Serving in Quito North

 We had some fun traveling to Shushufindi on Sunday and Monday. There is a little family group out there that the missionaries run. What a beautiful entry into the city! The name of Shushufindi is pronounced 'shoe-shoe-FEEN-dee' and is a city of about 45,000 people. Our meeting place is a little building that seats about 35 people and it has air conditioning! When it rains it is crazy fuerte. Although it is only 31 miles away, it takes an hour to drive. We've seen some terrible accidents on the two-lane windy road. There is no shoulder and plenty of motorcycles drive at night without any lights. We are often stopped by police on road blocks. I think they are looking for drugs coming in and out. We each got a backpack printed with our names on. I love the colors they chose. Each missionary has one of these with emergency supplies. Sometimes you can be stuck in a lockdown or a road blockade and you need emergency money and food.

 President Galál visited our area over the weekend that we arrived. He is a CES employee who is a counselor in the mission presidency. Luckily, he flew in to Lago Agrio, met with the missionaries and flew out of El Coca. Here is the Coca Branch building. Although it has no air conditioning, the ceilings are tall and there are heavy duty ceiling fans. We hope to divide the branch in two very soon. We drove President Galán 90 minutes south to this building. This area is also known as Orellana, named after Francisco de Orellana who took his trip from here down the Amazon to the Atlantic. Sacrament meeting was wonderful and I was able to play the piano for the first time in a long while. We met wonderful brothers and sisters who were excited to have us visit. President Galán asked us introduce ourselves in Spanish, which was probably a fun diversion for the congregation. Our Spanish is still basic, but they oohed and aahed in all the right places, especially when we said "Hong Kong....

 One of our friends, President Galán, referred us to this park to see more flora and fauna of the jungle. This 270-acre park was mostly empty due to morning rains so we experienced it in quiet reverence. It takes 25 people to encircle this favorite tree of the park. The diversity of nature here is just incredible. I'm used to being able to identify the plants and trees in my hometown. Not here. There is just too much growing. We walked down to the large lake and heard monkeys, but didn't see them. I thought of Pizarro and his men trying to march out of the jungle.

 Although our mission assignment will be having us move 7 hours east, for a few weeks we get to enjoy Quito. The weather is in the 60s nearly everyday. And because the mission office is in Tenis, it is an upscale, safe community.  Two zone conferences happened right as soon as we arrived. This is Elder Yokum. When I asked where he was from he started to describe where Temecula was. Well, he's in my parents' ward, or was, until a few years ago. My mom reports they had his older brother as a Sunbeam years ago. Since we had served in Guayaquil, we knew to look for some great Ecuadorian food and here it is. Delicious roasted pork, corn, plantains, potatoes, and beef. So much going on in the same plate. We went out to lunch with Elders Steiner and Horn to a local lunch spot close to the office. There were 10 of us in this tiny place. The drink is called oatmeal, but it was delicious. Soup, chicken and rice, all for $2.75. Elder S. Mark Palmer came to speak to both the Quito Mission...

 On our first Saturday in Quito, the Caldwells took us to the downtown plaza to see museums and churches. The basilica is quit an enormous building with towers you can see from everywhere in the city. The Church and Convent of San Ignacio de Loyala de la Compañia de Jesus de Quito is a Catholic clerical complex in the historic center of Quito. The facade is entirely carved in volcanic stone. The church and its rich ornamentation, completely covered with gold sheets, is one of the main tourist attractions in the city. It was visited by Pope John Paul II on January 30, 1985 and by Pope Francis on July 7, 2015. No pictures are allowed, so these are from Wikipedia. It is just this shocking, but the age doesn't really come through in these pictures. Things crumble over time and this church is no exception. On the way back home, we stopped at the República del Cacao shop in Quito. It had a shop with chocolate bars, a little museum to show the process of making chocolate, and an ice cream...

 We have had the opportunity to catch up with some friends we haven't seen in a long time. We enjoyed an afternoon with the Turners who just returned from their mission to Boston. They served as records preservation missionaries, which means taking images of genealogical records. Although it isn't an exciting assignment, I really could see us doing that someday. I love family history! How I love Mike and DeeAnne Brown! They were friends of my parents before I was even born. They were in the San Diego 12th Ward many eons ago when my mom was still a new convert. Soon they were fast and forever friends. DeeAnne was my temple escort in Provo when I received my endowment in 1989. What wonderful saints!  I didn't grab a photo of meeting up with Becky when we stopped by for dinner in Saratoga Springs. This photo is from the day when my sister married her brother. I think we were 11 years old, wearing GunneSax dresses our mothers had sewn out of brown broadcloth. There is a Harry P...

With winter storms pounding the Wasatch front every weekend, we got caught when we moved from Saratoga Springs to Provo on Sunday afternoon. Since my sister is near the temple, it makes sense to stay with her during our week of MTC training. But a loooong slide on I-15 and bumping into the next car was not in our plans. Luckily, there was no damage to either car. When we woke up on Monday morning it was -2 degrees and would continue to snow the rest of the day. Bright and cheery on our first day of MLS training. Since we had Preach My Gospel training before our Hong Kong mission, we slipped in halfway through the two-week session. It's January 31st and I'm pointing at Ecuador for the second time. ff to class! This week's group of MLS missionaries numbers nearly 70 and we meet every morning for 3 hours of training. Some days we focus on seminaries and institutes. On different days we work on family history, welfare/self-reliance, YSA, youth, or other leadership resources. In...