First gringo companion...sort of

Greetings from Salado 2!

Elder Fares

I am on the move again. I think I just need to visit El Cisne and I’ll have been in every zone in Guayaquil. I have a wonderful new companion, Elder Fares. He is actually from my MTC group. He is originally from Miami, but has moved around a lot from California to Utah. First gringo companion. Actually he’s gringo-latino. His family is from Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. With some of my other companions I kind of lied through my teeth to talk them up, but I can honestly say my new companion is awesome. I am excited. So far, I only have two days here. I got here on Saturday. They pulled both me and Elder Liberato out of Esteros. We are living in a foursome with Elder Karchner (AZ) and Elder Anchundia (Manabí, Ecuador).

More exciting news: Elder Uceda of the Seventy in new regional presidency came to visit Guayaquil yesterday. He talked to us about having more effective study time. He made a cool illustrative example. He drew a four by four grid on a white board and asked the missionaries how many boxes they could see. Some said 16 and some said a few more. He showed how you could find more boxes by making groups of 4, 9, and 16 boxes. He said that sometimes when we study, we say there are only 16 boxes and skip over a passage because we think we know it, but if we take it slower and ponder important words, we can find 17, 21, or 30 boxes.

Anyway, I am still getting to know the investigators, but it sounds like we have some good people. We have a really good ward mission leader, Hno. Saenz. He was bishop in the past so he knows how things work. No more of this lazy unmarried RM business. Hno. Saenz likes gospel trivia.

Well, hope to hear from you soon.

Love, Nane
(Is LaFawnda the new phone?)

Hope you have a good dinner with the new biker-buddy DeGooyers.  Pres. Montalti says hi, Bup.