Elder Tyler Walke

Hola familia!

Hey you finally got that package I sent you! That’s great because I sent it before Christmas. Apparently the office took a long time to get it sent off though. The important thing is that you got it. Sounds like everyone had a busy week this week—me too. Crazy busy. Everything went off really well but it was a near thing [translation: close call]. We had lots of big events go down and it was sort of a trial by fire experience for learning how to be a zone leader. Thursday morning the office called us and said that Elder Vargas (Elder Frye’s old companion) would be coming into Portoviejo that night so that he could go to the zone leader council the next day with us. That was a mess and would involve a lengthy but not too interesting story, but in short let’s just say that there were some miscommunications and it took us a long time to find Elder Vargas once he got to the city. Anyway, we got Elder Vargas to the house and went to bed early (10 pm) because we had to get up at 2:30 am to take a 4-hour bus ride to Guayaquil in order to make it to the darn council at 8 am. So we went to bed and all was well with the world until the phone rang at 11 pm. My companion answered and after he hung up I asked what was said. He mumbled something about giving a class but I was too tired to understand what he was talking about so I just rolled over and went back to sleep. As it turns out it was the assistants [to the president] calling to say that Elder Fonseca and I would be giving a class about “staying the course” the next day in the zone leader council. I hate giving talks at the last minute. Especially talks in front of all the other zone leaders and the assistants and the president. But hey, that’s life as a missionary.

So on the bus ride my companion and I were fighting the desire to sleep and trying to come up with a decent lesson, but it wasn’t really coming along. We had something more or less worked out and decided to call it good. Well, what really happened is that we fell asleep in the middle of planning. Then around 5:30 am I woke up and couldn’t help but notice that the bus was sitting at a 45 degree angle and that my side of the bus was now much higher than I remembered it being before. As I sat there contemplating my new, elevated status, I slowly became aware that we were no longer “on the road” in the conventional sense but that the right side of the bus was now half sunk in the mud—thus causing the significant tilt that I had recently become aware of. I woke my companion up to share with him my new discovery but at first he was too out of it to understand me. I told him and at first he said, “What’s the big deal, let me sleep” but I finally got my point across. So Elder Vargas, Elder Fonseca, and I got off the bus and sat around in the dark waiting for another bus so that we could continue our journey. I happened to have my camera on me at the time to take pictures with friends at the meeting so we took advantage of the moment to take pictures of the bus. I guess the driver fell asleep or something so he drifted off the road a bit and that’s when he got stuck. When we got on the next bus I sat there contemplating how lucky we were that he hadn’t fallen asleep when we were on a hill or something and I couldn’t help but notice the interesting correlation between that experience and the subject of the class we were supposed to give. So of course, that’s what we based our talk on. I think it went over well. It was a good meeting all things considered.

As it turns out, Elder Adamson became a zone leader this change too. I also heard that Elder Frye is a district leader now. I wish I could sit in on Elder Frye’s district meeting classes I bet they would be pretty entertaining. So then Saturday night the assistants called and said that President Gamboa would be in the area so he wanted to do the interviews for our zone the next day. Normally that wouldn’t be a big deal but Sunday was also the day we had planned to have the big meeting about missionary work for all the bishops and stake leaders. So the interviews were going to happen at 3 pm and the meeting was at 4 pm. luckily both were scheduled for the same building so after church Sunday, we went to lunch then rushed over to the stake center to get the building ready for both events. We were going to show a 15-minute video from Preach My Gospel as well so we had to get the projector set up as well.  But in the end we pulled it off. I guess that the stake president has wanted President Gamboa to come talk in Portoviejo for a long time and when we let it slip that he would be around, some people got it in their heads that he was coming to talk in the meeting at 4pm; but in reality President Gamboa didn’t even know we were having any such meeting. So when he got there we took him aside and informed him of our predicament and begged him to talk for 5 minutes to keep the masses happy. President was a good sport and helped us out so the whole thing ended up being a success. There have been all sorts of smaller events but I’m out of time now.

All in all life has been busy and there is a lot more to being a zone leader than I originally thought, but I’m enjoying it. Oh and I forgot to mention but there is this guy here who lives up in Utah and as it turns out he knows some people I know. One of them is J.R. Johnson. It’s a small world huh? Talk to you next week.

Te quiero,
Elder Walke

Note: Elder Walke recently send us some photos and videos in the mail. If you would like to see the videos click here.

¡Hola familia!

