It's November Already?!?

Buenas Tardes from Ecuador!

It´s kind of hard to believe that we´re already getting into November!  Happy birthday this week to Jessica, Tanner and Aaron!  I´m going to miss the crazy birthday week.  I hope that all went well with Halloween and all that.  Those martian costumes look pretty wild.  If I was a little kid I probably would have cried too!  haha.  I´m glad you all had a great time.  Halloween is a bit different here.  Mostly just a lot of partying, drinking, etc.  Made it pretty hard to visit anybody in the evening, although it´s been nice and quiet all day because everybody is either on vacation or sleeping off the ´party´ from last night.  I don´t really mind.

We did a lot of cleaning today.  Mostly because our power has been out for the last week and we had to throw out a bunch of stuff from the fridge.  Nasty business.  So we headed down to the power company to see what was up, but it was closed!  Everybody is going to be on vacation until Thursday!  You wouldn´t believe how not having a functional fridge limits your food options!  We´re trying to get out of our current apartment as soon as we can.  Luckily we don´t have to spend too much time there.  Reguardless, the work goes on!

Things have been going great as far as working with the members!  They really help a lot, the only drawback is that sometimes they like to talk a little too much.  We´re starting to catch on to which ones are good for lessons and which ones are not.  We met a military officer the other day who was taking a vacation.  He was pretty scary looking, but it turns out that he has a lot of faith in God.  He told us how he was in a vegetative state for weeks, but later recovered.  Some pretty wild stories around here!  Our Elders´ Quorum president apparently got kidnapped several months ago for a day or two and beaten on pretty badly.  He escaped to a friend´s house with his arms tied behind his back.  Kind of makes me grateful to be from Utah!  Nobody has tried to beat us up yet.  We get shouted at from time to time, mostly teenagers who think they know English.  I´m just glad that there are people who are willing to listen.  A lot of good people here, it´s just that they´re usually the ones that stay in their houses!  Lots of contacting.  Always the good, the bad, and the ugly.  The good is that we found three different houses where the people accepted a visit!  The bad is that we got a bit of rejection, but that´s to be expected.  The ugly is that we almost contacted a house of prostitution.  Luckily I saw the sign on the door just in time.  Maybe I should have left them a chastity pamphlet? 

Anyway, that´s this week in a nutshell!  Our success with some of our new families, the trials of a run-down apartment, and the ups and downs of street contacts!  Thank you for your emails, and see you all next week!  Pictures are on the way if this computer will recognize them! 

Love,

Elder Wallace

Espero que haya photos!

The baptisms of Ruth and Janise (the Ortiz family).

The view from the top of the hill in my area.

Me, Elder Diaz, Elder Hendrickson, Elder Sanchez.

Me flying!