Hola familia!

Happy Monday! I never thought Mondays would ever be my favorite day of the week but there are a lot of things that I have done and learned since coming on a mission that would have surprised me only a few months ago. I’m glad to hear that things are looking better for Aunt Lori keep me up to date on that stuff. I had an interesting experience Tuesday, as we left an appointment we came across an older man who had collapsed by the side of the road, as it turned out he had had a heart attack or something and was dead. It was all very strange and but I guess you kind of expect that kind of thing to happen here because it wasn’t surprising it was just sort of sad.

Wednesday was my companion exchange with Elder Mitton, it was pretty fun. The thing about having a Latin comp is that I just can’t ask as many questions about Spanish and stuff because I don’t have all the words to explain it yet, so whenever I get together with Elder Mitton I always learn something new. He showed me this fruit bar that they have in their sector. It’s a kind of a make your own fruit salad thing and it was pretty good.

The next day we were in the apartment and we heard a noise outside and when we looked out the window there was a huge group of people marching by. It was an anti-president march or something; there must have been at least 3000 people which is pretty impressive because Babahoyo isn’t very big.

In a couple of the emails I got this week some of you mentioned my bad spelling. It was known before my mission that I’m a terrible speller and Spanish is only messing me up worse so you should prepare yourselves for some pretty messed up spelling as my mission progresses. Plus I don’t have time to re-read my email so I really make no promises. Also, I’m afraid that you won’t be getting any pictures this week. The place that we usually do emails is down, and the shop I’m in now doesn’t upload pictures at all. Ecuador doesn’t want you to see me sorry. I did go thru the apartment today and take pictures of everything and I will work on taking pictures of the church and stuff too. We don’t have too many iguanas here but I will see what I can do about getting a picture of one for Andrea. I have only seen one in Babahoyo and it was moving pretty fast. We scared it as we were walking by and it ran across the street and into a hole in about two seconds.

Thanks for the recipes mom. If you send me the apple crisp recipe I will probably make that at some point and if you think of any other recipes go ahead and send them. I’m sure it will be an interesting Christmas here. Most of the people have little fake Christmas trees with a few decorations on them; they remind me a lot of the Charlie Brown Christmas tree because they are always very sparse and small. They also have a small strand or two of Christmas lights; blinking colored lights are the most popular here. I love the Christmas season here. It’s not cold at all and it’s very different but it’s still awesome. Fun note about thanksgiving by the way–this thanksgiving will be my 100th day as a missionary. I got bored one night so I counted. Anyway, when you are all stuffing your faces with sugar and fat and all the other things I won’t be eating that day, remember me and how I’m eating a really big plate of rice.

It’s gotten to be pretty easy to eat all of my lunch these days. After the first couple of weeks I could eat all of it no problem but it hurt to walk around right afterwards, but now I can eat all my food and then do whatever and be just fine. I’m pretty sure I could eat rice until my stomach ruptured without feeling a thing. In fact, I may have come close a couple of times. Oh that reminds me, I ate my first weird thing this week! I know that I have eaten weird stuff in the past but I never knew what it was–this time I did. As I was eating my soup the other day I realized I had a chicken heart floating around my bowl. This saddened me because I remembered my five grains of rice rule, so when nobody was looking I stuck it in my mouth (I was afraid they would see me make a face). It tasted interesting, very rubbery and it had a slightly metallic aftertaste that I think was caused by the blood. I was pretty proud of myself for eating it and I have come to the conclusion that it is much better to not know what it is you are sticking in your mouth in Ecuador.

Tell Scott congrats on his mission call for me and give him my mission email. Other missionaries can email each other so as soon as he gets to the MTC I can talk to him.

Mom asked about my ward so I guess I will talk about that. We have a pretty good sized ward. It’s about 2/3 the size of our ward and they have about as many youth. There really isn’t much to say about them because it’s really not too different than our ward; it’s just in Spanish. I have not had to give a talk but before church on fast Sunday a couple of the members and my comp were pushing me to bear my testimony so I did that and it went ok I guess.

Evon's birthday

Saturday we had Evon´s baptism. She was a pain just like I predicted. We spent most of the day getting ready for her baptism and we even bought her a cake because her 16th bday is today.

