(WEEK 78) Otavalo City!

That's right! I know all of the mission now! (Coast, jungle, Quito, and the rest of the mountains)... Well, not Ibarra, but that's only 30 minutes away. The Quichua Book of Mormon that Elder Richimondg gave me about 15 months ago will finally be put to use haha. My sector is on the north part of the city. If you look up Plaza de Ponchos on the internet, my house is really close to that. I'm also really close to the bus terminal. So my sector is mostly the small tuorist city of Otavalo with a little bit of hills and farms, but not much. I've already seen a ton of forigners. I'm pumped to learn an indigeous language! Actualy to be honest, Quichua won't be 100% necesary. Out of the many many wards in Utah-valo (Utah plus Otavalo because almost everyone is a member!), only one ward speaks Spanish. And that's my ward haha. It's called the Latino ward. The rest of the wards in my zone and the neigboring zones have sacrament meeting and other church meetings entirely in Quichua. So I'll learn a little bit of the language, but I won't feel like a new missionary again and be forced to do it haha sweet! It was wierd to leave Quito after being there for about 11 months but I'm more than excited to be here.

My new companion is Elder Mazzarelli (Almost like the cheese). Even though that's an Italian last name (I think), he's from Chile which would make him my 3rd companion from Chile. (The others were Elder Santana and Elder Parra). He's from Santiago and has a heavy Chilean accent. Sometimes I have to listen carefully to understand him haha but he's awesome. I'm still a zone leader so it should be fun working in a zone outside of Quito with a leadership assignment. I have to adjust to a new sector again but I have faith that the Lord will help me. Plus it's fun starting from level one again. There's always a lot of funny things that happen. For example, my companion locked the keys in the house haha. So there's a good start. The good news is that that the owners, just like almost everyone else here, are members of the church. So they'll be able to let us in later. Oh, and the house has a guitar!! So I'll be jaming for the first time in 18 months.

I always have a terrible time thinking of what I did in the previous week after the changes. But I know that we have 5 soild people with baptimal dates for March in the sector. I'm going to have to talk with Elder Gallego in the mission councils to figure out their progress. On Monday and Tuesday due to the carnaval, we could only leave the house for set appointments. So there was a time where we had no set appointments, we play a ton of card games haha. On Tuesday there was an air strike. We almost got nailed with water balloons from the 4 story building. To that was terrifying haha. We saw the first balloon splatter right in front of us so but we could tell where it came from so we paniced and ran behind a car as the 2nd wave of balloons came. We left the battlefield bone dry! I thought we wree dead but like I said last week, there are angels around us haha.

So now the sisters of my group are return missionaries haha. Or at least they are in the offices right now and are going home in less than 24 hours. On Saturday we normally have family home evening nights. But This last Saturday it was Henderson home evening. Sister Henderson had members from her old ward (Cumbayá). Even the bishop came. They put up a slideshow and everything to say goodbye to Sister Henderson. She cryed too haha. The best part was, we figured out by the pictures that she mounted a horse in the mission hahahaha!!! In case you don't know, that's something a missionary cannot do at all. And we had evedence of the iniquity haha. Oviously there's nothing we can do now because she's already going home. But it was fun messing with her all Sunday long haha. I kept on making horse noises. Elder Gallego mounted me and I galloped around the chappel. We're still children haha.

Wow this letter's getting super long. Maybe I'll try to end the letters in Quichua soon but for now all you get is Spanish. Entonces, que pena. Ya envié la carta que tiene los registros de SUU. ¡También puse una foto de mí en la mitad del mundo y una de mis placas misionales! ¡Disfrutarán! Bueno, espero que tengan una semana buena y que todos estén bien. Me di cuenta de que ahora va a empezar March Madness. Entonces voy a jugar basquet todos los lunes para conmemorarlo jaja. ¡Advísenme de todo! ¡Les quiero mucho!