¡Hola familia!

I’ve been playing around with this new email thing that we have and I discovered that I can actually change my font style. Pretty sweet huh? I can also include several interesting icons as well. For example, this one  which represents the food poisoning that I got last week. Yep I got food poisoning. It was quick but powerful. Luckily, I didn’t throw up; this attack was launched from a different direction. So I spent about 2 hours in the house in a great deal of pain and then I guess I managed to get it all out of my system (literally) and I was fine. I think it was this weird avocado shake that a family gave me. Avocados were not ever meant to be turned into a shake, they just are not that kind of fruit (avocados are fruits right?) and this proves it if you ask me.

Another icon that I will use to represent my week is this good looking fellow  that represents me looking fly in my suit for the zone leader council that we had on Friday. It was a really good meeting as far as meetings go. I learned a lot. I have a couple pages of notes full of changes that we are supposed to implement in the zone. I have to tell you, president sure is good at changing things up that’s for sure. The most notable change is that district meeting will now be held Tuesdays instead of Wednesdays. That one kind of rocked my world because district meeting has been on Wednesday since, since, since forever. I’m not complaining or anything, the change makes a lot of sense and it will make a few things easier for us. I won’t go into detail because these sorts of things don’t mean much to you non missionary folk.

Ok here is another most excellent icon  I’m pretty sure it’s a drop of water. That or it’s a smiley face with a cold. I can’t tell. But I’m going to pretend that it’s a drop of water and it represents Gabriela’s baptism. I may have mentioned last week that Gabriela’s baptism was scheduled for Friday and you may have noticed that I mentioned in this letter that the zone leader council was Friday. That’s a big deal because it’s almost 4 hours from Guayaquil to Portoviejo so it represented a huge scheduling conflict for us when they called us Thursday morning and told us that we had to be in Guayaquil the next day. so we woke up at 3 am and hopped a bus to Guayaquil, this time managing to stay on the road the whole way (remember last time we went off-roading in the bus and got stuck in the mud at the side of the road). Then we got to Guayaquil, ate breakfast, learned lots of stuff at our big important meeting, ate lunch really fast because the meeting ran late and we had to go, hopped a bus back to Portoviejo, and rushed to the church in order to bring to pass Gabriela’s baptism. Luckily, we were able to get someone else to fill the font for us in the morning and Gabriela’s husband, Carlos, did the actual baptizing so we just had to sit back and make sure everything ran smoothly.

Hey remember that guy who randomly showed up at church last Sunday? Well, we went to visit him on Tuesday and had a most excellent lesson at the end of which he decided to get baptized. So he will be getting baptized this Saturday. Along with a guy named Josue, he is 18 and the missionaries started teaching him a few weeks before I got here. We have been working with him a lot since I got to Portoviejo and it has been hard because he comes from a pretty broken family and had a whole list of issues to work through. The good news is that he has been making lots of changes in his life and now wants to get baptized. Unfortunately, several of our other investigators have been having pretty serious problems recently. In one house the oldest daughter ran away with some guy and hasn’t been seen since. So they have not had much time to talk to us these days. And in my favorite family, the house where we are going to have 5 of our baptisms, the dad showed up completely wasted Saturday and nobody from that family came to church on Sunday. Because of that I was pretty sad all day Sunday because they were progressing really well and their home life seemed to be improving. I still think they are going to get baptized, its just one more barrier to cross and it will push back their baptismal date but that’s life. I could tell you a whole list of other stories about messed up families, people who drink to much, and even a guy who cut off two of his own fingers the other day, but you get the idea.

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Tuesday we did a service project that was very entertaining. I think it may have been the best service project ever. There is this family in the ward that had a really old brick out house type thing near their house that they wanted to remove. Guess who got to use heavy metal instruments to level that sucker? This guy. Best service project ever. I took a crow bar and beat the toilet to pieces. I had never smashed a toilet to pieces before, as it turns out, it’s wildly entertaining. Smashing the brick walls one row at a time was also fun. At one point part of the wall started to cave so I karate kicked it and the whole section went down, it was sweet! The only part I didn’t like was taking down the thick concrete pillars. We had to chip at the base with a pick axe for 10 minutes until it was mostly just re bar, then we pushed it over. That was before I had destroyed the toilet and we thought we were actually supposed to keep the toilet in tact so we tried to push the pillar down away from the toilet but the darn thing decided to fall to the right instead of falling to the left. So yeah, the pillar smashed down right on top of the toilet seat. Needless to say, the seat and basin did not survive. We were pretty worried but then they told us it didn’t matter because nobody used that old toilet anyway so that’s when I got the chance to finish the job and powder that thing with a crow bar. It was a tough job, but someone had to do it. Well, my time grows short. General conference is in about 3 weeks. Have a great day.