Evon's baptism

We got her to the church and everything and then half an hour before she got stressed out or something and almost went home, but in the end she did get baptized. For some reason she wanted me to do it, even though Elder Fuentemavida has been teaching her for months, so I got to do my second baptism! It was pretty awesome because I only had to do it once and I didn’t stumble over her name or the words, so it was all very slick. I was impressed with myself if you can’t tell.

A few parting thoughts before I sign off for the week. Everyone that claims to be ghetto in America is a poser. They have no idea what ghetto is. Gold chains and gun–not ghetto. Unfiltered water and bamboo hut–very ghetto. I’m more ghetto than any rapper on the east coast or the west. Chew on that 50 cent. Well that’s all I have time for this week have a good turkey day and stay safe!

                                                                   Te quiero,
                                                                                  Elder Walke

Hola familia!

Well I guess it must be Monday again and once again I find myself struggling with the ridiculously short time given to me to write about all the things that have transpired in the last week. We had zone conference this week and I learned a lot. For instance, zone conference is looong. 4 hours long in fact. And McD´s is really tasty when your food has been almost salt free for weeks. Other than that, I don’t think I learned much. It’s hard to pay attention for 4 hours in English but in Spanish…well I was awake the whole time but that’s about it.

Oh yeah and remember how I was going to buy peanut butter? Well I forgot. Don’t ask me how. Now I have to wait until just before Christmas before I get the chance again. Speaking of Christmas, I want to have apple pie and eggnog on Christmas. I was going to try for pumpkin but I just don’t think they exist here. I’m pretty sure all of the things I need for apple pie and eggnog are here but I have no idea how to make either of them. Could you send me the recipe please? Something I wish I had remembered to bring is a cook book or something.

I really have not talked much about my comp and my mamita in my other emails so here are a few things about them. First off having a mamita isn’t as awesome as I at first hoped. Yeah we get one good meal a day and I don’t have to wash my own clothes but my stuff keeps coming back with bleach spots and it costs about 10 bucks a week which doesn’t sound like much but I’m living on 40. Please don’t misunderstand I’m very grateful to have a momita, but it’s just not the life of glamour that I was hoping for. My companion is a pretty cool guy; he does his work and I do mine. We don’t really talk much about home or stuff because of the language barrier and because we are always focused on other things. He is a lot of fun and we get along pretty well so no complaints there. I think I told you that I have been helping him learn English and he his doing pretty good but sometimes he cracks me up. If you want to know what he sounds like when he speaks English watch [the movie] Nacho Libre and listen to Nacho’s side kick Stevan. He sounds a lot like him. The other day we were reading a passage in English about the resurrection and the line said “We will have perfect, glorified, and immortal bodies” but he can’t really say the word “body” right, instead he says “booty”. It still makes me smile when I think about it.

My Spanish is coming along pretty well I guess. I can understand pretty much everything I hear and I can usually make myself understood when I’m talking to people but it’s still really annoying.

Mom the most useful thing I brought to Ecuador is my scriptures. Sorry if that sounds kind of cliché but its true. I use them all the time to teach and I study from them every day for personal study and when my companion is doing his zone leader stuff and I have nothing to do I pull out my scriptures to pass the time. I can’t really think of much else that I would really be devastated to lose here other than my shoes.

We don’t have any other Elders in our apartment right now but it is set up to have 4 Elders. Because of this my comp and I have two sectors. One of them is Puerta Negra and I can’t think of the name of the other right now. Because we have so much ground to cover we end up walking at least 10 to 15 miles a day. Saturday we walked about 30 [miles] because all but one of our appointments fell thru so we were walking almost nonstop from after lunch until we went home that night.

I did have an interesting experience Saturday night though. As we were walking along the main road, this guy’s motorcycle had some mechanical trouble or something and he fell over sideways and started sliding down the road and all of a sudden this mass of man and motorcycle screams past me riding a wave of sparks. It was pretty crazy to see. I was sort of stunned when it happened. As soon as he stopped moving a couple of guys rushed over and helped him up. From the looks of him he probably had a concussion and a hurt left leg but he seemed to be in pretty good shape considering what had just happened to him. There was nothing we could do so we just kept going to our next appointment but it was a pretty wild experience.

