Back in the Horno! (oven)

Hello Family,

Guess what!  I just got transferred back to Guayaquil!  My new area is called Los Almendros in la zona La Pradera.  Elder Sánchez, my old district leader, is my new companion.  We got here on Friday and have been getting to know the members and the sector.  I am opening another area that the sisters had just left and, yes, there are girl shoes all over the place here, too.

Goodbye to Elder Nuñez

Up in the Sierra, I had almost forgotten how different everything is here in the Costa.  I had forgotten the Guayaquil accent, the food, and everyone's general attitude towards life.  Last night, we were walking around when we ran into a member and her daughter, who offered to accompany us for a few lessons.  They were so happy and eager to help and participate in the obra misional (missionary work) you never would have guessed that they were recent converts of only a few months.  Fellowshipping is something they do really well here.  It was certainly refreshing to meet the ward at sacrament meeting.  It made me more eager to go find more investigators, point to the members and say, “Don’t you see what you can become?”  They are just happy.

This week we are having the Area Seventy come to talk to the mission.  We have a big chapel clean-up planned for this Wednesday so everything will be ready for when he comes.  I am preparing myself mentally for the long dark mail-less night that I know I can expect.  It will probably be a few weeks until they stop sending my mail to Cuenca and another few weeks to send it back to the office and then send it to my new area.  Oh well.

We had a cockroach problem here because we forgot to take out the trash

Recently it started to rain buckets and we took shelter under the gate of the member we had just visited.  A large part of our area is a navy vets-only neighborhood, so there are some pretty moody guys here, one of which is the husband of the member, who is also very antagonistic to the church.  He kept on telling us to get a taxi and get off his property, but Elder Sanchez kept on trying to start a conversation with him through the gate.  I thought to myself, "This guy is going to punch your lights out and I am just going to laugh."  But what surprised me was eventually the vet started to open up and started telling us about the different years when the neighborhood had flooded and how high the water got and we waited for the rain to let up.  I had misjudged the man and through some way, completely inconceivable to me, Elder Sanchez had been able to touch his heart. 

My bed

I don’t know how things were in Argentina, Mom, but here the rain here is kind of magical.  It is the only time anyone turns off the heat.  I am now finally able to understand why Gene Kelly liked dancing in the rain, something I never was able to understand growing up in the Northwest.  I used to think this guy is pretty twitterpated if he doesn’t mind that he is going to freeze to death.

I wait to hear from you soon (or not).

Love, Elder Ludlam