Te quiero,
Elder Walke

¡Hola familia!

Ok this week I will try not to delete my email so that I can tell you a little bit more about what is happening around here these days. I didn’t get transferred. That’s good. Elder Fonseca didn’t get transferred either. That was a bit of a surprise but it’s also a good thing. My entire zone got transferred though. Seriously, my companionship is the only one in the entire zone that didn’t change. Most of the Elders got sent out Friday but Elder Piedra just left today. The part that stinks about being a zone leader is that you have to wake up early with the elders that get transferred to make sure they all end up where they are supposed to be. Friday morning we woke up and went down to the terminal here in Portoviejo to make sure that all the elders showed up and that they got on the right bus.

Elder Goode is a zone leader now. That’s good; he got sent to my home town, Babahoyo. Lucky. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous. Then today Elder Piedra had to leave Chone really early in the morning because it’s far, far away from Guayaquil and they had to stop by in Portoviejo to pick up Elder Meril (Elder Meril will be training this change and went down to pick up his kid). So we had Chone call us at 3 a.m. when they got to Portoviejo and we called Elder Meril to make sure he left to go to the terminal and then we went back to bed. Oh yeah, I also had a really bad cold this week. I thought I was going to die. I think it was so bad because the last few days we have had a ton of rain followed by really strong sun, then a ton of rain, etc. So I think that amplified the nastiness of my cold, but it’s passing now, so all is good with the world.

I just read Nathan’s letter about how he committed a fake investigator to get married and baptized this week—that made me laugh. It’s good practice because he will be doing it a lot. In fact we just had a wedding last Friday. We are teaching a girl whose husband is a member but had gone inactive for a while but now wanted to come back to church, so we are teaching his wife. It’s a little awkward because they are both really young. The husband is 22 and the wife is 17 and she is pregnant; so with the kid on the way and everything, a marriage was in order. We have been teaching them since I got to Portoviejo and for several weeks we were not getting anywhere because Carlos (the husband) didn’t want to get married and Gabriela (the wife) didn’t want to get baptized. Then Gabriela finally decided that she really did want to get baptized and they have started going to church regularly, but the marriage was killing us because we could not get Carlos to help us out and get the papers together that we needed to make the appointment and get them married. Then one day Elder Fonseca was contacting people in the park with Elder Piedra (it was an interchange, I was in Chone) and they talked to this lady who didn’t want to hear anything about religion but at some point in the conversation she mentioned that she had seen lots of Elders because she was the person who preformed most of the civil marriages in Portoviejo. So then Elder Fonseca perked up and said, “Hey we are trying to have a marriage this Friday.” And she said something like, “That’s great but you need to make an appointment two days in advance.” That was bad news because it was Wednesday night, in other words, to late to have a marriage that week. I guess Elder Fonseca must have had a pretty sad look on his face when she said that because she told him that if we brought the papers in early the next morning she would take care of it. Of course we still didn’t have all the papers we needed in order to make the appointment so Elder Fonseca started walking to Carlos’ house but on the way he ran into Carlos who by some miracle had the papers we needed in his hand. I guess he finally decided he wanted to get married and had been working on getting the papers together at the same time that Elder Fonseca was looking for him. So the next morning the appointment was successfully made, and Friday morning (Feb. 26th) Carlos and Gabriela got married. The whole time we were at the wedding I had a hard time believing that it was really happening. So they are now married and this Friday Carlos will baptize Gabriela. So that’s cool.

This change is going to be a really good one for us because we are going to see a lot of baptisms. It’s just like how in Balzar we worked really hard and didn’t have a lot of baptisms but we had a really great teaching pool with lots of people who were about to get baptized, and then I got transferred. But this time I didn’t get transferred! And this may be the most successful 6 weeks of my entire mission because we have a goal of 18 baptisms and we are going to reach it. I don’t know what things are like in other missions but in this mission if the zone gets 18 baptisms in a change you are doing alright, so you could say that we have a high goal. But last week we had 11 people in church and this week we had 13 and next week we should see even more. In the next couple of weeks Gabriela and a couple of other people will be getting baptized plus a family of 5, so that’s almost half of the goal right there. And we have plenty of other people lined up as well. Like on Sunday a 20-year old guy just showed up at church, nobody invited him and we had never seen him before, but he loved it and it’s a little soon to tell because we just met him yesterday, but I think he will get baptized soon. He already made plans to go with the single adults on some trip they are doing next week and everything. I guess you could say that I’m excited for the upcoming weeks.