There is this one family that is the unofficial mamita family for the zone because we all end up eating there at some point during the week and sometimes we all go at once for Pday and stuff (like today in fact) and the other day after I finished eating they went on and on about how awesome I am because I always eat everything and how great it is that I do that. I have a rule that if there is more than the equivalent of 5 grains of rice left I keep eating and I guess that has been paying off because both of the families that I eat with regularly are pretty much in love with me now and have commented on my awesome eating abilities.

I can’t believe gas is 1.62 right now! That’s crazy. Why did that happen? Gas is about the same price here but I thought it was way cheaper or something. Guess not.

We have another baptism next week. It’s a 15 year old girl named Evon. Her whole family was baptized except her a few months ago but she is painfully shy so it has taken a lot of work to get her to this point. I think I may get to be the one that baptizes her so I’m pretty excited. Hopefully she won’t back out on us but I wouldn’t be surprised. Well that’s all for now. I hope that you are all happy and healthy and that you have an awesome thanksgiving. Stay safe and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.
Te quiero,
Elder Walke

_____________
Olivia,

On Pday we buy food, write letters, and clean the apartment. After that we hang out with the other missionaries or sleep or something until 6 pm then we go back to work for another week. That’s pretty much all we do on Pday. Pretty boring huh? If you send me a letter for her I will see what I can do but I don’t have time to translate letters for you during my email time so you will have to send stuff thru the snail mail. Sorry. I do want a copy of your talk and I also want a full report on how it goes. My standing question is “what did you do this week?” You may not think it’s every interesting but I do. So do it, do it now.

____________
Allison,

You get no letter this week because I have received none from you. Repent! Have a good day sis.

____________
Kayla,

You hit a deer you fool. Here is some advice: if you ever see a deer near the side of the road, it’s going to try to get you to hit it so you might as well let it cross. Was their any damage to the Saturn? I swear you are harder on that thing than I was. I’m impressed. Keep up the good work. Nobody should ever be exited to get up at 4:45 am. Sorry. You are crazy. I don’t know why you would ever doubt that. I guess that explains why you ran into that dear though. Say hi to Dunnagan and Tumlinson for me and stop breaking my car!

tyler-with-mission-president-and-wife

We just received this letter from Tyler this week. He wrote it when he first arrived at the mission home in Guayaquil, Ecuador. We are grateful that Tyler can email us once a week, because it clearly can take 2-3 weeks for letters to get to us from Ecuador via snail mail. With the letter was also two pictures of Tyler (see below). One with his mission president (J. Wilson Gamboa G.) and his wife at the Temple, and one with his trainer companion (Elder Fuentemavida).

Letter dated 10/22/08:

Well I guess I’m in Ecuador now! We got in last night after a very long day of travel. I’m sure I will have the chance to send an email about it later, so I won’t to into that ordeal now, but it was a pain. So far I love this country. The fact that all the ads are in Spanish still blows my mind. Oh yeah, and the toilets totally flush the wrong way and everything! We just went thru the temple and I have not met my trainer yet. I’m really only writing this letter because the president is doing interviews and they said we could write one so I’m pretty much just killing time.

So far the coolest thing about Ecuador is the lack of road laws. They do have lanes but nobody uses them. They pretty much drive where they want. And they don’t have speed limits–well they do have speed limit signs but so far I have not seen anyone follow them. The drive from the airport to the temple hotel was a lot like a theme park ride–really. I wish they would let the missionaries drive because I would have a lot of fun here. 

Tyler with Elder Fuentemavida (his trainer)

So far the food has been really good but I have a feeling they have been spoiling us. The temple is really cool here. The celestial room has a really cool massive chandelier.

Well, I can’t really think of anything else to say right now. I’m sure there is not much new in here for you but oh well, it killed some time so it did its job. I love you all and I hope you are doing well!

Elder Walke

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new_missionaries_and_trainers

Valerie also found a picture of Tyler with his traveling group of new Elders as they met their trainers on the first day.

……….

Hola familia!

Well another week has gone by already! It feels like time moves faster here; we always have a ton of stuff to do and never enough time to do it and then all of a sudden its Monday again and I have to figure out what to include in my email home. I forgot to bring my camera this week so I will have to try the other ftp site next week or something, I haven’t had the chance to take very many pictures because November and December are the most likely months to get robbed so I’m keeping it at home for the most part until after Christmas. I promise you will have some pictures of Ecuador by Christmas though so don’t worry about it.

