Hey Mom and Dad,
Ah thats sweet sounds like you had a nice relaxing new year with Robbie and Kristen. And I bet Ryan must´ve had fun at the single dance. Yeah they told us we had to be in our house by 8:00 that night so we had a good time watching things from the window :). And wow that’s so exciting how all the Spanish news that’s happening in the stake, lol. that sounds like a great start to the new Spanish Branch. And sounds like the Pattons are well involved. They´ll be great leaders. That´d definitely be fun for after the mission when I get back to be able to continue talking in Spanish, especially in a church setting. And so you saw an Elder Fuller in church?? Wow yeah we weren´t really on a last name basis in the dorms but that name definitely sounds familiar, lol. was he tall, kind of lanky with brown hair? That´s kool that he saw you and I wonder how he recognized you. You´ll have to tell him Hi for me :).
It´s been fun to see the custom here in Ecuador for new years. The big tradition is to make what´s called “viejos” or “monigotes” or “muñecos.” The first word means old as for old year and I´m not sure how to say the other words, lol. but they´re basically life sized papermache figures of either a person or any other cartoon or popular character, lol. It´s pretty cool families will actually start making them months in advance. We´ve seened characters like dragon ball Z, the hulk, Michael Jackson, a giant bulldog and a transformer, sid from Ice Age and any other movie character you can think of. But yeah the custom is they´ll make those and paint them to look all nice of some character from that year, then on new years eve they´ll put them in the streets and burn them, lol. which actually looks pretty fun. I guess it´s symbolic to burn a character from that year to show the passing of the old year and start of a new. One dangerous part is some who are a bit more teenage crazies (you know there´s always some of those in the neighborhood lol) will take the Viejo, put a bunch of firecracker or other fireworks in it then burn it, thus lighting off a bunch of explosions. Then while it´s still burning they´ll walk by and throw in more firecrackers, lol. Once during the day we saw one and they had put in some rocket fireworks, oh man that was way crazy-dangerous. The rockets lit off and flew in random directions and exploding. So yeah, probably for good reason we had to be in the house by 8 :P
It´s been fun to see the custom here in Ecuador for new years. The big tradition is to make what´s called “viejos” or “monigotes” or “muñecos.” The first word means old as for old year and I´m not sure how to say the other words, lol. but they´re basically life sized papermache figures of either a person or any other cartoon or popular character, lol. It´s pretty cool families will actually start making them months in advance. We´ve seened characters like dragon ball Z, the hulk, Michael Jackson, a giant bulldog and a transformer, sid from Ice Age and any other movie character you can think of. But yeah the custom is they´ll make those and paint them to look all nice of some character from that year, then on new years eve they´ll put them in the streets and burn them, lol. which actually looks pretty fun. I guess it´s symbolic to burn a character from that year to show the passing of the old year and start of a new. One dangerous part is some who are a bit more teenage crazies (you know there´s always some of those in the neighborhood lol) will take the Viejo, put a bunch of firecracker or other fireworks in it then burn it, thus lighting off a bunch of explosions. Then while it´s still burning they´ll walk by and throw in more firecrackers, lol. Once during the day we saw one and they had put in some rocket fireworks, oh man that was way crazy-dangerous. The rockets lit off and flew in random directions and exploding. So yeah, probably for good reason we had to be in the house by 8 :P
This week was kind of rough when it came to appointments falling through. I guess just with the holiday seasons a lot of people were together as families but they´ll always be doing stuff, lol. so we did a lot of knocking doors :P. which was actually pretty fun. We went with the just get in the door and ask for 5 or 10 minutes to get a quick message to the family and a return appointment strategy and it wasn´t too bad. With that we found a lot of new people. It always amazes me how Christian oriented the people are here. It seems the majority of the people already recognize us as servants of the Lord. One older couple let us in and it was awesome because they were already familiar with the church and said they knew we were servants of the Lord and looked way interested to hear us. I almost wanted to commit them to baptism right there but we didn´t have enough time, lol. Another older lady told us that her daughter died as an infant and was never baptized and her pastor said that baptism was required for heaven and had warned her to have the daughter baptized as soon as possible so she felt terrible. Yeah, that is definitely such an amazing doctrine of the church to be able to tell people that their children are in heaven because all little children are alive in Christ. So yeah, all in all a lot of walking and working this week, lol. but it´s been great. There´s nothing better than getting back to the house dead beat but knowing you did all you could to find, teach, and invite.
Thanks for sending insoles. One thing though, I´ve been talking with Elder Olsen and we´ve both been totally craving root beer, lol. I don´t know if I told you but there isn’t root beer here, like, at all, lol. It´s one thing that´s fun to tell people about. Often to start lessons we´ll have every say their name and favorite food. I always like to say a giant American burger, fries, and a huge glass of root beer, lol. so I was just wondering maybe you could send some rootbeer extract and the recipe, that´d be fun to make and share with the members and investigators. I was thinking too here there´s a lot of that plain carbonated water, could you make it with that? Lol but ok i´d better get going. Thanks for everything and I hope you have another great week! Love you!
Love,Elder David Frome
No comments:
Post a Comment