So transfers have come and gone. I got transferred. I was shocked. So now I’m in Portoviejo, and I’m a zone leader. That was the most shocking part of all. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but somehow President Gamboa decided that I should be a zone leader. Surprised? I was. I was feeling a little overwhelmed and very under qualified at first because I don’t feel that I’m the best option, but I’m starting to settle in. Sadly, I got transferred Friday morning instead of Monday so I didn’t get to see Elder Mitton but oh well.

So the zone leaders called Thursday night and told me I was getting transferred and that was surprise number one because I was only in Balzar for 6 weeks and was really looking forward to spending the next change in Balzar because the last couple of weeks we started teaching some really cool people and things were starting to go well. Plus we had a cool new apartment to look forward to. I was also sort of hoping that I would be training again this change. I never did get to move into the new apartment. We took care of all the contracts and worked everything out with the office, but we had to wait until Wednesday to receive a contract signed by president Gamboa to terminate the rent in the old house. So the zone leaders called and said “Elder Walke, you are getting transferred to Portoviejo, to the Andres de Vera sector. Do you know what that means?” I didn’t. But as it turns out, that’s the name of the zone leaders sector in Portoviejo. The best part is that I was on the bus a long time to get to my new sector. I had to leave Balzar at 4 in the morning in order to be in Guayaquil around 7:30-8 am. And of course I had to pack. I wasn’t told I was being transferred until almost 11 pm and didn’t finish packing until 3am. I take forever to pack. I was afraid that it would do more harm than good to only sleep for an hour, so I spent the last hour before I had to leave writing letters. And then I ended up sitting around in the terminal. When I got there I ended up talking to the other missionaries for 2 hours until the assistants finally gave me the all clear to leave for Portoviejo—a 4 hour bus ride. Of course, I was unable to sleep at all during the entire trip, so I got to Portoviejo very, very tired. Then I met my new companion, Elder Fonseca, of no relation to our next door neighbors as far as I know—unless they have distant relatives from Bolivia. Although Elder Fonseca says he has family ties to Brazil and Paraguay as well so who knows?

There turns out to be a lot more to being a zone leader than I originally thought. The good news is I no longer have to teach district meeting every week. But unfortunately it doesn’t mean I don’t have to do a lot of teaching, because next Sunday we are supposed to give a two hour presentation to train the bishops and other stake leaders on how to create a ward mission plan, how to apply the new “Perry Plan” in the stake, and a list of other missionary related stuff that Elder Fonseca and I are working on. Then in February we have another similar meeting to train the ward mission leaders and ward missionaries in the stake. Plus we have a monthly coordination with the stake president to make sure everything is running smoothly in Portoviejo. And that’s just the stake level responsibilities.

Saturday we did inspections of the missionary’s apartments that we are supposed to do at the end of every change and that burned a lot of cash because we had to take a lot of taxis to get to all the houses that morning. Then Saturday night we had a baptism and the bishop asked me to give a talk the next day in sacrament meeting because one of the speakers wouldn’t be able to make it. My talk went pretty well I think. It was a pain to do, especially because I didn’t have time to write it Saturday night so I ended up preparing it 5 minutes before sacrament meeting. Luckily I was the second speaker so I only had to talk for 10 minutes. Then after sacrament meeting I went over to the gospel principles class and as it turns out, our ward has no gospel principles teacher. I forgot to mention earlier but we have two wards in this sector, so my companion went to the other ward while I managed things in Andres de Vera. It’s like Jipijapa when we had to do splits every Sunday to cover both branches. So anyway, the bishop told me I was supposed to teach the gospel principles class, gave me the manual, and left. That was an interesting class, but I got through it. It was a hard first Sunday but I think it went a long way towards gaining the bishops confidence, and the members got to know me a lot quicker because of my talk.

But the fun doesn’t stop their, because in a week and a half we have to go to Guayaquil for the zone leader conference with president Gamboa that happens the second week of every change. So I will be traveling for 8 hours round trip that day and once again not get very much sleep. And seeing as how Monday is still the official change day, we had to receive changes. Even though my companion and I didn’t have changes we still had to get the other elders from the zone on the bus to Guayaquil in the middle of the night. So I’m tired. Very tired.

I do have a few elders in my zone that I know. Our two district leaders are Elder Goode and Elder Cruz (Elder Cruz was my companion in Babahoyo my last change there). There are also a couple of gringos that came into the mission a couple of months ago who knew who I was. That’s still weird. And when I was in Guayaquil another gringo came up to me and told me he had read my blog as well. Oh speaking of Guayaquil I saw Elder Muhlestein there. He got transferred to Duran. He seems to be doing really good these days. I think his Spanish is improving a lot. I also saw Elder Frye. I sort of just assumed he would be there because he always seems to show up when I am in Guayaquil. I didn’t see Elder Elwood but I will see him for sure in the zone leader meeting anyway. So I don’t know what else to say; I probably didn’t cover everything I should but I can’t think of anything else to say. Have a good week guys.

