10/26: First Days in the Field

Well its out of the frying pan and into Ecuador!! Flying into Ecuador was one of the most exciting things ever!! We left bright and early for the airport at 430 AM and when we stepped off the plane the heat and humidity just hits you haha. Our mission President and his wife picked us up at the airport and then right as we were about to leave my mission president said the person who stamped my visa and all that good stuff wrote down the wrong type of visa so I had to go get it fixed. We stayed in the temple housing the first night and then the next day all the new missionaries and trainers met together and we were assigned our campanions and areas!! My companion is Hermana Rojas and shes from Peru and is so sweet! She also anjoys pretending like shes a cat...haha, anywho, our area is in Portoviejo so we took a 4 hour bus ride after we got our companions and it was so gorgeous to see so many different parts of Ecuador! The other two sisters in our house are Hermana Ospinoza (Bolivia) and Hermana Miller (Minnesota). On my first day in the field we went to a members home for lunch and I couldnt understand anything they said except for when they said I looked like Hermione from Harry Potter, or "arry Potter" haha. Then the next day we went to lunch at another member´s home and they had two girls and they totally reminded me of Layla and Adelyn with their Tangled backpacks and how energetic they were aha. One of them when I dropped a piece of rice on the table picked it up`and ate it in the funniest way aha. Ive never had so much rice in such a short amount of time! The rice here comes in one size, a mountain! Teaching has been good, the people here are so kind and will almost always listen to a short message from us! We got to go to a baptism on Saturday and it was so great! The family of the girl getting baptized sang a song together and it was so sweet!Then yesterday was my first Sunday in the ward and they were all very welcoming and there were lots of Bienvenido s . CHAO!!

10/20: Arriving in Ecuador

Hello family! I have just a few minutes to send you an email to let you know I made it to Ecuador, woohoo!! We woke up at 3AM and the fly went well, it was so gorgoeus right before we landed seeing all these palm trees and hills covered with little houses!! and of course it was super humid right when we got off the plane,haha. The person who wrote stuff for  my visa after we landed messed it up so  I had to go back with secreatries and go to the migracion building near the airport and got to see a bit of Guayaquil! The streets here are hoppin´´, there are street performers just perfroming in between traffic alñong with people selling fruit weaving in etweem cars haha. LOVE YOU ALL!!!

10/15: Last Week in the CCM

This time next week we´´ll be in Ecuador...!! Sometimes I forget that we wont be in the CCM forever so the fact that we´ll be flying out of here tuesday morning is the best feeling. This week the Nortes in my room (Hermana Parker, Beutler and Ely) and I got Latina names from our Latina roommates, and mine in Hermana Torres,haha. I can see it. And then we gave the 4 hermanas in our room American names like Anderson,I think its easier for all of us to just say these names instead....but really haha. We´ve been studying a lot this week, per usual, especially since everyone well be talking to in less than a week will be speaking in Spanish. To survive the long hours of studying and teaching the Hermanas in our district have taken to group shoulder massages and are mastering the art of back cracking. One of my and Hermana Parker´s word of the day for this week is ´humid (moist) and we particularly loved the sentence used in the dictinary="the rich,moist fruitcake is delicious". And yesterday we had orientation for THE FIELD (Ecuador) and its starting to sink in that well be there soon!! Well I hope everyone is doing well, ¡CHAO!

10/6: Touring Bogota, Colombia

Today we toured Bogota, Colombia after going to the temple and it was SO great! Every group at the CCM gets to go on a tour for around 4 hours when they begin their fifth week so its basically our one shot to be touristy.Bogota is so gorgeous and I love all of the green mountains!To begin our tour, we went on this skylift up a mountain (Colombian initiation!) to this church(Monserati) and it was so cool, the little car thing we were rode in was at this crazy angle so you could see everyone below you.We climbed up a bit further where all the good photo spots are and the view was so gorgeous. the pictures dont do it justice. We attempted to ride a llama but our tour guide ( a teacher from the CCM) said we couldnt because of healh reasons..but i think those of us that didnt get to ride it wouldve gladly taken the risk. Then it was souveneir shopping time! It was kind of overwelming to look at ALL the booths then decide which things to get, but I decided on a few bracelets and this awesome Colombia t shirt with a mariachi band (spelling..) on it. Going back to Friday, we went prosleyting at this park/ shopping centre in Bogota for 3 hours and it was great but SO difficult. We definitley dont have the´¨Spanish ear¨¨ yet because even simple things like names sound NOTHING like what they actually are to us, like if we got a referral from someone and they wrote their name down we wouldve never guessed that was their name..but there was this really sweet woman we talked to and she started crying because she was so happy we gave her one of the church magazines and she kissed our hands, it was so sweet. Saturday and Sunday were General Conference!!! So many wonderful talks, some of my favorites were Von G. Keetch (attach link to talk here..) and Gregory Shwitzer. Sunday was also a great day because it was CERAL SUNDAY, and the milk was cold! The milk here comes in these rectangle containers with a guy that looks like David Tenant on it...But the CCM is still going great, the new Latinos get here tonight so thatll be exciting!!

