Happy 20 Months To Me!

Well, this email should be nice and long because I have a whole bunch of pictures!  

First of all, Luis got baptized two weeks ago.  It was something really exciting for us because he had been listening to the missionaries for four months without any visible progress.  It turns out he was just afraid of getting baptized, and now he is really happy and should be getting the priesthood soon!  I´m really glad we were patient with him because it seemed for a while that he didn´t want to do anything.

The next week, María and Dennis got baptized.  They live REALLY far away, so it was kind of tough to teach them.  She´s really humble though, and even taught us to make awesome little scone-type things (that´s my smiley face that I made!).  Her husband just got back from working far away, so he should be home more frequently now.  We only met him about twice before, once to get to know him and once so he could aprove of his wife getting baptized.  We´ll see how things go with him now.  

Things have been going well in the zone, and all three of our companionships here in Ibarra are having baptisms.  Tulcan is beginning to do a lot better as well.  There´s a picture of our district in Ibarra at a baptism the sisters had (left to right - Elder Adams, Sister Figueroa, Sister Garcia, myself, Elder Resendiz, and Elder Dipiton).  We´ve also been busy helping out all of our missionaries so that they have success.  I went on splits with Elder Adams, who is from American Fork.  I had no clothes with me, so he was kind enough to lend me some of his.  As you can tell from the photo of me with his clothes, he´s a pretty big guy!  We´re also working a lot on working with the members of the branch.  There´s a photo of us at Maria´s house with Gladys and Kevin, two of our members who help us out.  Kevin is a convert of about 3 months who can go on a mission in about two years, so we take him with us a lot.  Gladys is one of our branch missionaries who is sending in her mission papers very soon.  When I got here, it was kind of difficult working with the members because branches are so tiny!  But now we are having a lot more success, and the district president is being very helpful.  We´re getting a movie night ready for this Friday!  We hope to get a lot of referrals from it!

Today we went to Peguche!  Second time for me, because it´s close to Otavalo.  I was pretty much the only one in the zone that was against the idea, but I had a great time anyway!  We went and checked out the waterfall there, which was pretty awesome.  We got back and had pizza!  So all in all, a good day.  I´m happy and ready to work.  So thank you all for your emails, and for the support you give me!  I´ve got to go!  It´s time to start working.

Love,

Elder Wallace