Te quiero,
Elder Walke

¡Hola familia!

So you may be wondering why the subject for this email says “the news from Guayaquil” when I’m clearly in Balzar. No I didn’t get transferred. My darn companion has just been half sick for weeks and Sister Gamboa made us take a two-and-a-half-hour bus to Guayaquil so that he could have a one-hour doctor appointment where nothing seems to have been accomplished. But on a brighter note I did get to hang with Elder Elwood, and Elder Frye’s companion was also sick so I saw him for about 10 minutes too. I found it ironic that Elder Frye’s companion was sick instead of him because it seems that guy is always sick. In fact when I saw him I said, “What are you sick again? You were just getting over being sick the last time I saw you!” and he said, “Nope this time it’s my comp!” I just can’t stop running into those guys. I live in a very small world.

I’m changing apartments this week. That’s going to be fun. It’s a long, long story and I really don’t feel like going into details because it will annoy me just to think about it. President Gamboa told us to change our apartment ASAP, so that’s what I did Saturday. I didn’t work; I went apartment shopping. Which I have never done in my life. And as it turns out, there isn’t much of a housing market in Balzar—like, at all. But we did manage to find an apartment that fits the criteria that Elder Williams gave me. It’s awesome because it’s a brand new apartment, much better than the pit where we currently live. Honestly the biggest difference is that it’s a new apartment with fresh paint; it’s still just a concrete box like every other apartment I have lived in during my mission. So Elder Williams and I have been working like crazy trying to get this change to happen before transfers roll around next Monday and I think we will be able to pull it off. But that means that we will have to haul all of the stuff out of our old apartment and into the new one and that means next week will be yet another week full of interruptions where I don’t get everything done that I want done. Oh I forgot to mention that we did take a day off last week because my comp was sick and needed to stay in the house and throw up for a while. But he’s good now. Probably. So between my comp being sick on Thursday and the apartment garbage on Saturday we lost two work days last week. I also did an interchange with Elder Baum on Wednesday so that was three days during the week that I didn’t work in my sector. My interchange with Elder Baum was fun though. He is a cool guy and he works hard; his mommy should be pleased.

Hey, so you guys mentioned that you have been reading Nathan and Tasha’s weekly emails. Could you convince their parents send me their letters too? I can print them out and read them pday—and Derek’s too…and Clark’s. Yeah, that should cover it. I got that package you sent; it was great. I love the videos, the pen, and the cookies. I did hear about the Haiti quake by the way. I don’t know much about it; I just know it happened. I was thinking about what it would be like to be a missionary over there right now. Crazy stuff. I can just imagine the chaos that we would see if something like that hit Guayaquil. I think it would take a long time to sort out the mess. Are they struggling to get a decent relief effort mounted?

Moving back to Ecuador based things, Elder Mitton is going home this week. I still can’t believe it. I have been thinking about it a lot because he was the first gringo I ever knew in Ecuador and he hadn’t even hit 8 months at the time. And now he is going home. And Elder Elwood is about to hit 20 months. And Elder Muhlestein just broke 6 months. I can’t believe I have a kid with 6 months already.

Ok well its time to end this letter before I get too trunky. I think I will tell you my thoughts about what will happen with transfers just to ensure that it doesn’t happen like I think it will. Elder Lopez now has 4 changes here in Balzar so we probably wont be together next change. I doubt that I will get transferred because the only way I see myself leaving before Elder Lopez is if I become a zone leader, in other words, I ain’t going nowhere. If Elder Lopez does get transferred I think I may train again because there is a big group coming in. No matter who gets transferred though, both of us have to go to Guayaquil so that I can drop off Elder Lopez and pick up my new comp because there is nobody for me to stay with in Balzar while I wait for my new comp. So don’t expect a letter from me to quickly next Monday. Ok family, that’s the news!

Te quiero,
Elder Walke

¡Hola familia!

How the time does fly. Ok not really. This week was a little slow because Elder Lopez was sick with some sort of stomach bug and we spent two days in the house. I would also like to announce that the rainy season has officially begun here in Ecuador. It has been raining off and on the last couple of weeks but now it’s raining most days. That also means that once again the mosaic plagues are in town. Crickets and frogs for everyone! I cultivated a pretty healthy dislike for crickets while living in Ecuador that’s for sure. The darn things are always getting in the house and then they die in some odd corner and make the entire house stink of rotten cricket. We kill a good amount of crickets on a daily basis. One night I got feed up with all the crickets so I tied strings to several of the recently dispatched buggers and hung them on a cable outside our window in a vain attempt to ward off any cricket foolish enough to think of entering. It didn’t work but it does look pretty funny.

