Sometimes... Strange Things Happen.

Hey everyone!

This week has been interesting and crazy.  First of all, after I got done telling you that I haven't gotten sick and that I don't plan on doing anything of the kind, I woke up on Tuesday morning with a fever. On Wednesday we had interviews and a video presentation with President Riggins.  During the movie I was able to tell Hermana Riggins that my Fever had reached 102.74, she told me to drink pedialyte, water, Tylenol, go home and get some rest.  I agreed.

The movie however was really good.  Here in Ecuador, all the missionaries heard rumors that there was a movie in the United States called "Meet the Mormons" but it was very sadly out of our reach until this last week when President Riggins got the new Spanish Dubbed version for us to see.  He said that pretty soon all of Ecuador will have it. If you guys haven't seen it yet, shame on you. I was forced to wait.

Besides getting sick and recovering we had a pretty weird week: 

First - we saw a guy with a Potato Sack with a dog sicking its head out of the side confirming that The Dog-napper is real.

Second - we got to see what happens when too many fat pigeons sit on the powerline and the top line sags down to touch the bottom line. There were pretty colors and lots of toasty scared pigeons.

Third - I got to see how Ecuador can REALLY rain.  Luckily I got to see that from inside the house.  sitting on our balcony felt link sitting under a powerful waterfall and I'm pretty sure an umbrella would fold itself.

Apart from all that, Gabriela Maldonado got baptized on Saturday night:

I'll probably continue with the story of all of that next week if I can.  The truth is that the story is probably personal to her and I don't know if I ought to be sharing it until I get back...  I don't know.
I'm just going to say that this girl spent years listening to missionaries. even though her whole family was baptized she didn't want to get in the water until some personal things were taken care of and that she had an answer for herself the the Book of Mormon is the word of God.

Long story short, she got her answer. And she's amazing.

We finished the Saturday night with Tres Litros de Cola y Torta con una cena.

Victory.

-Cameron

Life in Guayaquil

Hello!

I'm here in Ecuador, doing the normal. Mom asked a few questions, so I thought I'd address them:

I'm in El Barrio Albonor in Guayaquil.  The people here are a little more on the richer side, which means they think with a little more logic and can be a little bit prideful. The Logical part is ok for me, as long as you belive in the Bible our faith makes complete sense.  The trick is you actually have to read the bible to understand that.  (FYI the bible is actually pretty awesome and talks a little about the plan of salvation in Corinthians and other parts) The problem we've been having is that people have started putting stickers on their doors that say "This house is Catholic.  Please respect our religion"
Which is cool, and I respect their religion...but I've also read the bible, and I've figured some things out for myself... ANYWAYS!

Yeah, This area is richer, a little bit cleaner, and a whole lot more compact.  Every block has a number but none of the numbers are in order, and people usually write their addresses on their door with a crayon which can make it VERY hard to find a little house in this maze of a city.  In BuenaFe we used landmarks.  Our directions we literally like "The street with Water Tower of San Jacinto, left at the guy who sells chickens and take a right after two blocks.  It's the house with Old blue paint and a brown door"

Here the directions are: "Sauces VIII Mz 454 F7 Villa 12, ring the doorbell for the third floor and ask for Familia Loor" It's very different.

We're teaching a few families, one is Familia Maldonado, who are some mas o menos activo members with a daughter who has been on the fence about baptism for a few years.  I cooked some Pancakes in their house on Saturday and my friend Gabriel who's 10 years old is starting to master my recipe.  I think if I ever come back here after my mission I'll find a very successful Pancake Restaurant in Sauces VIII.  Our goal is to help Gabriela find her answer about the Book of Mormon and help her be Baptized before the end of January.

Elder Taylor is awesome.  He likes working, and I do too!  It can sometimes be kind of hard being two good looking white guys walking down the street in white shirts and ties.  We get called "guapos" several times a day on the street.  The thing is with my companion and the two other guys that I'm living with is that I can usually expect to end up laughing about a new inside joke every single day.

Yep, the rain has begun. we've had a couple of beautifully refreshing rainstorms over the last week.  It's supposed to kick up more in a week or so.  I just got me a new umbrella today. Rain season also means cricket season.  They're all over the streets and they like to get into your houses.  It's another fun element that we get to experience here. The over shoes I got at Mr. Mac are cool and help a little.  But they probably weren't worth the $20.  Then again, in a muddier area they would probably be very helpful.

I've been kicking sick season like a champ so far.  Two people in our house and half of our zone got sick with a fever or a parasite last week, but I've been unscaved so far.

Yeah, that's all.  I've been doing pretty dang good in general.  That's all the time I've got for today. I'll write again next week, as always.
I hope all is well back home!

