Hola de Ecuador

Hey Mom and Dad,
Thanks for your email! I´m glad it sounds like you´ve had a great week! That´s awesome to hear about the baptism for Elder Fuller and Lopez. And thanks I like to think that missionaries live and act in such a way to help lift the life of everyone that surrounds them on a daily basis.
But anyways, as for your questions Elder Sanchez goes home no less than 2 weeks (crazy!) and funny thing I´m not actually sure what the church did to extend his visa or how it worked exactly. Often the visas that we get last a month or so longer than the exact year or two year mark, like the censo I have now will keep me legal here until halfway through march of 2011, then I´m pretty sure your passport will keep you good till a month after the censo expires. So yeah maybe he just did that. It is funny, though, because his certificate from the church authorizing him as an official minister of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints expired so officially he´s no longer a minister, (oop Elder Barrientos just came over to show me something with the email page and got confused with one thing and then accidentally closed the whole internet and was like “oh fetch” in his calm low voice. I laughed and pushed him back to his computer, good thing I´m typing this letter on Microsoft Word first :)
And that´s great I´m glad you got the memory cards. Funny thing I sent it certified but then I forgot to give you the code to be able to track it on the internet. But ah well I figured just having it stamped certified would be the important part putting pressure that it would get delivered. I didn´t actually tell them they were memory cards in the package, also I´m glad it was delivered well enough. I guess the mission went over the top with sending heavy letters and spent way too much so now they´ve made a new rule that if you want to send mail, you have to find the post office in your area and send it through there so I think we´ll be using the correos of Ecuador more often now.
But anyways, well this week has been awesome. Firstly we had interviews with the President on Monday then on Tuesday we had Zone conference in Babahoyo! That was way awesome. It was fun because we had it in the same chapel that I assisted when I served there. It was kind of crazy too because before it started when we were all sitting down Elder Sanchez waved me over and asked me if I had ever conducted a zone conference before (which is funny to think now, because being it my first change as zone leader, of course I´d never conducted one before, though now that I think about it, I guess I had conducted one in the MTC before I left, lol). But yeah I told him no and he said well this´ll be my first time, lol. Then he gave me a paper with the program and told me what I needed to do to conduct the zone conference. Yeah kinda made my heart jump for a bit but it´s really pretty easy to conduct. I was a little nervous standing up to start and announce everything but after that it was fine. It was fun but at the same time I tried to be a bit more formal. In District meetings I´m usually way laid back conducting but I always noticed when the Zone leaders conduct zone conference it´s all very professional so that´s what I tried to do. So yeah that was fun to be able to welcome everyone to the zone conference and conduct. Then zone conference itself was way good, as always. One part that was neat was the presentation the Assistants gave, was in large part, in English. Elder Sanchez obviously knows English and Elder Aguirre (from Mexico) knows english fairly well and they must´ve prepared well. They spoke of the importance of the companionship and two being stronger than one. Elder Barrientos afterwards said he was lost. But it was good because the mission has been putting so much stress on the importance of studying english and they said that in the changes the mission will slowly progress until entire zone conferences will be given in English. They said that other missions with American mission presidents are already doing that. It´s pretty neat how much emphasis they´re putting on it. I think I already told you how the mission received a set of manuals for studying Spanish for all the latin missionaries. Elder Barrientos has been studying very well but not progressing as fast as he wanted so I guess he asked the President for permission to get up at 5:30 each morning to be able to study more. It was funny he didn´t tell me till we got back to the house and he told me that he asked permission and that president said yes, but asked if I knew what else President said. Realizing quickly what else he must´ve said I joked “and he said that your comp can sleep in as normal???” Elder Barrientos laughed and said “ah no Elder Frome, he said I can get up together with my companion.” Yeah I half joked asking why would President give such permission. But it´s all right. The first time we set the alarm for 5:30 I heard go it off but Elder Barrientos slept straight through it, so I decided just to sleep in, lol. But yeah now we´re getting up early to study. Yeah less sleep but eh, now I´m sure we´ll have more companionship unity at least.
But alright well I´d better get going. Thanks for the email! Love you!
Love,
Elder David Frome