Elder Farley's Life in Ecuador: Week #74 - 2nd Christmas in Ecuador

JA JA JA JA! Hola como estan?

First off, DAD, you would look so good with a handlebar mustache!! WOW--you really do. Dang! I am a bit jealous!!! Ask Mom if you can keep it. :) But really you should consider doing that!!! You look so sweet! :)

Wanna-be cowboy with slight handle-bar mustache

Now I will answer your questions-

1- How are you feeling now? Did you get over your fever?

1- Well, I do feel a lot better. Not a hundred percent but I feel a lot better!!! I sure hope that you guys could feel all of my love during our Christmas Skype call. :-)

2- How did you like the Christmas gifts we sent you?

2- I LOVED them! I loved the puzzle letters and the plan of salvation card and everything else--they were so cool!!!! I love the BYU Idaho shirt even thought its huge on me--its still awesome!!! I ended up sharing the food with everyone that lives in my house and boy was it good!!!!! ;) Thanks guys. You guys are really good people!!! ja ja ja! I love you guys!!

3- What was one of your favorite letters from the letter garland gift?

3- I really loved three in particular. The first was the "Testaments of Miracles" that you guys wrote. I loved that because that gave me a good idea of how it all started. I found out things that I didn't know before, so I truly loved that!! The second one is the one mom wrote me about when I was a baby and when she bore her testimony to me--that was really cool!!! And the third letter was from Dad. He wrote about his experiences in his mission during the Christmas season and that gave me some ideas of what we could do as a zone. Unfortunately we could not accomplish it because there was no time!! But I did love them all. ;)

4- I believe that you had a baptism scheduled for December 27th. Did that happen? Who got baptized?

4- The thing is, he didn't attend church last week so that pushed his baptism date a bit further back. He will now be baptized on January 6th!!

5- Tell us about an experience this week where you saw the Lord's hand at work? Be specific!

5- On Saturday I had some good plans to help out my district. I was going to go and help them work so I could get a good idea of how they work so I can help them better. So I had plans to go over there and help while my campañero stayed and worked in the area. I had several people that were willing to help and we had enough people to help that we had back up people as well. So as the time approached we went to go get the people so we could split up, but everyone that we got to help us didn't show up or they came but they left early and it turned out to be a disaster. That meant that I couldn't help the sisters in my district. I was still feeling somewhat sick so I got super mad, super fast, and I was completely stressed out!!! I knew that with that attitude I couldn't work with the spirit, so I called president and he helped me calm down and he helped me feel the spirit again and I was able to work just fine and we accomplished what we wanted to do!! So this would be the experience that you asked for!!!

Well, now I will tell you about my week-

Tuesday we went to the temple in the morning as a mission and it was a fun experience. While we were in the celestial room president punched me in the face!! I will explain--so I kinda forgot to bring my temple recommend to the temple and I had to wait for them to look me up in the system. So presidente asked me what happened and in the celestial room he kinda punched me in the face--like it was a joking around friend punch, not like a punch punch!! Then afterward we went to the stake center and we cleaned it really good!! Then in the night we went, as a mission, to a stake center and we ate dinner as a mission. The food was really good! I had like three plates of food!! Then we had the program. THAT WAS AWESOME!!! There were such great song performed by the missionaries and we felt such a great spirit in there!! The songs that I was part of were toward the end. Our performance was SOOOOO COOL! We did it almost flawlessly, and when we finished everyone started cheering so loudly! I felt so cool! I kinda felt like Simba being born and then being presented as the next king!!! Or kind of like JB--one of the two ;) JAJA! BUT IT WAS AWESOME!!!!

Wednesday it was a normal day. We worked as best as we could but unfortunately there hardly was anyone in the houses. But in the night the bishop gave us food--REALLY GOOD FOOD!!! He gave us turkey and chicken corden blue which was so good. I haven't had that in forever!!!!! Then after that we had another dinner with the stake presidente who lives in our sector and that food was also very good. This was our day!!!

Thursday we had a party as a zone and we watched movies (with permission from presidente) and we cooked food and we had a gift exchange and we talked. But I was sick so it was an ok day. P.S. favorite part was talking to you guys!!

Friday was a normal day--we worked as hard as we could but again hardly anyone was in their houses!!!

Saturday I told you guys what we did previously!!! But it was fun!!

Sunday we had full meetings and we went to church and this was our day, pretty basic!!!

Well, this was my week. I hope you guys can experience the missionary work with me!!! I love you guys so much! You will never know how much that I love you!!!! ;)

P.S. Yes you can come to Ecuador if you want ;)

LOVE,

Elder Farley