New Sector, New Fruits, New Investigators, New Experiences

Hey Mom and Dad,

Today I opened the package with the peanut butter- thanks!!! I´m way excited now to make some pancakes with peanut butter! Lol, it´s been so long. Also I think I´ll have to try and make some Dinosaur cookies with it. I don’t think I told you I haven´t been able to find any raw cocoa powder here in any of the stores. All I ever see and all the workers ever show us is powdered chocolate to make chocolate milk. So I´ve actually tried making them with that two times, just trying to put a good ratio of chocolate powder and sugar. The first time I tried they turned out terrible, lol. But the second time not too bad. I´m excited now because I found in the freezer a bowl of ground cocoa. I tried it and it tastes like actual non-sweetened cocoa. A guy next to me in the cyber just asked me what I think about William Braham, he showed me a picture of him with a light over his head almost like a halo and told me about how many people believe him to be the “Esias,” or the prophet spoken to come in the Bible. Ha, fun times..and a good opportunity to invite him to General Conference this weekend. But that is interesting, have you heard of that guy? Ha now this guy sitting next to me is trying to convince us that Adam really wasn´t the father of Caín, but the serpent. Gotta love the conversations you get into as missionaries:). But anyways, so yeah.. I´m excited to make some real dinosaur cookies. And haha thanks for the quick make mashed potatoes, those´ll be fun to make some time. One thing that’s awesome about our area is that the chapel was just redone so it´s all new and really nice- oh and there´s an oven! Lol so yeah we´re thinking one Monday we´re gonna have to go and try baking some banana bread, hopefully it turns out good.

But anyways, things here are going great. As for our ward, it seems a little smaller than our ward in Libertad, but still strong. I´m excited because we have a great bishopric who all are willing to help us as much as they can. Like I said before, the building is new. It´s a little different because the actual chapel is a little smaller and it´s all a part of the main building. In Libertad the church had kind of two sections, one with the chapel, and then another building with the rooms (kinda like how the church was in Peru, if you remember how it was). There are 2 wards that meet in our building so our church starts at 8 and the other ward at 10 (yeah, 8! It was hard enough getting investigators to come to church by 9 in the morning, lol. Ah well a trial of the faith I suppose ). It´s called the 18 de Mayo ward I believe because that´s the name of the neighborhood it´s in, which has a street named 18 de Mayo (as to why they have neighborhoods and streets named after specific dates beats me, lol). The area that I´m in itself is actually way small. It’s in the middle of the city between the river Babahoyo and like what looks like huge fields where they grow rice (at least we think they grow rice, lol). It´s like 14 or 15 blocks long and maybe 9 or 10 blocks wide, so yeah, way small, especially compared to my sector in Libertad. Its kind of fun being changed to the middle of a city. Most of the parts where our investigators are feels like downtown Albany. There is one part that looks crazy and I definitely need to get a picture of is the southernmost border of our sector where I said there are what looks like fields of rice. There are tons of houses (many of bamboo) that are built on stilts of about 20 or 30 feet over water. There are a bunch of very rickety looking bridges to get to them. We have one less active family that lives in one of the houses and every time we go over there I hold my breath crossing the bridge, lol. When I get the chance I´ll take a picture to show you, it´s way cool.

Ooh one thing I have to tell you about is the fun experiences I´ve had eating some new fruits. You´ll have to tell Robbie about it, he sent me an email and asked me to tell him about it because it reminds him about being in India eating fruits that aren´t available in the states. The first one I actually had in Libertad several weeks ago named Maracuya (I think, lol, that’s what Elder Barcia said at least, oh and Elder Peters said they´re illegal in the states because you can make a drug out of it, lol, so I told myself I had to try it here while I can :). And it was a crazy oval looking fruit about twice the size of an egg. It was tan and was very hard like a pear. After a few days in the fridge they started getting all wrinkly so I thought they were going bad but Elder Barcia told me they were “maturing.” Lol. So finally he told me to cut one in half to try it and when I did I found there were like hundreds of black seeds in the center in kind of a goopy substance (it looked like a bunch of fish eggs, honestly =). He said you could have it two ways, with salt, or with sugar, I chose sugar. You pour some sugar on it then eat it with a spoon, spitting out the seeds. It had a very tart taste but was quite delicious. The other new fruit we had this week: Guava. I could of sworn there´s tons of guava juices that I´ve had but I´ve never seen the fruit. But it was funny we went to one family of recent converts and the first thing was they gave us two 3-foot long green wrinkly things that were also way stiff and told us to enjoy, lol. Seeing the confused look on our faces they explained it was guava and you open it by twisting it to break it open. Inside there were several huge seeds that had a white sweet covering. Again, you were supposed to eat the white sweet covering and spit out the seeds. It had a sweet taste that I enjoyed as well. All-in-all just fun new fruits that’s a good part of being in Ecuador :P.

Other then that all is going well. I´m way excited for Conference this weekend. It´s amazing the perspective as a missionary now. What I´ve been teaching for 6 months now about prophets and apostles is about to come to life. We have the opportunity to hear people who are inspired of God tell us what the Lord wants for us today. I´m especially excited for our investigators to come. Oh and also I´m glad I have a gringo companion because we can sit in the English room and actually hear the voices of the prophets :P Ok well I believe I´m out of time so I´d better go. Thanks for everything! I love you!

Love,

Elder David Frome