I had another comp exchange Wednesday, I’m not sure why because my companion used a lot of vocab that I didn’t know and I was too tired to ask so I just nodded my head and said “si”. I tend to do that a lot. Anyway I spent the day with Elder Arellano, one of the two Kechua Indians in my district. Both of them are pretty cool guys (the other is Elder Campo); everyone in the zone is always asking me and Elder Mitton to help them with English in some way and the other day Elder Campo and Elder Arellano told me that they were going to teach me Kechua in exchange for helping them learn English. So now I’m learning an obscure South American language on the side as I go about my daily work. It’s kinda fun because I think there are only a few thousand people in the world that speak it, and it doesn’t seem to be an overly complicated language so I figured I would give it a shot.

My companion and I went into Guayaquil Thursday to get my senso (my government ID card) and Elder Adamson was there getting his as well. I talked to him for a bit; it was pretty fun to see how others from my MTC group were doing. He has been having quite the time in Ecuador; he looks more pale than I remember and I’m pretty sure he has lost some weight. I guess the food here hasn’t been agreeing with him or something because he said he has been having some trouble with his insides for about a week now. He said something about Obama being president and I was said “wait he’s president?” and then I realized that we had an election two days before. It’s strange because I followed politics very carefully before my mission but I didn’t even think about it until then. Oh yeah and Elder Adamson got robbed. He and his companion were talking to some guy on the street and Elder Adamson thought that he was asking him what time it was but he was actually trying to steal his watch. Adamson figured this out when he saw the pistol his new friend had tucked in his belt. I always keep my watch in my pocket to avoid just such a problem, and his watch was a bit nicer than was needful so its not really a surprise that he got robbed. It would have happened sooner or later.

While we were in Guayaquil I looked around for some peanut butter and I did find something peanut butterish. It claimed to be peanut butter but I don’t believe it. It has an almost similar flavor but on the whole it was a disappointment. When we go back for zone conference I’m going to try the store where Elder Mitton bought his Peter Pan. I’m starting to get annoyed with the food choices here; the people here don’t seem to understand how to drown food in fat, sugar, and salt. I ran out of M&Ms Sunday and that made me pretty sad because it was my last dependable source of sugar here but today I’m going to go on a quest to find more. I know they have M&Ms in this city so I’m going to find out where.

We had three baptisms Saturday: a woman, her sister, and her daughter. I got to baptize the daughter. Olivia asked if there were any kids here like her and I have to say that this girl is pretty much Olivia’s Latina counterpart. Her name is Josylin and she has a very similar personality to Olivia. I was pretty nervous to do the baptism. I said the prayer right and everything (and in Spanish) but I had to do it twice because I didn’t get all of her underwater the first time.

So every night when we are walking around I always see several fires outside of people’s houses. They are just regular camp fire looking things but nobody is standing around them and I couldn’t figure out why people were starting them because they seemed pretty pointless. But the other day I passed one of the pits and I noticed that there was a lot of half burned garbage in it and it hit me — this is how they get rid of trash. Its a pretty simple answer and I probably should have figured it out sooner but I’m used to garbage trucks and anti pollution hippies. Our way of getting rid of trash in the apartment is pretty interesting. We tie up the bags and hang them from a tree outside of our apartment and at night the garbage fairy takes them away. If you haven’t heard of the garbage fairy I will describe her for you: she has four legs and answers to the name of fido.

Whenever something we do or see is troubling or clearly unethical Elder Mitton has a saying that makes everything easier to understand, “it doesn’t matter, you are in Ecuador”. That pretty much sums it up. Now after I finish a drink or some sort of food with a plastic casing, I just toss it by the side of the road and keep walking. Then I say, “it doesn’t matter, I’m in Ecuador” and I feel better. Sort of.