The rain also drove a couple of other interesting guests into the house the other day. A while ago I was making breakfast when I noticed something dart across the small space we call the kitchen. I was pretty sure it was a mouse but it was early and I’m still not a morning person so I wasn’t sure. My companion thought I was full of it when I wasn’t able to locate the mouse or any evidence that he existed, but I had faith. I knew the mouse was real. A couple of days later I caught another glimpse of the rodent and tried to pursue, but once again I couldn’t figure out where he ran away to. At this point my companion thought I was losing my mind because he still had not noticed anything. Then the next day he was moving his suit cases around trying to get at a cricket he wanted to kill when he yelled, “¡ah un ratón!” for those of you who don’t speak Spanish that means “ah a mouse!”. And I said, “¡yo le dije que no estoy loco!” or in other words, “I told you I wasn’t crazy!” We then commenced a drawn out battle as we struggled to capture the devil. As it turns out my companion is afraid of mice, which would have been funnier if I didn’t need help. To make a long story short, after much chasing and moving beds, furniture, and every other object in the house that was big enough to hide behind, I finally got the thing trapped in a bucket. Did you know mice are excellent jumpers? I had no idea. This one was an expert in his field because he somehow managed to clear the bucket and escape a few minutes later. Thus began “epic mouse hunt part 2″ which turned out to be even more drawn out than part 1. He really didn’t want to get back into that bucket and had gotten better at avoiding my tricks. Finally he ran to the kitchen and I lost him for a couple of minutes. I soon discovered evidences of a mouse home under the sink and as I lifted a small carton I noticed a pair of eyes looking at me. Unfortunately I didn’t have a fast enough reaction time and the mouse jumped out before I could toss the box into the bucket. But luckily we caught him pretty quickly after that. As we were sitting there contemplating our victory, I couldn’t help but notice that our mouse seemed to have grown since the last time I caught him. I looked in the carton where I had found the current detainee hiding and sure enough, I found another mouse. This time I was a little faster on my feet and tossed the mouse into the bucket before he could make a break for freedom. So now they are sitting in the house in a bucket and we are still trying to figure out what to do with them. Actually now there is only one mouse because the big one killed the little one for some reason. She must have been mad that the little guy led us back to home base. My companion wants to drown the remaining mouse but that’s not really my style. I wanted to make a short movie starring the mouse but I don’t have time for such antics. I think we may just end up letting it go into the wild or something (far from the house of course).

In other news, our shower finally got fixed this week. I know I told my family this on the phone at Christmas time but our shower broke on December 24th for some reason and since then we have been bathing out of plastic bins. The plumber came over several times trying to fix it but he never did figure out what was wrong. Then on his fourth visit the shower just sort of started working. We don’t know why. I try not to question such things and just count my blessings. Well I’m out of time but before I go I just want to mention that I tried cow tongue the other day, and it was good. I didn’t expect it to be, but it was. I have clearly been here too long.

Te quiero,
Elder Walke

¡Hola familia!

HAPPY 2010!!!!!! Well, I don’t even know what to say—2009 is gone. It went out with a bang too. I saw 4 fights this week, although one didn’t count because it was just a couple of 12 year olds. But the other 3 fights were pretty epic. In one of them a drunken guy had a knife in both hands and was trying to gut another guy, but his friends managed to wrestle the knives out of his hands without anyone getting hurt. I don’t know how they did it, but they did. And then last night there was another fight just outside our apartment where the participants from both sides felt the need to smash a large number of beer bottles in the process. I’m still not sure why they did that. I guess it made them look scarier or something; I don’t know. But that’s Ecuador for you. I took a bunch of pictures of the “añoviejos” throughout the day and some of them were pretty impressive. Sadly, I forgot to bring my card adapter today so I will have to upload them some other week. Oh well. I didn’t get to see to many of them burn though. That was sad. We had to be in the house early on the 31st (8pm). Then I had to call my district and make sure they all made it back to their apartments alive and report to the zone leaders that all was well so they could in turn tell the office that the Quevedo South Zone was alive and well. I guess President Gamboa was worried about it. Or maybe he just wanted to make sure nobody had decided to go to a party that night. Who knows?