10/1: A Little More About the CCM

9/22: Proselyting For the First Time

9/17: First Email From Colombia

Oh my goodness, where do I begin?! When our districstarted emailing just now it was like a race because we all have SO much we want to tell in just an hour! \i aboslutely LOVE Colombia and am so glad I get to be at the CCM here. So there are 73 missionaries here at the CCM so it's very cozy and so nice because everyone gets to know each other and it's like one big familia! There are 26 Nortes and the rest are Latinos! Me and Hermana Parker's roommates are all Latinos but one of them, Hermana Goosman whos from Bolivia, speaks English and it is SO nice since we obviously aren't fluent in Spanish yet, haha. 

      So our schedule goes like this / we wake up before 6 30, get ready, do personal study in our districts from   7 00 to 8 00 , go to breakfast until 9, study grammar for an hour, study to teach an investigator for an hour, do more language study for an hour, go to lunch, study some more, teach our investigators, go to gym where we can either workout, play volleyball, soccer or pingpong *i usually just run with another Hermana or do ping pong because soccer here is intense....like people have gone to the hopsital for injuries plus the court is on concrete so..* then we shower and get ready again, go to dinner til 6 30, then usually have a lesson and then we do TALL, which a spanish program of the church and we get to repeat words and conjugated verbs over and over and overrrr, so fun! 

         The next best thing other than the people here is defintely....THE FOOD! Holy moly, meal time is like my favorite thing here. Since  I cant share every meal I\ve had here, I\ll just list some favorites_ For breakfast theres almost always this delicious hot chocolate , and its so much better than in America because it actually tastes like real chocolate, if that makes sense..? And theres always these delcious rolls and fruit for breakfast too. Then my favorite lunch would probably be the delicous assprtment of rice (duh( , this soft tortilla biscuit thing, ground meat, DELICIOUS plantain cooked to perfection, and the biggest slash best piece of avocado ever. Then for dinner there was this steak with a boiled egg cooked in the middle with potatoes and rice. And to finish the delicious food segment, the best dessert ever was this macaroon looking thing, it was these two shortbread cookies with thiis orange caramel stuff in the middle rolled in coconut. Need I say more? Oh, and me and Hermana Parker discovered a fun new fruit, I dont know how to spell it but its granadia? Hermana Goosman said they call it Moco Moco in Bolivia because the stuff you eat inside looks like...MOCO. Look it up..

            Almost everyone in our district is from Utah, or as the Latins call it, The Mormon Factory. The first few days we were here we learned how to bear our testimnonies and pray in Spanish, and guess who got called on to say the prayed our third day here right before a meeting with everyone at the CCM...me! Thankfully I did alright!! Our teacher we have everyday for language and other lessons is Hermano Arangos and he is so hilarious! He comes in almost everyday singing ]buen dias, BUEN DIAS!} and awlays says ]can I get an amen?!] when he wants us to be more passionate about what were learning or saying.wve been teaching two investigators.aka  a teacher at the CCM and the CCM President\s wife haha. TEACHING IN SPANISH IS HARD. Our lessons are basically just a page of notes in SPanish and when they ask a question, we just string togethher words and verbs so theyll get the idea. 

        Meetings and Sunday classes here are so great!When we meet in the chapel for church or devotionals or other speakers, the nortes get headphones and one of the teachers translates everything into English for us. ITs funny htough because whenever the speaker says something funny the Nortes laughs are delayed since we dont know what they said until later. Oh, and I love singing hymns here! The Latins just sing with their whole heart and theres no pressure to sing the perfect pitch and harmonize, even though thats great too...haha.

A member of the quorum of the seventy came and spoke to us yeseterday morning and it was such a cool experience. It was Elder Camargo and he spoke about what we nee to do to be successful missionaries and one of my faovirte things he said was that the gospel is a daily effort and diligence is an active thing! Before the meeting started we all lined up and got to shake his and his wifes hand and introduce oursellves to them . 

        This morning we went to the temple and it is so gorgoeus!! We got so many pictures afterward so dont worry...Driving there in the bus was an adventure, traffic here is crazy. You can literally reach your hand out the window and shake hands, high five, whatever you prefer with the car next to you since youre so close. Oh, and our next P Day is on Tuesday because it alternates between Tuesdays and Thursdays here. Thank you so much for all the sweet emails and pictures!! LOVE ALL OF YOU! Chao!!