                                                                              Te quiero
                                                                                       Elder Walke

Allison,

I’m glad to hear that Bro. Williams is taking care of my interests back home and making sure you stay in line. Good job on successfully giving you talk and stuff. I’m sure it was awesome! I like the temple too. It’s a very calm place and it always helps me relax. How is school going? I know you don’t think its very interesting but it is to me. You should be getting a report card soon I believe. I want a copy of your grades so I can chastise you for not doing you math homework and such.  I was pretty diligent with my math homework as I recall so if you need any advice on the best way to do it just ask!
Olivia,

5th grade spelling bee huh? Pretty cool. I was never much of a speller and Spanish isn’t helping my English skills so you can probably spell better than I can right now. That’s funny that you have to give a talk at stake conference. I’m sure you are excited. I don’t remember a time you were not willing to talk to people. Good luck with that and tell me how it turns out.
Kayla,

Your Spanglish was interesting. I was pretty pleased with myself after I read it because I didn’t have any trouble at all. In the future though, stick to English. I hear enough Spanish during the rest of the week thank you very much. Costume crew head huh? You don’t seem to know the meaning of the phrase “take it easy”. Judging by you letter you also don’t know the meaning of the phrase “clean your room” either. I could give you some pointers if you want. Mom told me to clean my room all the time. In fact she still does, so I know exactly what it means now. Don’t ask me how to actually clean your room though; I’m still a bit shaky on how to carry it out.

Hola gringos!

It’s been a pretty full week here in Ecuador, lots has happened the last few days. Entonces, Tuesday my companion had to go to a meeting in Guayaquil for the zone leaders. I am not a zone leader so I didn’t get to go. I was pretty sad about that because I learned that they sell peanut butter in Guayaquil and I was hoping to buy some but we have our zone conference in a couple of weeks so I can get some then. Anyway Tuesday I was with Elder Mitton and his companion all day which turned out to be cool because Elder Mitton is the only other gringo in my zone. Our zone is pretty small, there are only 10 people total, and only one of the other elders speaks English (Elder Cabeza, more about him later). Mom you probably know Elder Mitton´s mom; he says she is on that missionary mom site. Throughout the day Elder Mitton taught me a lot of the things that I can’t learn from my companion because I just don’t have the vocabulary to ask about them yet. He also taught me a lot of important slang. Fun Spanish fact for you:  adding “ito” to the end of any word in Spanish means small, for instance, perrito is a small dog. But here they use it as a term of affection or something like that, its hard to explain because it has a million meanings but it mostly means “you are awesome” or “you are adorable” and such. It’s kind of weird but yeah that’s what they do; they throw it on the end of names or whatever. It was good to hang out with an American for a while and talk to someone in English. They had to change apartments this week because theirs got robbed in the middle of the night a couple of weeks ago—their apartment doesn’t have bars on the windows and mine does so don’t worry about it happening to me—but yeah it was pretty crazy because none of them woke up or anything.

My Spanish seems to be getting better although sometimes it feels like I haven’t made any progress at all. I’m pretty sure that I am improving—maybe. We are teaching this one girl and she loves the fact that I’m an American and I can’t speak Spanish and such. She laughs at me quite a bit and talks about me with my companion and I just kind of go “yeah that’s funny; I sure am white”. I don’t understand why its so funny but she does listen when we are teaching so I put up with it.

The kids in our ward love American stuff; they play NSYNC all the time and ask me to translate the words for them. They think NSYNC is still cool for some reason and I don’t have the heart to tell them otherwise. They ask lots of questions about what I do and don’t like, and they love yelling phrases in English whenever they see me. It can be pretty funny sometimes. The most common is “hey what happening?” But once, when I had to go and they were trying to get me to translate more songs for them, one of them yelled “no don’t leave me, why are you doing this to me?” I just cracked up after that. I wish you could have heard it.

For Halloween we went into town and got some pizza with one of the guys from the ward, his name is Byron and he is pretty cool. He is about 17 or 18 and he likes to come with us during the day when we teach lessons. They do have Halloween here but its not nearly has big. While we were eating the pizza Byron asked me if, after saying trick or treat, we throw eggs at the person’s house if they don’t give us food. I told him that we didn’t. It was pretty funny. The pizza here is good. The cheese is a bit strange. I’m afraid to ask what it’s made of, but the pizza was really good so I ate it. Elder Cabeza says that there is a place here with really good pizza and that we will go for lunch one day. Every P-day we try to get together as a zone and have an American lunch and hang out and after that we play basket ball or something. I’m still terrible at basketball but at the MTC I got to be a pretty good defensive player in soccer and the principles are still the same for basketball so I did pretty well.

