Hallelujah‏

Well here we are together again. Yipee. Bueño. Aight so for water I.... stank, took a shower at the district leader´s house, and.... stank. And I finally have clean clothes today so that´s good! My one shirt I wore for 3 days was turning brown on the sleeves and collar....

Vaca Santa Channing you´re dying!! What did that Panama food do to you?! And a black poop sample sounds like one nasty piece of work there. Satan works in terrible ways my sister.... Hope ya get better! I´ll fast for ya or somethin

Oh Papa and Grandma at resturaunts. Those were fun times. Cambria knows. When we would go over there to help with the lawn and such and we would go out to eat, it would be pretty entertaining. Oh when I get back to the states I gotta go help them out again. Good stuff.

Ah districts is good. Swollen knees are bad.

So today is my first change... that sounds weird. Cambio. There we go. Hoy es el dia de cambios! But we don´t know anything yet because our district leader doesn´t know anything because our zone leaders don´t know anything. We lost a lot of leaders this last change so this is the problem. And that´s why my compañero thinks that he´s gonna be changed. I asked who´s gonna train me then? He said yourself. I said okay. And I´m sure I´d do fine. But I hardly doubt that we´ll be changed.

Guaranda is my little piece of Ecuador! I can finally express myself (enough to get by at least) in Spanish so now we can actually get rolling. Oh and good news is that we´re gonna have one of our investigators be baptized this Saturday and he wants me to do it. My pants burst into flames and angels sang on high.

And we have a new family of 8 that have a house full of choclo (like corn but big and white). We helped them seperate it for 45 minutes then taught them a little. They laugh when I hit my head on the roof. The mother doesn´t understand Spanish really well because her first language is... man I don´t know how to spell that indian language. But not spanish! So I feel for her. But the family has a really hard time understanding, so it´s hard to teach them. We do it slow. And we need lots of pictures and stuff. But they liked church so that was good.

And one eternally investigating family finally wants to be baptized, but the esposo is hard but he finally accepted. I played with the kids while the mom was in the interview. So they like me well enough.

But oi I don´t have time today, we´re late because of all the washing we did. And monopoly. Siempre monopolia.

Entonces adios!!

Love ya all and hope you´re lovin life!

Rock on!

I Left My Pants In San Francisco‏

Yo howdy hey everybody. I am currently in Riobamba because we went on a Zone activity today for P-Day. To the most beautiful part of the country Baños. There were a lot of waterfalls, lots of green, and a zoo. So yeah it was pretty cool! Just wish my camera wasn´t dead so I could send some fotos. Crud. But I will later. My camera died there so I just put my memory card in another elder´s camera and took pictures with that. So they´re not gonna be as beautiful as I would have liked. Cést la vie. But I pretty much call this day, Dia de Defacation. Because I haven´t been able to wash my underwear or shirts in weeks because we haven´t had water and I have no clean clothes and we have no food and our house is dirty. So no dia de preparacion. Dia de defacacion. And I have an interview with president tomorrow for the training we´re all gonna have. Oh what joy. Why yes, president I do want to come clean. Starting with my underpants. Oh well, today was fun in any case. I´m just hungry. I didn´t have lunch. FEED MEEE!!!!

SO we finally got a progressing investigator! Cha ching. Walter. He has lived a hard life though, his wife ran off with another man and took all the money and he needs medical help but doesn´t have the money. He´s a retired teacher/ head hancho of the school. But he accepts everything is doing really good. And I gave two blessings this last week. My first, to a sick member. That wasn´t too good. I realized I really need to memorize what to do when using oil and giving the blessing. But the other one was way better. It was to Jorge, a friend of Walter, but Jorge was stabbed in the neck and robbed about a year or two ago and might be paralyzed too. But when I gave the actual blessing, at the end he was just crying. So I hope it helped. I dunno. But it felt like my first real blessing where I was confident. So yippee ki yay. Oh speaking of yippee ki yay.

YEAH YA FOR KYLE!! Isn´t that where Doug is? That´s awesome, he´ll do good. Wow this music is strange.... sounds kinda like Fall Out Boy singer going pop. If he sold out that´s terrible.

So today at the waterfall, I met some people from Salt Lake, he served his mission in Guaywakkawcan´tspell. And he asked where I was from, so I said Alamosa. And turns out he´s moving there next month with his wife to play lacrosse at Adams. I was like nice!! And so they had me describe it. I hope a mixture of cowboys and hippies is a good definition. But he said if he´s in La Jara he´ll say hi. Or he might see the family in the Alamosa churches. Rock on.

Umm... what else happened? Not much I believe. Quito was good, it was cool to see how everybody in my group is going with Spanish. Made me feel better, I don´t suck at Spanish as much as I thought. But studying grammar alot helps. So I just gotta dig into it and keep working to get better. Cuz I´m still pretty awful. Oh and I´m reading Jesus the Christ right now and that is a very interesting book. I like it.

So yikes thats no fun in the Valley. I hope everything turns out okay. And that you can live Channing and not get eaten alive by some bacteria in your foot and your butt. Confidence. Cambria sounds like she kicks trash. I was terrible at everything in middle school. So that´s awesome! DON´T TOUCH BOYS!!!!

oi, a couple of nights ago I had a dream Taylor has gone crazy since I left, and does terrible things with some gangster who was in high school. I was way angry when I woke up that morning!! WHAT IS WRONG WITH THAT WOMAN!!! But then I thought, oh it´s a dream.... whew. Okay. But I don´t like it. So if she HAS gone crazy somebody kick her in the butt and call yo mama. But I doubt she has!