Let’s see, what else I can say. Well, mom asked how many people are in my ward. We usually have about 150 people in church but the last couple weeks the chapel has been pretty full, mostly because of the extra bus load of people we have been bringing in. Oh, one of the new elders in the zone is Elder Mitton’s kid, Elder Peña I think. Other than that I don’t think I have much to say. Well I do, but I don’t have time to keep talking about all the people that we are going to baptize. Plus, if I do keep talking about it I will jinx it and I’ll feel really bad if we don’t make our goal. Oh and by the way, you can just send stuff to my new email address; the stuff you send to the old one just gets re-routed here anyway. Ok have a great week family.

Te quiero,

Elder Walke

¡Hola familia!

Hey guess what I just did? I erased my entire email. Yep, I did. Pretty sweet huh? Darn it all. The reason it happened is that the church upgraded the email system. We basically have a Gmail account now. Unfortunately I no longer seem to be able to work with technology anymore because I erased my entire email by accident! Geez. I hate technology.

So here is the low down:  to answer dad’s question, no, I did not feel the Chile quake. But Sunday morning we did have our own Ecuador-based quake. At 5:30 am I woke up to my companion screaming like a crazy person. So naturally, I screamed too. I didn’t know why I was screaming; it just seemed like the thing to do at the time. So my companion bolted for the door and I said, “Hey, where are you going?” And he yelled something about the house being dangerous and earthquakes. It’s at this point that I noticed the earth was in fact moving. And I said, “Hey you are right, but it’s just a little one, what’s the big deal?” So I stayed in bed and enjoyed the last of the quake, because I still think earthquakes are fun—as long as nothing falls over. Interestingly, they say the quake here registered a 5.3. That’s pretty strong. It didn’t feel that strong to me. At least, I figured that with a number like that we should have seen some buildings fall over but there wasn’t any damage here. So that was good. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to include all of the witty comments and such that I wrote in my first letter about the experience but trust me, it was a funny experience.

In other news, we are having some success here, finally. We learned today that there is a guy who has been coming to church for three weeks and isn’t a member. I guess he used to come to church regularly a few years back, and even the bishop just assumed he had been baptized. But when they tried to pull up his membership record they realized he didn’t have one. So we will meet him today and we are going to try to get him baptized Saturday.

Ok I know this letter is short but I have to do other things and I’m out of time so I have to cut off here. Sorry. Have a great week. Next P-day is a new change so I may have a new companion. I really don’t anticipate getting changed. If they try to change me, I may just tell them no. I’m sick of getting changed. If I stay here for the next 6 months, that’s fine with me.

Te quiero,

Elder Walke

¡Hola familia!

I have writers block and don’t know how to start my letter this week so I figured I would start by telling you about this nasty case of writers block that I have going on. Pretty creative way to start a letter huh? Yep, I’m lame, now moving on to my achievements and other weekly activities. First off, zone conference. It was good. The Seventy, Elder Gavarret, only made me feel mildly uncomfortable in my zone leader status. which is to say, he made me and my comp stand up while we analyzed the zone’s efforts here in Portoviejo and he asked us all sorts of stuff about the other missionaries’ baptisms and other such things that I didn’t have a clue about. So then he made us ask the missionaries and district leaders until we could piece together the data he wanted out of us. I got two things out of this experience, first off, we really should be more familiar with the efforts of the missionaries in the zone and the people they are teaching and baptizing, and second, if we work with our district leaders we will be way more efficient and effective. It was a really good zone conference all in all and I learned a lot.

Carnival came and went without anything particularly interesting happening. Thanks to President Gamboa keeping us in the house all day during the week, we didn’t have to face the armies of kids and drunk guys that would have normally soaked us. In fact I never got wet once. It was weird because a few times we walked past people that I thought would hit us for sure, but then they thought about it and changed their minds; so that was a blessing. It also helps that Portoviejo isn’t like Babahoyo—they don’t throw water the whole month here in Portoviejo and they almost always use clean water. So that’s good. And thus ended my last carnival in South America.

