8 bautismos, el templo, Bus drifting, y misioneros ver peliculas avasis

Hey!

So I guess I've failed to inform you all about my baptisms.  The first five was familia Holgin/Burgos.  Namely: Justin Holgin, Jubede Holgin, Alexander Burgos, Junior Burgos, and Rosa Burgos. They count as my baptism and I personally baptized Junior, but the truth is that they were mostly taught by Elder Christiansen (el poderoso), a missionary who finished his mission right as I started mine and was the companion of Elder Pagoada before me.  I feel like I can take more credit for the other three though: Pablo Fillian, Andy Cruz, and Noami Burgos.  Those are my eight baptisms, I thought I sent pictures for all of them... I'll send them again if I have time today.

This last week we got to go to the temple and afterward listen to President Riggins speak.  President Riggins is awesome and I like the way he runs things!  He tightened up a few things that I'm really glad for.  Before, the mission ran on the COMPLETE YOUR GOALS system were you made a goal for baptisms and if you didn't meet it you were put to shame.  Because of this missionaries seemed to baptise people by whatever means nesasary and I think sometimes some people got baptised before they were ready.  I hated this system.  President Riggins however is taking a new approch to the work that still involves making goal (because goals are SUPER importaint) but he's also raised the bar of the requirments to baptise.  He basically wants stong members which is OK by me.  This mostly comes from the statistics of last year, 80% of the baptisms last year were childeren and teenagers and he flat out told the missionaries that we're harming the church.  Another statistic is that the number of less active members here is over 50%.

The Temple was amazing!

This picture was taken at 6am, meh....

Our Zone consists of Buena Fe and Quvedo.  This being the case we do a lot of bus traveling between the two cities.  NOTE: I hate busses.

During one of our trips to a zone meeting, the bus hit some loose gravel and the back end started to drift a little.  WHICH IS REALLY SCARY IF YOU"RE A GREENGO IN THE BACK OF THE BUS.  Everyone was calm however.  Because as I said before; people here are gutsy/crazy-out-of-their-minds and they're good at it.  We continued to slip and slide down the road and we continued on our way.  No biggy.  Welcome to Ecuador.

The four hour bus to Guayaquil plays a movie for its passangers.  Missionaries really have nothing else to do in the bus exept for sleep or watch the movie.  With four hours there's usually time for both. SO, on that note.  If you're in the mood for one of those feel good/inspirational/make you love life and then litterally murder the charactars that made you love life and then make you feel good again kinds of movies, I'd recomend "My Name Is Khan", I liked it. Granted I watched it in spanish.

So there, I'm still recommending movies :P

I think that's everything for today... I have more but my time is sadly limited.  I usually make notes in my planner about what to talk about and if I end up not talking about a point I move it to the next week.  So don't worry.  you wont miss information!

I hope all is well back home!  Love you all!

~Cameron

This is What Missionaries Do...

This Email is mostly dedicated to the sending of photos.  Because I love photos and I think they can describe the things I've experienced a lot better than I can.  First of all, There are a lot of typical questions that people here ask us as missionaries, some of them are really funny.

Question:
Where do the missionaries live?
What people say when I ask what they think:
In the church
My favorite answer: 
In a box down by the river  or  segunda estrella derecha y adelante hasta mañana
The Truth:
An apartment in centro

Question:
How old are you?
What people say when I ask what they think:
23
My favorite answer: 
Greengos no tener endad
The Truth:
19

Question:
Do you have a family back home?
What people say when I ask what they think:
...I really don't know what people are thinking when they ask this...
My favorite answer: 
No, actually greengos are born from trees like orcs
The Truth:
DUH

Question:
Can you have a girlfriend while on you mission? (A question generally asked by 16-20 year old girls or "Dollys"
What people say when I ask what they think:
I hope so!
My favorite answer: 
no
The Truth:
NO

ANYWAYS! On to the photos.  I hope this cyber doesn't freak out when I try to upload them.

Yo y me Companaro

My Breakfasts are getting more and more complex as the days go on.  I'm getting the feeling that Ecuador is starting to make me fat.

August in Buena Fe is like the Forth of July back in the states... except it's parades and parties ALL MONTH LONG.  and it's only for the town's anniversary... Our house is on the main street here, so we get a pretty good view of everything that happens from our 2nd story apartment. WIN.

This Was the Military's float in the first parade, it made me laugh super hard!

These are TricyMotos.  One of the best means of transportation here in Buena Fe

The Second parade was ALL dancing.  I think I enjoyed it more than anyone.  AH...dancing... culture.... music......

A Latin ballroom team performed in this parade.  Made me miss dancing a little... They were super good!

The Local Bike Gang-- I mean... Police Force was in this parade. 

The Parades seemed to be themed and lasted for about an hour and a half to two hours. This is the Forth or fifth parade that's passed in front of our house...

This one was all about political figures and marching bands

Sometimes Elder Vidal and Elder Suitor from across the street come over during language study to watch.  Because honestly... We can't study very well with all the noise. You can also see in this picture how well we all sleep at night with the parties going on.

One night a bunch of funky cars packed on either side of the street.  These two spit fire out of the tale pipe when the reved.  Also notice that their trunks are open:  this is because they were showing off their sound systems.  This went on until about three in the morning. 

The Church ran out of water again, so we called the firefighters to help us out with the baptism for the second time.