They had a bunch of the best “añoviejos” out in front of the house on the 31st but at about 11:15 pm they hauled them all away to be burned in other places, except one—a big transformer. But they didn’t even burn the darn thing until almost 6 am and I had no desire to stay up all night. I headed to bed at about 1 am. But get this, my companion stayed up until they burned the transformer and got a half hour of sleep. The guy is crazy I’m telling you. He is a good guy but sometimes he does stuff and I just think, “Dude, what was going through your head when you decided to do that?”

I got a letter from Elder Muhlestein this week. Included was a picture of the baptism I missed by 2 days. Yes, Cecilio finally got baptized. For the record, I’m counting that baptism as mine because Elder Muhlestein didn’t get his new companion until the day of the baptism. I’m still sad that I missed that baptism! We were supposed to have a baptism here this week but she (Viviana) wants a little more time to put her wedding together. It’s kind of hard to argue with that so the baptism got pushed back to the 23rd of January. We may have a couple more people get baptized that day but nothing confirmed yet.

I had to call Elder Elwood this morning and we were talking about how we passed the holidays. He seems like he is finally getting used to being in the office. That’s good because, for a while, I think it was really killing him to be in there. I have to tell you, its good to have friends in the office because anytime I need something done, and I talk to the assistants about it, nothing happens. I don’t know what the deal is with those guys. I guess they must just be really swamped or something. Anyway, whenever I need to know something or need help from the office, I pretty much just call Elder Elwood.

So there you have it. The end of 2009 and the start of 2010. And this email is a little short. Oh well. You’ll be fine without a long letter this week. I use the fact that we talked on the phone only a week ago as my excuse for not writing more. Have a good year!

Te quiero,
Elder Walke

Hola familia!

So how was Christmas? Oh wait, I already know because I talked to you on the phone Friday. Yep, that was awesome. It was cool to hear everyone’s voices again and realize that you all sound the same. Although apparently I have a Spanish accent. I still don’t believe it. I swear when I speak English it sounds normal. But oh well, you guys are welcome to think what you want.

My Christmas went well enough. I know on the phone Christmas morning I said I didn’t have high hopes for teaching lessons that day but we had something of a Christmas miracle because we managed to teach 4 lessons. Actually we had a really good teaching week in general. We managed 35 lessons this week. I’m not sure if we had the highest numbers in the zone but we did get a lot higher than any of the Elders in my district. So that was cool. I was amazed because on Christmas Eve the entire city was up all night dancing and drinking alcohol and other such nonsense. It was a little hard for us to sleep because we live right off the main street and that is where the bulk of the action happens around here. New Year’s Eve promises to be interesting because then the party is about 100 times bigger and there is a lot of “año viejos” burning in the streets. Along with a ton of fireworks and other garbage that wont exactly help us sleep. I’m looking forward to it though because last year I didn’t get to see much of that stuff because the house wasn’t very close to the areas where the parties and burning of paper statues was going down and I was too sick to care anyway. Remember that is when I had my first Dengue experience. Speaking of which, it has now been 6 months since my last round of dengue. That means I’m about due for another! Yes! I love near death experiences! Ok maybe not near death; Dengue just makes you feel like you are near death. Good times, good times.

Hey I think it’s funny that Bishop Driggs told Nathan that missions are like a tithe on our life and that we have to give it our all for it to be a full tithe because I used the exact same line in my last district meeting. And I thought I was being creative.

I can now report that the cookies that mom sent in my package were in fact quite tasty. They were a little smashed and more dense than normal but I still really enjoyed them. Homemade cookies are the one food item that I have really been missing.

I have to say I still don’t get this hamster thing that Andrea got for Christmas. I guess it’s like when everyone was on the “lame robot dog” kick a few years ago. It helps that I still have not seen any of these robotic rats around Ecuador so I’m not really sure what the big deal with this thing is. But hey, if that’s what Andrea likes, that’s fine.

We have now reached my last email of 2009. Next time you hear from me it will be 2010. That’s weird. My “blackout year,” the one year of my mission that I spend 100% of in Ecuador, is now coming to a close. I can tell that I have been gone a long time because today all of the email I got from you guys mentioned how it was hard to say goodbye on the phone and how you miss me. I think your memory must be getting fuzzy. Remember when I left how all the talk was about how peaceful and calm the house would be without me around to cause trouble with all my usual crazy antics? Anyway, this was the last big phone call. The next one is in 4 ½ months, much shorter than this last 7 ½ month wait until the Christmas call. And after the next call I will only have a couple of months left so that call won’t be a big deal anyway.

So grandma and grandpa also might drive up with me and Kayla when we head to BYU? That’s cool. The list of people going on this road trip seems to be growing these days. Originally it was just going to be me and Kayla but now we have a whole car full. Pretty soon we will have a whole caravan heading up to send me and Kayla off to college.