Well that is all!! Adios mi familia, I am off to find some chicken and a life. Love ya all and love peanut butter.

Re: Homecoming picture‏

Who are these hipsters?? And I must be going crazy cuz it looks like Garret McGinnis is at homecoming. I thought he died. And Tanner Coombs is the man and always will be. The King is a worthy successor. And I like pie. That´s all I gotta say about that.

Thuffrin Thucatash‏

Hey how´s it goin?? Oh I just didn't write because I didn´t feel like it. Naw, I joke, the internet was out last Monday. And there´s no water this Monday. We shall call it Outback Mondays. I haven´t showered or shaved or used the bathroom and my bladder is screaming something in French that I can´t understand and is probably not appropriate for anyone over the age of 4. HEY! I just wanted to say that.

Oh so I got my REAL mailing address from a letter from Kylie but whoops I forgot to bring it soooo don´t send anything yet. And don´t look them in the eye. I´ll get it to ya. Real snappy.

Channing, I am jealous you saw conference in English. I had only spanish in our tiny rama. But it was still good. I understood. I think... I don´t have any English to compare it to so I´ll just say yes. I´m using Richard G. Scott´s advice of memorizing scriptures. I got 5 down right now. And partly because when I´m cookin my eggs and pan in the morning I got nothing better to do than to memorize. Oh ya.

Um so yeah I got the humility thing last week but this week has been patience! Hoorah for attributes the mission will force you to learn. Like in real life. Not mission president kinda stuff. But like I said, the water is out, but the good news is that it´s the rainy season here again! Feel like Forrest Gump. It rained here for three months. NAw.. Just everyday is a shower! Cold. But hey my normal shower is just as cold so it´s alright. Like showering with clothes on. But it rained way hard this last week. The district leader was in Quito so me and Elder Andrade had Elder Bloxham with us. And we had to go to lunch up on the mountain. And I thought it was hailing but it just turned out to be rain drops the size of marbles. Tasty. So we start heading out.

I can happily report that Blake´s rain jacket isn´t water proof but is about as absorbent as the average diaper. Got that water nice and freezing like. So we´re running through the streets because we got to get to lunch, the other two elders have their umbrellas, I have my diaper jacket, and we get to the stairs leading up the hill side. It´s a stinkin waterfall. VAMOS SEMAJANTES! NINGUN VIVE PARA SIEMPRE!! and we run the stairs. It was a great idea to have those shoes waterproofed. Then we get to the mud section. Oi. Cars are flippin out, we´re running like trying not to slip and get me more wet in this waterfall. Second pair of stairs!! Woo!! Well we finally get there, our mamita gives me her husband's shirt to wear under my shirt since I´m soaked. Then we get ready to eat and she gives us a whole fish each. Elder Bloxham hates fish and is horrified. I tell him it was probably just spawning on the staircase. But hey it´s food and we´re good.

Yeah! What do I eat? Well I eat rice! And cooked bananas! Last week Elder Andrade and I cooked bananas and corn for our vesina and we got some cheese in return. and a cooked banana. Yeah I eat corn but a different kind of corn that has a different name and is big and white. I helped grind some of it and we put it with some cheese and put it in the corn husk and then cooked it and then ate it and it was good. Oh but in Ambato I had a choco banana which is the first dessert use of the banana I have seen and it was good. There are actually different types of bananas that aren´t called bananas at all. Verdes and duros. I cook those for breakfast sometimes becuase you can´t eat them raw.

HEY! Who signed me up to grow up anyway?? I gotta do my own shopping, wash my own laundry on a rock, then iron it, clean my stinkin house, pay this $3 electric bill, keep track of my expenses, feed a Latino, and convert people to the gospel?? I want my money back!! And a stinkin bathroom oooooooh my chalupa I am going to scream like a dying pig.

Oh Channing, by the way I hear screaming pigs here alot and I think of you. I don´t like that scream very much myself. And oh man we almost got attacked by this pack of dogs, those things are everywhere. So Elder Andrade and I were throwing rocks at them like crazy. BACK! BACK!

Well investigators wise, we got nada. Zip. Gah. So we´re gonna CLEAN the zone. Lots of contacting and finding new families because the families we have now are not progressing. They just don´t wanna change. And yeah it´s true that some are humble but that humility can go two ways. One is, that they grow closer to God. Other is, they only think money can fix their problems and all they do is feel sorry for themselves. And we can´t help them because they won´t let us. I thought I was a terrible missionary because we have no one progressing. And we´re working!! Not like we´re sitting out here with our teeth in our mouth. But it´s probably where we´re putting our efforts. So yeah. REFRESH BUTTON.

WEll I gotta write Presidente cuz I didn´t last week too sooo I might be in trouble. Oh no. And I´m going to Quito at 3 I need to go change. OH NO!!! But I played monopoly and won so I was happy. But I gotta go. To the bathroom. But that won´t happen so I´ll go write President. Aight I wanna say seguia adelante and I am outta here.

ROCK ON!!

Nothing, Nada, Zip

We didn't hear from Brett today. I hacked into his account and discovered a half finished draft that was never sent. It ended with a story about a drunk crying man...... probably would have been a good one. I don't know what happened. We'll get the full report later I'm sure.

(What kind of mother hacks into her missionary's account?)