Ecuador Week 8

Dear fam and friends,

So things are moving along here. I have my new companion now. His name is Elder Bloxham and he's from Idaho. He's a good guy and I've already learned a lot from him. He's interesting too haha. Definitely a lot different than my last companion. Better is some ways, and not as good in others, but I guess that's how it will always be throughout the mission. I'm looking forward to working with and learning from him though.

This week we had a couple good things happen. First, is that we had three baptisms this last weekend!!! Whoo!! We had the baptisms of a Sister named Erika who is about 32 years old, and then the baptisms of two girls, Mairy and Maisa (one is like twelve and the other is like ten or something). It was awesome! I was especially excited for the baptisms of Mairy and Maisa because I've gotten pretty close to that family and love them a ton. Now we just need their parents to get baptized. The only problem for them is that they have to get married first and the dad in the family doesn't want to get married right now. But they believe the church and Book of Mormon are true, so we are going to keep working with and praying for them and hopefully he will have a change of heart soon!

Besides that only one really crazy thing happened this week. We had like kind of an earthquake! It happened yesterday when we were in church. We were sitting there in the last hour and we were all in the chapel for a meeting with the whole ward, when suddenly people started freaking out. I didn't know what was going on at first and then I felt the ground shaking and the whole building started shaking. Some people started yelling and car alarms started going off, but then it passed after a few seconds (which felt a lot longer than a few seconds) and everything was okay. As far as I know nothing got destroyed or anything, but it was definitely the biggest tremor I've ever felt. Kind of loco!! But I'm okay and no one got hurt so it's all good!

So that's how things have been here. It's getting a bit hotter, which I'm not too happy about, but I guess I'll live. I have definitely been humbled by being here. I am really grateful for lots of the little things now, like carpet (I have yet to see any here), A/C, and even chairs (There have been houses where we had to sit on the floor becasue they didn't have chairs, and by the end of the lesson my legs were really hurting me! haha). And my spanish is improving a ton. I can almost understand everything I hear now which is awesome! There are still quite a few times where I don't understand what people are saying, but as I look back, my Spanish has flown through the roof. I really believe in the gift of tongues haha. But I need to keep working hard cause I've got a long way to go!

Oh and I got a lot of letters this week which was awesome! I got letters from Garebear, Sarah, Jessica Cook (just so you know it wasn't Jessie haha), and Rebecca (with all five letters in there from Kate, Kira, Tracy (sp? sorry!) and Brianna as well) as well as a letter from Sister Farnsworth! Oh and I also got the letter you sent me in the Peru MTC. I guess they forward them after all so I got that letter as well as the one from Jessica which she sent to the MTC. Thanks soo much for the letters everyone! It was awesome to hear from you all and how things are going. I'm going to try and write you all back as soon as I can! But sorry if it takes a while! Just know the letters meant a lot to me! And sorry that I don't have any pictures this week. I gave my memory card to an investigator to take the pictures of the baptism off and forgot I would need it today to send pictures, but I'll try and send some next week! 

Love,
Elder Joshua Lee