Oh yeah, and I hit a year and a half a couple days ago. So that’s weird. It wasn’t as big a deal as I thought it would be. At some point in the afternoon I remembered that that day I was hitting a year and a half and I said, “Hey Elder Fonseca I hit a year and a half today,” and he said, “That’s cool,” and then I forgot again because we went to a lesson and had other things to think about. But I guess that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

In other news…I’m broke. I have been constantly broke since I got to Portoviejo. Last week I started the week with $5.33 and we had to go to Chone to do a baptismal interview and it cost 3 dollars to go to Chone and back. Now that I see it written I realize that 3 dollars isn’t very much money for you guys but it is a lot of money for me. It’s funny how your perspective of the worth of a dollar changes when you don’t have very many. So anyway, I ran out of money.  We had to call President Gamboa and ask permission to use a part of our reserve cash in order to get through the week. Every missionary here has 40 dollars reserve in case of emergency that can only be used with President Gambia’s permission. So I ended up spending $7.75 of my reserve to get through the week. Part of the problem was all the travel we have had to do the last couple of weeks because we had to go to Manta for zone conference and we have to use a lot of money in taxis to get around here in Portoviejo. So needless to say, I didn’t buy much food last week. In fact, I pretty much just bought bread. Yep, I was living on bread and water this week. It was awesome. I could, of course, dip into my personal cash and take out some money so that I could afford rich people food (like milk) but I prefer to live on the $80 that we get every two weeks. In the MTC I remember that they said if we did we would learn a lot and we would be blessed so I’m sticking to it. Today we got our money so I’m “rich” again. For some reason only $75 came for me this week, which is annoying. I could use the 5 bucks that they stiffed me but oh well. I also need to replace the money I spent from my reserve so I still can’t buy much food this week, but I think I can get my reserve back up to $40 in the next couple weeks. Oh yeah and we have to go back to Chone again to do another baptismal interview on Wednesday. It’s annoying but I’m glad that they are baptizing so I don’t complain. We are also planning on doing an interchange with Bahia de Carraques soon, that’s another city that like Chone is far away and requires a long bus trip that we also have to find a way to pay for. I’m thinking I may go on an oatmeal diet. I did that in Babahoyo for a while and it was a pretty effective way to save money because oatmeal is cheap. But I’m not a big fan of oatmeal. The Quaker instant stuff is good because it has flavors but I don’t like just plain oatmeal. I’m sure that’s a direct result of the days when we lived in Tennessee and we ate it for breakfast every day.

So that’s the story of my life these days. Interesting stuff. Sunday we have to give a training meeting to the ward mission leaders and ward missionaries in the stake. Should be interesting. I imagine it will be interesting anyway; I still don’t know what we are going to talk about. We are also going to try to apply some stuff we learned in zone conference and from other sources in the next couple of weeks. I’m not sure how that’s going to work out but once again, should be interesting. That’s all this week, talk to you next week familia.

Te quiero,
Elder Walke

¡Hola familia!

¡Feliz carnival! Contrary to what dad mistakenly believes, carnival is right now, not last week. Sorry if I was unclear on that. So 3 times the Ecuadorians have attempted to get me wet and 3 times they have failed. My luck won’t hold out much longer I’m sure. That last time it was the bishop’s wife that tried to soak us—that was pretty funny. The bishop and his wife here remind me a lot of the Fishers because the bishop is a quiet, laid back guy and his wife is very outgoing. It’s like I’m in the Latin Spring Creek Ward or something—it’s awesome.

We had a baptism this Saturday; it was the daughter of a family that returned to activity in the church a week or two before I got here. So while it may have only been 1 baptism we actually brought 5 people to church. So that was good. Once again I won’t be able to upload the pictures though. I know that drives mom nuts but it’s a pain to upload pictures most of the time, so you will just have to imagine the picture instead. I vote that we move back to a world where we use our imaginations instead of needing all these expensive gadgets in order to capture images and get all the details just right. Just imagine a picture of me in my white shirt and tie standing next to a small, very tan Latin girl dressed in white and then go paint it and pretend like it’s the picture I sent you.

In other news zone conferences are tomorrow and we are definitely going to have a Seventy present, which is kind of scaring me now because the assistants told us directly that if someone in our zone messes up they are holding my companion and me responsible. I’m not exactly sure what that means but I’m sure it can’t be good.

So I keep hearing you guys talk about how cold it is up there. I’m sorry but I just can’t imagine cold anymore. I have been living in perpetual summer since May 2008. I have to have a fan blowing on me at night just to keep cool enough to sleep. Speaking of fun times, the rain is trying to kill me. All my stuff keeps ending up with mold on it! I think part of the problem is that all my stuff is old now and far more mold prone.  I spent an hour this morning washing ties because I woke up the other day and realized that several of them had an impressive amount of mold growth on them. Then I finished that project only to realize that my backpack has also acquired a few interesting growths on the inside. It reminds me of a conversation I had with Elders Mitton, Elwood and Frye back in Babahoyo. I’m not exactly sure who said it but someone said, “In Ecuador apart from the typical responses to the question “how do you feel?” such as “I’m happy”, “I’m sad” or “I’m sick”, another common response you may receive is “I’m moldy”. I’m not sure if you guys find that to be as funny as I do but given my current surroundings I find it to be quite entertaining.

