Loco Coca (week 8)

Primero, culture shock! Ka-bam! This is the craziest place. Especially compared to Cedar city, UT. Right now I'm writing from Coca in some public, timed internet place. They actully give us about two hours to write home in the mission field, so that's bueno. My 2 companions are from Ecuador and Peru. They speak no English. Haha so crap, right? We actully just have companionship study with a English-Spanish dictionary and play sharades(How do you spell that) with each other. It's kinda hilarious. I'm teaching Elder Agapito some English phrases like: "I'm so confused", "I'm awesome", "I love my life", and "Can I sniff you?"(He thinks that one means "Can I help you?" Hahaha I'm dispicable...) Elder Agapito only has four more months of his mission left, Elder Richmondg(Yeah that's how it's spelled) has about eight months left. So I hope they are patient with my Spanish. Elder Agapito wants you guys to send me an ipod touch to give to him and then he'd pay for it; He can't buy one in Peru I guess. But I'm sure that would cost an insane amount of money, especially for him so, ehh... Don't do that probably haha.

So when I arrived in Quito, and finally got through airport security, The mission president was there to greet me. He's the nicest guy and cares a lot about his missionaries. After that we chilled in a church in Quito while they taught us basic In-field missionary stuff. All in Spanish too so that was very unbenifical since the missionaries that were teaching us were from Peru and Guiaquil where they speak exteamly fast haha. Oh well... Then we dropped our stuff off at La Luz, our appartment(which is where we spent the first two nights.) That night we had dinner at his house and it was gosh dang delicious! Then we all bore our testimonies in spanish. The next day was just gaining basic missionary instructions.

The following day I met my first companion, Elder Agapito. He´s a goofy guy. My MTC companion, Elder Guild, went to Esmeraldes, the other side of the country. Sad, right? That next day we traveled for 8 hours on the bus from Quito to Coca. The mountains were muy verde! Slowly the mountains vanished and the jungle appeared. I haven´t seen any yet but there´s boas, monkeys, and just every kind of animal down here. Especially DOGS!! They are everywhere. Completely unavoidable. And it´s so hot and humid. I thought that was avoidable with the Andes mountains but I guess not here haha. There´s only 5 missionaries in Coca. The joke is here, "Oh, they forgot about us again" Haha but the biggest problem here, is that they need more missionaries down here! The people are so nice and just need the gospel more. This place historically has been more successful than all the other zones in the mission if you count that there´s only 5 people down here.

Today I saw a guy with a flamethrower. I want to just steal it and carry it around for lessons and say; "Now first you are baptized by water... And then by fire(Then just blast the flamethrower!!!) I wonder how many people that would convert. 

Don`t get mad when I say thins, but my camera was stolen... Yeah... I was taking pictures by the cute little church that I go to at 9:00, and I was taking some pictures of the members for them, I set my camera down for like 20 seconds behind me to talk with my companion and a couple other members, next thing I know, I see a guy running down the street like 200 feet away and my camera gone. Haha I ain´t gunna baptize him now. It´s fine though, he only took that so I still have the cord and the charger. Hopefully I can buy a similar one soon.

As far as my ward, I´ve already attended two baptisms! Issac and Patricia. Just my presence makes the people flock to the font haha. It´s awesome though. I conducted the first one and was a witness in both of them. Pretty tight. The ward had about 40 members this Sunday. The last couple of days I´ve been walking around to appointments made before I got here and teaching lessons. I usually don´t say much, but for one lesson a 16 year-old we were teaching had trouble believing that God was real, and didn´t know what faith really was, I shared Alma 32:21 and Moroni 10:4-5. I thought it was pretty sweet haha. I also promised him I´d teach him English cause he really wants to learn it. He asked me to speak english to him and he was facinated. Which is cool but kinda weird because Spanish is a pretty language, English is just whatever haha. I mean, have you ever heard someone say: "Oh he has the most beautiful gringo accent!!" Haha, no.

The mamitas(Our mommys that feed us dinner) are great!! The food is actully really decilious here. I mean, I´ve only been in Coca for 3 days but I absolutly love it! The most common thing is easily rice. A lot of bananas too. Fried bananas, frozen bananas, dried bananas, banana bananas. It´s awesome. I´ve already gotten pretty good at killing roaches. My first kill was within like 20 seconds of walking in the door of my apartment the first night. I´ve killed like 15 since. We actully cleaned our apartment pretty good today though. We might not see as many in our apartment now. It´s probobly obvious, but the favorite sport is soccer. They like volleyball here too. Even though all of them (save a very small handful) are shorter than me, they like volleyball too. I dare any Equadorian to face me on the front line in a volleyball game. I`ll show them my signature, "Gringo Spike!"

That pretty much sums up the first week! My P-days are on Mondays always so that´s when the next letter will come! Love you guys!