People Sometimes ask:  "Elder Howell, do you baptize?" My answer is: "Why yes, why yes I do."

-and this is my eigth!  Her name's Naomi.

This Family is awesome, we've been teaching them since I got here.  They seem to only like being baptized one by one though...

Carlos unfortunately is not married or baptized yet. We've been working with them and the ward to make it happen because him and Gissela both want it. The problem is that they need $200 to make it happen. We do however still meet with them from time to time. They are my favorite couple here! For awhile they'd call and cancel appointments because they were in the "finca" and not in their city house.After awhile Carlos invited us to learn where the finca/farm house was.  We figured out it wasn't was and was in our area. So we hopped on the bus and it took us into a beautiful rural part of Buena Fe that I've never been to before. Gissela and Carlos were waiting far us by the side of the road and then we walked for a few minutes through the Jungle to their beautiful wooden house.

This is Gissela and Carlos.

We are Missionaries... This is what we do... sometimes.

Not sure if this plant is dangerous or not but...hey stick it on your nose! 

The End. For Today. Love Ya'll!

Things About Ecuador

Hello!

I've been wanting to write a few things about Ecuador, I'm trying to organize them in my head... meh I spent too much time writing the president this week...

ALRIGHT! Things about Ecuador:

A Man's Bus is His Ferrari
People drive crazy down here, Lindsay can testify of that.  I've gotten used to it in general but I still haven't gotten used to the buses. Sure, we use them almost everyday, along with TricyMotos and Taxis.  But the bus drivers are completely out of their minds, they drive through the neighborhoods and highways like they're a sports car.  Sometimes I question if we can make some of the turns we make.  This week I got to experience LINE #8, the single most loco bus line in the city.  The drivers go through neighborhoods both with dirt roads and concrete.  they take sharp turns and make sharp stops.  The feeling is like the Night bus in Harry Potter, except without the magic... which actually makes it more scary because that means physics apply.  The driver and the Conductor were even yelling strange things and making taunts to the road like the head dude thing did on the Night bus. "OLD LADY OLD LADY! STOP.  GOGOGOGO!"

Local Bike Gang
The Local Bike gang just so happens to be the National Traffic Police.  As far as I've noticed they don't have and traffic rules here aside from "don't hit anyone" and "stay in the flow of traffic".  Pedestrians are of little importance.  We witnessed a guy get hit by a taxi last Friday, it wasn't that great of an experience.  The taxi got away with little questioning because the driver had the right of way while the guy was in the cross walk.
Anyways!  The Police here basically ride on their motorcycles in packs of ten with their lights blazing through the neighborhoods.  I've never seen them do much more than that...

Missionary Tan
I have what I call the missionary tan.  Which is basically a tan line up high on the neck because we wear collared shirts every day and a blunt white line on the wrist because of our watches.  It isn't the most attractive tan- but hey! my arms look great granted I'm wearing my watch!

Fiesta!
Buena Fe is celebrating it's anniversary this month.  Which means concerts and parades all the time.  Which is awesome because we live in the central and we have a deck that over looks the street.  We have some of the best seats in town! I have pictures, I promise I'll send some next week!

People here are good at being gutsy
on the note of the buses and everything else I've noticed something, people are really good at being gutsy here.  When I see people ride down dirt roads with propane tanks on the back of their motorcycles without straps and only balance to hold it down I am less and less shocked. Turns out these people know what their doing and they usually don't get hurt doing things that in our eyes are definitely are not safe. It's a marvel, and sometimes I wonder if we can learn from them.  Is it bad to be nuts? and if not, are we just too stupid to be nuts too? Food for thought!
Personally, I like the way things are back in the states. Less chaos.

Anyways, I'm overtime, again.  A bad habit that I picked up from my new companion, trying to stop.  I also blame myself a little because I wrote the mission president for a little too long. Sorry! \
Talk to you next week!

~Camero

¨Coming home early¨ ...Ha.

I´m currently in the worst Cyber Cabina on the street. Elder Lachuma claims it´s better than the one on the ground floor of our house that the missionaries have been faithfully using, I disagree.

This week went by super quick! I´ve started a new Journal that I call the small journal.  It´s kinda ironic because it´s bigger than my other Journal... It´s called the small Journal because it´s like the Small Plates of Nephi.  In it, I´ve been writing expiriances and stories where I´ve noticed the hand of God in my life.  The idea came from a request by president Riggins.  He told us that we need to start looking for the hand of God in our lives, so that´s what I´m doing!

I was tempted to title this email ¨Coming home early¨ but then I pictured mom freaking out and calling everyone before she opened the email, so I refrained.  I´m probably coming home on the 22th of March 2016 and not the 9th of April.

We have a cool little card that we get on our first day of service signed by the prophet that certifies us to preach the gospel for the noted period of time.  Most missionaries have a card that states that they´re serving for exactly two years, my card however states that I´m serving 19 days shy of two years.  Everyone I´ve talked to said that it´s true and for some reason or other it´s the case.  When I figured this out I was very tempted to not tell you guys and sneak into the house in the night and be in the kitchen eating breakfast in the Morning when ya´ll wake up.  I figured that probably wouldn't be a nice thing to do so this is me letting you know. I'M COMING HOME EARLY!

Things have been good here. My health has been good but my knees have been killing me for a week now. If they persist I´m going to inform the Mission Pres about it.

Anyways, I´ll talk to you all next week!

Love you!

Cameron