A Very Wet Week!

Baptism photo, left to right: Monica, Bishop Lucero, Elder Corado, Kaiet (he´s a bit of a serious kid), his mom, and me!

Cotapaxi, a volcano just outside the city.  It´s active, but not as much as Guagua Pichincha, which has erupted a couple of times in the past few years.  Luckily, that one is about 5 miles away.

On top of Panecillo, the hill where President Kimball opened Ecuador to the mission work.  Then the Catholics went and built a virgin on top of it.  Go figure.

Hello Everybody!

It´s rained so much this week!  It´s absolutely crazy!  Reguardless, Elder Corado and I have been super busy, and have found a lot of new people to teach.  The tricky part is getting them to progress.  P-day has been good, President Sloan lets us watch one game of the Mundial (world cup) every Monday.  Today Spain beat Honduras 2-0.  If that really actually matters to anyone!

We had two baptisms this week, Kaiet Ayo (9) was baptized by me, and Monica Arana (19) was baptized by Bishop Lucero.  I´ll send some photos.  We had a bit of trouble, because Michelle, the sister of Monica´s husband, wanted to be baptized but her mom said no at the last minute.  It was tough because we´d been trying to talk with her mom throughout the week, but she was never at home.  Hopefully we can work all of that out! 

This week brought my first experience with robbers.  We were waiting at a bus stop to go to an appointment, when this guy comes up to us (probably 16 or 17).  He asked if we ¨had anything¨, but I just ignored him, and we went away.  Next thing I know we hear this noise behind the bus stop and realize the guy is robbing this little boy behind the bus stop.  My first impulse was to go and beat the crud out of him, but then I got the impression that missionaries aren´t supposed to ¨beat the crud out of people.¨  So I just went and yelled at him instead.  He ran away pretty quick.  I guess if I was in his shoes, a gringo brandishing a Book of Mormon and yelling at me in a weird accent would probably freak me out too.  He ran off with the kid´s cell phone, but we took the kid to some cops and they took things from there.  Turns out only Elder Corado had seen the knife that the guy had, so it´s probably a good thing I only yelled at him.  The punk.  We´ve been a lot more careful now at that bus stop.  The robbers around here usually hang out in groups of four or five, so we´ve been on the alert.

Most of the visits around here have been good.  We visited this lady and her two little kids, when one of her kids spilled cereal all over the floor.  The mom told her older daughter to go and get the ¨trapeador automatico¨ (automatic mopper).  I was a bit confused about what that was, until the daughter came back in through the door carrying the neighbor´s dog.  That was pretty funny. 

That´s all for this week!  I will send photos, and let everybody know how it goes with our new investigators!  Hope all is well with everybody!

Love,

Spencer