¡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