I liked the story about Nathan being accidentally funny in his farewell talk Sunday. If something like that hadn’t happened, it just wouldn’t have been Nathan. Ok have a good week and I will write you guys next decade!

Te quiero,
Elder Walke

[Show as slideshow]

¡Hola familia!

So today is Monday and I will be talking to you on Friday. Uh, I never know what to say on these emails right before and right after talking to you guys. Luckily it’s a problem that I have only had to deal with twice before, and will only have again one more time. Man I’m old. Do you realize that yesterday I hit 16 months? That’s 2/3 of my mission. That scares me. I was thinking about asking for an extension but realized that with BYU starting right when I get back I may need to head out a week or two early, so that plan went down the drain. I pretty much just try to not think about it.

Oh hey guess what, we had zone conference on Friday and Elder Mitton’s zone was not there so I will never see him again in the mission field. But both Elder Elwood and Elder Frye were there so it was ok. Zone conference was a little crazy this round because we went to the temple and our bus was really late getting to Guayaquil for some reason so we got to the temple and everyone was already there and we almost didn’t make it. We walked in and President Gamboa gives me this look like, “I don’t know and I don’t want to know why you are so late,” and I felt terrible of course. Oh well, it happens. Hopefully it will keep me off the list of future assistants to the president. They cut the office staff from 6 missionaries to 4 so now there is even more incentive to avoid getting assigned to the office at all costs. I think Elder Elwood is adjusting more or less but I don’t think he is enjoying the office life. He did tell me a funny story when we were eating lunch though. He said one of the new gringos recognized him from a picture he saw on my blog. He said something like, “Hey you were on the sky gondola of death with Elder Walke,” or something like that. I guess he was asking about me and stuff. Elder Elwood said, “It’s weird that people know who I am,” and I said, “Hey dude, welcome to my world.”

So we were supposed to have a baptism on Christmas day. It was going to be awesome. Really it was. But the darn guy went and got sick. He still wants to get baptized but he is just not going to be able to do so on Friday. Just my luck. Ok so this letter is a little jumpy but back to zone conference. So I got to meet the Elders from my district. I have several guys in there that I have met before—in fact almost all of them:  Elder Hynes, Elder Luthman, Elder Casteñeda, and Elder Baum. There are a couple other missionaries in my district but I don’t know them. Elder Hynes I met back in Babahoyo in my second change so I have known him for a long time. He was Elder Mitton’s MTC companion. In other words, he will be dead this January. Elder Luthman was in my zone in manta but I don’t know him very well. Elder Casteñeda came to Ecuador the same day as me. I say “came” but he was already here; he’s an Oltavaleño. I should say he got to Guayaquil the same day as me. And Elder Baum is from Elder Muhlestein group. It’s a pretty good district. I’m looking forward to this change.

I opened the packages from mom today. Pretty awesome stuff. I’m sure the other guys from my district will enjoy the stuff too. The temple workers gave the missionaries gifts when we had zone conference so between that and the calendar and the random CD I will have 3 gifts to open for Christmas. I already pretty much know the contents of all three but its something. Oh and the Reese’s cake thing looks awesome. I’m making it for Christmas breakfast I think. The stockings for Elder Barrientos and Elder Rodriguez will not be making it to them for Christmas sadly. But hey, it’s not my fault. I already gave one pair of insoles to Elder Lopez and I will try to give the other two pairs away at district meeting on Wednesday. Elder Lopez really needed them; his insoles are literally bits of cardboard and plastic that he cut to fit his shoe so he was happy to receive the replacements. Ok I have said enough for now. I’ll talk to you guys soon!

Te quiero,
Elder Walke

¡Hola familia!

I feel the need to apologize ahead of time because this email will be a little short. I wrote some other rather lengthy letters to other people and now I find myself short on time to write to the rest of you. First off, I got transferred. I now find myself in the city of Balzar. Sorry for not building up to the grand revelation of where my new sector is but I just don’t have time to be lame right now. Sorry guys, I know you enjoy that kind of stuff. The weird part is that I got transferred on Thursday. Boy was that a mess. I don’t think I should talk about it either because I won’t be able to do so without a heavy amount of complaining. Needless to say, there were several aspects of this round of transfers that I didn’t like. Plus, I missed Cecilio and Israel’s baptisms! Man, I don’t even know if they got baptized! But now I’m here, in Elder Goode’s first sector. And I’m with one of Elder Frye’s old companions; Elder Lopez is his name. Yep, once you get to be an old missionary like me your world just gets smaller and smaller.