Today my companion and I got on a bus with some of the kids from the ward (for future reference kids from the ward means people between 16 and 23) and we went into the jungle/mountains about 45 minutes away. We had to catch a second bus up from the edge of the mountains into the heart and I got to ride on the top. Yeah it was awesome. The view was amazing it was probably the coolest thing I have done so far. As we were riding up we just talked and ate chips. I took pictures of the bus and the jungle so you can see how cool it was. I’m thinking I may just have to send a cd of pictures to you guys for Christmas because I’m not sure I will be able to get this [ftp] to work anytime soon. But yeah the jungle looked like all the movies you have ever seen. We even went over a rickety old wooden bridge with rotten loose boards that swayed when we went across. I took pictures of the bridge; I even had my companion take one of me doing a one arm pull-up on one of the support lines off of the bridge. I’m sure you may be wondering why I would do such a thing—me too. It was awesome and had to be done so I did it. That’s just the kind of guy I am. Anyway, that was a pretty fun trip and now I’m pretty tired, but we still have plenty left to do today before I will get the chance to sleep.

I did finally get the mosquitoes under control by the way, I’m not sure if I told you about the mosquitoes or not but the first night I got about 60 or 70 bites. I got tired of counting after awhile. After that I made sure to put on bug spray every night and so I only got 20 or 30 a night after that. A few days ago my companion said, “hey we have a mosquito net downstairs do you want to try that?” I did. After I got that all set up I cut my bite count down to 5 or 6 and I’m pretty happy with that now. As soon as I find the time to buy some electrical tape so I can fix the hot water heater (Elder Mitton says that’s all it needs) I will have a pretty good set up here.

I was able to see the pictures on the ftp site. Andrea was pretty cute. Don’t worry about the drinks. The people here don’t drink the water either. They use the same stuff I drink. I thought I told you before but my companion is from Chile. I’m running out of time so I will have to talk about him later but he’s a pretty good guy. He isn’t from a grass hut or anything like that. His camera is almost as good as mine; it’s not a Canon so I really can’t compare, but yeah he seems to have come from a pretty well off family.

As far as Christmas goes, I never knew what to ask for at home and its no different here. The only temporal things I ever worry about are:  letters, food, and pictures—in that order. So just write me a really awesome letter or something.

It cost 80 cents an hour to use the computer here and it’s about as good as the one we have at home. I can do all of the things our computer does, no physical restrictions, but there are the mission rules to follow so no facebook or anything like that for me. I think I could print emails if I wanted to, but I haven’t tried yet.

Are there really people outside our family reading my blog? That’s funny because I’m not that great of a writer and I haven’t done anything very interesting. So far, most of it has been the MTC. If people want to read it that’s fine with me. I probably won’t have anything to say that I don’t want other people to see anyway so don’t worry about it. Hello other people reading my blog. I don’t know who you are because my parents haven’t mentioned any names but hello anyway. Oh before I forget my companions first name is Samuel. Well that’s all for this week, stay safe and keep writing me letters!

Elder Walke

________________
Allison,

Ha ha! You have to give a talk! Yes I do wish I could see it, I would make faces at you and make you laugh in the middle of it. I can’t be there to do that so you can do one of two things: in the middle of your talk think of me making faces at you and laugh, or just tell someone else to make faces at you for me. As far as writing it goes, I like to use scriptures because that always takes a lot of time and its like the prophets wrote part of your talk for you—much easier that way. Life here really isn’t as exciting as you think. The one or two stories I have to tell are the extent of my excitement. For the most part I do a lot of sitting or walking; it’s pretty boring stuff. I remember school being about as exciting as the life I have now. The only real difference is that I’m 5,000 miles away from where I used to be bored at. 

Olivia,

I love Much Ado About Nothing!  That is one of the few Shakespeare plays I actually like. You will do very well in that role because you are loud and let people know when you are around—just like that character—so it should come easy for you. Yep my legs do feel pretty sore at the end of the day, but I go a bit further than three miles a day. Now do that in church shoes and tell me how you feel afterwards.