Hermana Espinoza is learning ENglish (all the Latino missionaries have english books to learn english on their missions) and so Ive been helping her learn new words and phrases like ¨´cream of the crop´¨ ,haha, our favorite. ALso the phrase ¨´totes amazing´´ (not found in the book..) Weve been well fed this week, as usual, and were especially well fed wednesday when we had already eaten lunch then were given a mountain of rice from someone else we taught a few hours later..I don´t know how,but it happend. But it´s okay because we´ve been doing the KALO (spelling..?) workout in the morning for exercise! Yesterday and SAturday our neighbors that live across this little street had kareoke night...and their voices sound the same as when the someone here kills a chicken..and they went all out last night (for 4 hours) so pray we dont fall asleep during a lesson today!haha. YEsterday at church Eva Ruiz, a less active member who we´ve been teaching, gave me a pair of earrings! SHe just asked me if I had earrings and I said no and she just took some out of her bag,haha.THis week´s been good and hot! CHAO!