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So mom asked me to tell a little about my companion and I guess that’s fair. First off, yes, he is a zone leader too. Thankfully this zone is big enough to warrant 2 zone leaders and he has 6 weeks more than me in the mission. He has not been a member all his life, in fact, this march he will hit the 3-year mark since his baptism. He is from a very small town in Bolivia; the kind without a single stop light in the entire town, and he says the “taxis” are cows with carts strapped on the back. He is the only member of the church in his family and he was baptized because he decided he wanted to get a college education so he left home when he was 17 and moved to Cochabamba to continue his education. That’s when he met the missionaries. There is a lot of more stuff in the middle between that and how he ended up serving a mission, but it’s a long story. It sounds like something out of a movie to me. He got it in his head a few weeks ago that he wants to study at BYU, so he has been working on his English a lot. It’s still pretty rough but he’s doing well. He is a good guy and it has been a humbling experience working with him because I have really realized just how blessed I have been. His biggest dream is to go to BYU, something that I got without breaking a sweat, but he still has to learn English well enough to get in. But that’s not even the hardest part because he still has to get a visa to enter the States. That’s no easy task I can tell you because I have met very few people here that have managed it. I guess unless you are really wealthy it’s hard to get one. In order to even have a shot at getting a visa he would have to get accepted to BYU and have enough money in the bank to show that he can afford to pay for it. He says that Bolivia is even poorer than Ecuador and that he will have to get a really good paying job in order to raise the money, and apparently a good paying job in Bolivia is $200 a month; so we figure that if he can get some sort of scholarship he should be able to pull it off. Of course neither one of us really knows what it takes to get a visa to enter the states but one step at a time. This project is still in its beginning stages because until he can get the English down he won’t be going anywhere. Missions are interesting experiences that’s for sure. I never told Elder Fonseca that he should go to BYU. He just woke up one day and decided that’s what he wanted to do. I’m just along for the ride. Anyway, have a great week, watch out for stray water balloons, and talk to you next week.

Te quiero,
Elder Walke

¡Hola familia!

It’s Monday? That’s weird. Well, seeing as how it’s Monday and all, I suppose I should write you a letter. But what to say? Honestly I don’t have much interesting news for you. I have been learning a lot about being a zone leader and we have plenty of stuff to do around here. I have been amazed at the amount of minor bits of business we have to do though. Several nights this week I have been sitting at my desk making phone calls, coordinating with the office and the missionaries in the zone, and doing other random bits of paper work until 10:30 pm. Most of the time I get done and find that I’m still in my shirt and tie because I didn’t even have time to change. But the good news is that we did manage to take care off all of the tasks that the assistants could throw at us this week. And I have to tell you, those guys sure have some odd requests some times. We gathered a lot of information about the different wards this week and I still don’t know what it’s all for—but we did it. Luckily the missionaries were willing to help and didn’t rebel against our constant stream of phone calls every night.

In other news carnival starts this Saturday and won’t be over until Wednesday; President [Gamboa] is going to have the whole mission on house arrest between lunch time and 6 pm—when the bulk of the craziness is going down. In other news, we have zone conference this week—well—I think we do. The assistants have not given us a specific day yet because there is supposed to be a member of the Seventy speaking as well so they are working off his schedule. So that should be interesting; every time I run into a Seventy it’s a good experience.

Um, what else can I tell you? It’s raining a lot, and Portoviejo is really muddy. So I’m constantly wet and muddy too. Which I don’t really enjoy. Have you ever seen that painting of Samuel H. Smith walking though the mud in the rain? That’s me. And I guess my shoes must be getting old because they are just not as waterproof as they used to be. But it’s all good; in just a couple of months the rain will stop and I will never again have the chance to walk through the mud and rain in Ecuador as a missionary ever again so I’m trying hard to make sure I have a solid memory of just how annoying it is to walk through the mud all day with shoes full of water, so that years from now I can look back and say, “those were the days when I learned to appreciate the blessing of having dry feet.” Yep the rain is fun.

We did an interchange this week with Elder Cruz and his companion, Elder Piedra. Elder Piedra is from Washington but his parents are from Ecuador, hence the Spanish name. Anyway, he read my blog before coming to Ecuador. I asked him if it was weird to meet someone that he had read about on line. He said it was. It was a pretty funny interchange; all things considered. Ok I have nothing more to say. I feel as though I am forgetting to tell you something important but I can’t think of what it is so I guess it will have to wait for next week. Ok talk to you next week family.

Te quiero,
Elder 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