FELIZ DIA DE LA MADRE!

Hey Mom and Dad,

Haha yeah it was great talking to you on the phone last night. Yeah when the phone rang Elder Barrientos answered and I looked and saw that it was the house phone I hoped it was Dad calling so you could at least understand a little of what he said, lol. And yeah when I got on the first few things I said were in Spanish like “hola! Cómo estás? Cómo le va?” so that´s probably why I sounded different at first. I think when one speaks a different language his entire voice sounds different. I remember with Elder Sanchez thinking what a contrast it was to be in a lesson speaking to each other in Spanish, then outside talking in English, it´s like two different voices. So yeah that could be why I didn´t sound the same (that and yeah changing from speaking Spanish full time to English is a little hard in the first few moments, so I suppose maybe I did have a little accent:).

But wow sorry that must´ve been way frustrating trying to get through. I was honestly a little worried about the area numbers I gave. Those are numbers we never use but just asked to people from here. Maybe next time it´ll just be better to give you the basic phone number of our cellular in the house and you can look up on the internet the area codes to get through. Gotta love the internet and everything you can find on there, lol.

But yeah that was fun talking to everyone. And fun to talk to Walker in Spanish. That´s neat how he served years ago but his Spanish still sounded way sharp.

But anyways, oh one thing I didn´t explain on the phone that Dad asked was about the USA currency that is used here. That was the first surprise I think when I got here was to find out the same $5.00 american bill from the states is worth the same here (of course you could say it´s almost worth more because it´ll get you farther here because everything is so cheap:). I guess originally Ecuador had the currency system of using “sucres.” But about 30 years ago or so they had a series of terrible presidents that practically robbed the country. I guess the economy was so terrible that they decided the only way to save it was switch over to the American dollar. I´m not sure what kind of deal they had to have made with the states to do it but about the year 2000 or 2001 the Ecuador government made the change of the national currency from sucres to American dollars and it actually did help. But it´s fun because all the bills are the exact same ones from the states, but along with American coins, Ecuador has made their own style of coins that equal the same amount of our one cent, five cents, ten cents, twenty five and fifty cent coins. But yeah to give you an idea of the cost difference a bottle of water that would cost a dollar in any corner store in the states here costs about 25 cents. You can eat a good conservative meal in a restaurant for about $2.00. so yeah it´s kool. The things that cost more here than they do in the states are all the imports like cameras or other technologies, products like peanut butter, Gatorade, things like that. So yeah, fun facts about Ecuador :)

And yeah it was fun to have Elder Sanchez and Aguirre (the other assistant, who I also know from Libertad because he was in the same zone when I started and is way kool also) over for the night. Yeah president and the assistants often come the night before so they don´t have to travel so far early in the morning the next day. The Assistants stay with us, and President and his wife (when she comes) find a hotel, I think, lol.

Alright well I think i´d better get going. Thanks for everything! It was great talking to you again! I hope you have a great week! Love you!!!

Love,

Elder David Frome

PS- oh and yeah jerky and peanut butter are like gold here in Ecuador, lol (it was funny this morning in the interviews the Assistants had brought pouch and Elder Pugh, an Elder from Utah in our zone, got a huge package with jerky, two huge jars of JIF peanut butter like we always bought and some other goodies. It was crazy to see, lol:).