12/29

Editorial note: Double post to start off the new year.

Tanner sent e-mails as scheduled in December, I just didn't get them posted. 

This week we had a really cool reunion with the entire mission. We left Monday in the afternoon for Guayaquil and got there after 4 hours in the bus. We ate Pizza Hut in the bus terminal then went straight to the mission home to sleep. Tuesday morning we all went to the Temple, then did service as a mission. We got split up and went to the different Church buildings in Guayaquil and Duran and cleaned the chapels. After that we all gathered in the Stake Center. There were 250 missionaries and we all ate a nice Christmas dinner together. We had turkey and stuffing and all that good stuff. Then there were some musical numbers for Christmas from the different zones.

We left Wednesday morning again for Quevedo. Wednesday night was my skype call home to my family, and also a small service activity as a zone. We went to the hospital and gave out Hot Chocolate and Pan de Pascou and sang for the people there. We had dinner with Familia Menoscal (recent rescatados). They are the best and always have us over for dinner.

On Christmas we had an activity as a zone. We cleaned the chapel of one of the companionships, and after had a Secret Santa gift exchange. I got a wallet from Elder Gomez. After we ate with Bishop and his family. They also gave us gifts, a tie for each one of us. Then we visited some of the members of the ward and shared a small message for the rest of the day.

Then Friday we did another service project, this time for Familia Valencia. We hauled a big mountain of dirt up the stairs to their house. 

This week was interesting because we really didn’t do to much work with our investigators or menos acitvos, but it was still a really nice week. 

Much love for everyone back home, hope ya’ll had an awesome Christmas and will have an excellent new year!

Elder T

This is the only stadium in Quevedo. I have been dying to go in since I got here and we finally got to explore a little. It was exciting, but also a little bit of a let down, as it's not super nice inside. But hey it is real grass! There's not really grass here...

  

This after a big Championship game between the two most popular teams in the country, Barcelona and Emelec. Barcelona was the best team for a long time, but recently it has been Emelec. Emelec won and after the game it was INSANE! People were in the streets pretty much all night!

 This is the Latinos getting introduced to Candy Crush. They were like this all of lunch!

This is the view from a members house that we visited this week. She is super cool! She has a son on a misison in Pennsylvania and another just about ready to put in his papers. She also gave us a hammock to put in our apartment so that's really awesome!