Balzar reminds me a lot of Jipijapa because, like Jipijapa, it’s a small city in the middle of nowhere. I have to take a bus for an hour and a half in order to get to district meeting every week, and the grocery store is really small. You should know that I really do love small towns in Ecuador; I think I will enjoy this sector.

The reason I didn’t comment on your thanksgiving pictures is because I never got them. Could you send them again? That would be cool. I did get the two pictures of Andrea today; she is way too big now. It really blows my mind. Tell Gammy, Grandma, and Grandpa thanks for the Christmas present. I will put it to good use I promise. Well as promised this week you get a short letter. Oh well, I will be calling you on the phone soon anyway. Talk to you next week!

Te quiero,
Tyler

¡Hola familia!

It’s P-day. But not just any P-day, its SUPER P-day! Back in the old days, when I was a new missionary, I thought super P-day was something good. But now I know, it just means I have to clean more than usual. Today I was on kitchen duty and I felt inspired to move the microwave over and clean underneath it. Big mistake. I think I may have been the first person to ever feel the inspiration to do so in that house. I don’t want to give the impression that we don’t do a lot of cleaning, but it’s true that there are some areas that nobody ever thinks to clean under. After all, you have to consider that we are just a bunch of 19-21 year old guys. So be proud mom, I cleaned something which has never been cleaned before! And yet, no matter how much I clean, mom still finishes her letters with “clean your house” or some other similar variation. Ironically, while the rest of the house is very clean right now, I still have not gotten around to my room. Well, to be more specific, it’s my closet that I need to get around to. It’s a little disorganized. Ok so I still have some work to do before I become a clean freak like mom. But hey we are supposed to become perfect, line upon line and precept upon precept, here a little and there a little—strong emphasis on the “little” part.

Oh, Ecuador finally got copies of the conference edition Ensign. I still don’t have a copy in English but I do just fine with the Spanish edition these days. Hey did you guys like the First Presidency’s Christmas devotional last night? It was awesome right? Ok so I guess you might not have seen it since nobody mentioned it but I did enjoy it. I had been looking forward to it all month actually. Partly because I miss snow and I wanted to see shots of Temple Square with snow and Christmas lights. I was not disappointed. I also enjoyed the talks; they were good, and it made me feel more like we are in the Christmas season. And I have to be honest; those moments are few and far between because it has been just plain hot this week. I did put up my awesome Christmas tree and fireplace the day after Thanksgiving, like I said I would, and my guitar Christmas music CD helps, but I have been having a hard time getting into the whole “Christmas spirit” thing.

Elder Abriel tells me that I have a couple of packages from you guys that have arrived. I have not seen them yet but he tells me they exist. I should get them Wednesday. So I have a couple of new funny stories for you guys about Elder Muhlestein this week. We were eating lunch one day and we were about done when the mamita asked Elder Muhlestein if he wanted more rice. He turns and looks at me like “translate that please” and I told him, “She wants to know if you liked the rice,” and he looks at the mamita and says, “Uh huh, yep,” and before he could say another word she throws a couple of large spoonfuls of extra rice on his plate. He just stared at it for a second and then he looked up at me and said, “I hate you,” and got to work on round two. I don’t know what inspired me to mistranslate but it was pretty funny. Luckily Elder Muhlestein is a big guy and was able to knock back that rice with relative ease—sort of.

Ok time for story number 2. There is a sort of wild pepper that grows in Ecuador that is called a “rat pepper.” It’s really small and very spicy. I happened to notice a bush loaded with them a few days ago and I told Elder Muhlestein to try one. He bit a little off of the end of one and I guess he decided it wasn’t so bad, so he popped the whole thing in his mouth. Those things are powerful so of course the usual display of watering eyes and red face occurred after he ate it. Sort of like a small scale version of my jabeñero incident back in the MTC. The interesting part was when he decided to wipe his eye. Apparently he still had some pepper juice on his hand because he started saying, “Ah my eye!” So we bought some water and he poured about half the bottle on his eye and the other half in his mouth. Afterwards he claimed that it wasn’t that bad and that he would eat another one, just without wiping his eye the next time.

To close this super P-day edition of the Walke weekly report, I would just like to say that today I will be eating a burger for dinner—and it will be free. I’m not sure how it got started but a few weeks ago Elder Barrientos was making some outrageous claim about how they could out teach us any day; so that somehow led to a contest of who could teach the most lessons in a week, with the prize being a hamburger. So last week we won. In fact, we killed them. We beat them by 7 lessons or some ridiculous number like that. So last Monday they bought us burgers. Then Elder Barrientos claimed that they would for sure win this week and wanted to up the prize to a burger and a shake. I guess he thought the first time was a fluke or something. We agreed and once again we creamed them. So tonight Elder Muhlestein and I will enjoy a delicious burger and shake, compliments of Elder Barrientos and Elder Rodriguez. For the record I have not heard any suggestions that we will have the contest again this week.

