Buenas!

¡Hola Familia y Amigos!

I can’t believe this week has gone by so quickly, or this year for that matter.  It’s already December!  I’m so excited.  People here in Ecuador have been decorating and preparing for Christmas since before it got here.  (It’s because they didn’t have to wait until after Thanksgiving.)  Speaking of which, how was Thanksgiving?  Sometime Thursday morning as I was preparing to go out for the day I remembered.  It was weird not having any Thanksgiving stuff anywhere. 

This week I got to finally visit Puerto Jelí, the town just next door that’s part of our sector (our sector is huge by the way).  I guess the little bay there opens up to the sea eventually or something, I’m not exactly sure.  But I liked it, it was a kind of neat little beach town, but really small.  Luckily I had my camera with me that day so I got to take pictures.

  

We’ve started teaching this boy who’s the cousin of the kids who got baptized last week.  We have been trying to contact his mother for a while, but when we finally went over he was the only one home.  So we taught him instead, and he’s agreed to be baptized!  It was so neat, because (as we found out the next day) I guess that night as he knelt down and asked Heavenly Father if he should go to church like we asked him to, he heard a voice say “(You will) go to church” (sorry it’s hard to translate and understand exactly what people are saying here).  When he heard it, our investigator asked, “¿Quién es?” (Who’s there?) but it was dark and he was completely alone.  When he told us about it, we asked him if he felt like he got his answer and he said he did.  Guess who came to church on Sunday? 

Katie and her companion, Hermana Herrera

Each with their Spanish/English dictionaries

 

View from their apartment

Obviously they are way too serious

Katie's location in Southern Ecuador, near the Peru border

I don’t think I explained much about my area last week.  Like I said, I’m in Santa Rosa, four or five hours south of Guayaquil.   It’s in El Oro, near Machala (45-60 minutes south of it—we actually had a capicitación there last Friday.  Funny story really quick, at lunch I ate my big whole plate of food but was actually still hungry.  Pres. Torres and his family sat down at our table, and when I mentioned I almost wanted to go get seconds he just said, “Go ahead! Please, eat more.  EAT.  You need it.”  A lot of people have commented on how skinny I am, but that one took the cake.  It can get pretty hot here, but usually since I’ve gotten here it’s been overcast.  It’s sunnier today.  We’re in Rama (branch) 1, and like I saidour sector (or area I guess, we say sector in Spanish) is pretty large.  We go all the way out to Puerto Jelí on way and out to Estero Medina another.  We live in en el centro of the city.  There are a lot of parks with statues and fountains everywhere, and now they’re all decorated with lights for Christmas.  It’s really nice.  We’ll be walking down the street and two blocks away we’ll hear someone blaring reggaeton.  It’s totally normal for people to blare their music from their house as loud as they can.  A lot of times I recognize the songs playing and have to fight the urge to dance like all the time.  Hardest thing for me right now – ha ha.  Also, it’s very common for people to just never get married here.  They just start living together and have kids and everything.  I was expecting that, but I wasn’t expecting how young they’d be living together.  One girl we know is 18, and she’s been living with her boyfriend for three years already!  So crazy.

Well, I’ve run out of room.  Food’s great, people are great, everything’s dirty, language has its good days and bad, and I am so glad I decided to serve a mission.  Peace!

Hermana Iverson