That’s the news this week guys; chances are good that I will get changed next Monday, now that I have been with Elder Muhlestein for 2 transfer cycles. But I never do guess right when it comes to changes, so I will talk to you next week. I will probably still be in Ecuador but more than that, I don’t know. Have a great week!

Te quiero,
Elder Walke

¡Hola familia!

Sup guys! How was the turkey? What’s it like to have a vacation? I remember those days. Sort of. I personally didn’t have any turkey but it wasn’t a big deal because I have never been a big turkey fan anyway. I did manage the apple pie though. Man was that a mess. The whole story is this. I went to the bread store and asked them to make the fore mentioned pie and they said, “Ok but we will need more time. I don’t think your order will be ready today,” and I said, “No, it has to be today; if its any day after today it doesn’t matter!” But they insisted that it takes a long time to make 200 pies. Um…yeah. I don’t know how that little mix up came about. Luckily they still had not started making the pies so I wasn’t stuck with a 500 dollar bill. That would have been really bad. And then I learned that they were confused as to what exactly I wanted them to make; but after 20 min of explaining, again, what a pie is, I made them understand. Finally, I had my order. That night I went back to pick it up and it was awesome. Really. I was surprised. I didn’t think it would turn out but they made a legit apple pie based off of my explanation. My Spanish must be getting good. The only difference is that the pie they made me was square instead of round but it was close enough. Then I had to go buy some vanilla ice cream, of course, because apple pie without vanilla ice cream is a sin. It’s like using tennis shoes without socks—you just don’t do it. Anyway, then we bought a pizza for the main course (Hawaiian) and Elder Muhlestein said that if we were buying all this food we might as well buy some rolls because that’s an important part of thanksgiving too. I concurred so we returned to the bread shop and bought some rolls. It turned out to be a really good meal. We put on my CD of Christmas music on acoustic guitar and ate food and talked about Thanksgivings past. That was possible because Elder Rodriquez celebrates thanksgiving. As it turns out parts of Mexico celebrate it; who knew? It was however Elder Barrientos’ first thanksgiving. He enjoyed it. We took a bunch of pictures and stuff and ate lots of food. We even had leftovers. We didn’t manage to eat all of the pie. So it was a proper thanksgiving because if you eat a Thanksgiving [meal] and you don’t have leftovers, you didn’t make enough food. The cool part was that the clean up for our meal was 5 min. I bet none of you spent that little in the clean up. All in all I really enjoyed it. You don’t have Thanksgivings like that too many times in your life, that’s for sure. And the best part is, since that was my last thanksgiving as a missionary, I will never work Thanksgiving day ever again. I have to tell you, it’s really annoying to work all day knowing that there are millions of people in the United States, including my family and friends, who are not doing anything besides eating and talking. But seriously, I did have a good Thanksgiving. In total the pie cost 7 dollars, the pizza 9 dollars, the vanilla ice cream 3 dollars, and the rolls 40 cents (10 cents per roll), in case you were wondering. We had to be pretty careful with our money for a couple weeks in order to pay for it all. I went to bed a little hungry once or twice because of it. But it was worth it.

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So I saw the picture of Kayla and I have to say, she loses. She looks just the same as when I left! And I thought you guys were going to send a picture of Thanksgiving, what happened with that? Oh well. Oh so news on Cecilio—we found him. And he still wants to get baptized. Hurrah! So he has a baptismal date for the 12th of December. I hope it happens but we are going to have to work hard because his life is a little out of whack still.

But we have been working hard. We had the best numbers in the zone this week. Except for that big fat zero for our baptisms this week. But hopefully that will change Saturday. I guess I forgot to tell you about zone conference. It was good, but it didn’t do anything to help my feelings that the lack of baptisms for me and my district are my fault. I walked away thinking, “Well, there is a lot of things I am doing wrong as a district leader.” But its ok; I’m not depressed about it. I guess I came off a little down in my last letter. That’s what mom says anyway. It’s just, that’s the kind of stuff I worry about these days. I really am happy. Just a little busy is all. Ok well I hope you are doing good. I can’t believe I will talk to you guys in a few weeks. It’s been what, 6 or 7 months since I talked to you guys? That’s a long time. Have a good week folks!

Te quiero,
Elder Walke