Love you!

-Cameron

P.S.  here's the picture of the suit you got me for Christmas and a box of Corn Flakes:

Food! ... Because food is important.

Hey!

I feel that yesterday I had a lot of things that I wanted to say in an email... but at the moment I'm at a blank. I feel like I talk about food a lot, but really, food is important to me and I feel that it is a matter to be discussed.

As a few young guys living alone together in a house in Ecuador, we seem to go through Phases when it comes to food.  All green missionaries go through an egg phase because eggs are universally simple and easy to cook.  After awhile however eggs get kinda odd and missionaries with imagination start getting creative when they buy their food on Mondays.

Me and Elder Taylor are relatively creative guys so we've hit some pretty yummy food phases: when I got here Elder Taylor and Elder Rallison were just coming out of a Smoothie phase, for a couple weeks over Christmas time we were in a pancake phase, at one point we hit an empanada phase, and right now we're heading into week number two of the Sandwich phase.

The Sandwich phase is pretty awesome.  Me and Elder Taylor have been rolling things out from PB&J to salami with cheese, basil, tomato, vinegar, and lots of other yummy stuff.  Not sure what we're going to figure out how to make in Ecuador next, but it's sure to be good.

For Christmas I had a suit made for myself and I picked it up on Saturday, it's pretty dang nice, I wore it for the first time as I gave a talk in sacrament meeting.  My talk was not all that fantastic.  People say your public speaking skills get better over the mission but I haven't seen that happen yet.  :P

We're just about heading into rain season here.  We got hit by a couple showers but nothing too notable.  So far rain season only means to me that I sweat a bit more because the extremely high humidity is just a little bit higher than before.  I'm currently looking to buy an umbrella because the one I took with me from home somehow found its way to Chile with Elder Povar from the CCM in Mexico.  He has since lost it in "Wind City" along with three other umbrellas.



So yeah, that's what I've got for ya'll this week.  Things here are pretty dang good.
As always, I'll write next week.
¡chao!

-Cameron

Feliz Nuevo Año!‏

Hey!

Happy new year!  You guys totally missed the party, Ecuador is nuts on New Year.  There's lots and LOTS of fireworks and people starting fires and exploding things in the street.  We were told that we couldn't go out in the streets after 9pm on new years eve, so we went on our roof instead and from there we saw it all go down.  We were told right, new years here is "apocalíptico"

New years was pretty cool, but it was also a big pain in the butt because everyone is either spending the week in the mountains, the beach, of some other place.  In other words, no one is at home and as missionaries there is no one to visit. Im going on the hope that this week will be a bit better as it seems that people are starting to come home again.

Another thing cool that happened this week (I kinda went out of my way to do this)  I totally added Cow Tongue to the list of weird things I've eaten in my life/mission!

It looks about as grody as I hoped it would!

Yes, I ate it willingly- Better yet I requested it.  It was prepared like roast beaf and tasted like it too.  Although the texture was completely different, I liked it!  As long as you told think about how its a tounge it isnt that bad. :D

Oh hey! Another thing, we discovered through a member (I promise I don't hand out on youtube) that there's a page that is interviewing RMs from all missions all over the world.  They interviewed our ex Assistant to the President and he basically spilled the beans on EVERYTHING that goes on down here.  You should check out all his videos, he pins it down a lot better than I have ever been able to and he speaks the truth on all his points.

Heres a link: Living as a Missionary in Ecuador

Seriously check it out!

Hmm, flipping through my photos I cant really think of anything else to write about... that's how I remember things; I take pictures of them.

I'll email you all next week!

Love ya!

-Cameron

Makin' Banana Pancakes

Hey everyone!

It was great talking with the family on Christmas day, sorry we had problems with the computers.  I intended to call on time.

One of the problems was that I totally forgot my Skype account name and passward so I had to get on to Elder Banegas' account to call.

It was also crazy and totally predictable that Lindsay got engaged over Christmas!  She sent me the story, pretty cool stuff!

Christmas was pretty fun here, we had a big dinner party with all 250 missionaries in the mission in the Kennedy Stake Center where I got to see all my old companions and friends.  We also had a big ward Christmas party where we sang a Spanish Christmas rendition of The Lion Sleeps Tonight that we wrote, it was pretty stinking brilliant! Elder Rallison will go as far as to say inspired.

To recap some things that I madtioned in the call: I made Banana Pancakes on Christmas Morning with Ariana De Platano (Banana flour) and little bits of chopped up bananas.  It was bacically the best thing ever!  I couldn't help but humming Jack Johnson.

Other things happened too...

Also, someone asked in our Skype call if we had Eggnog here.  We never really found any, BUT Elder Taylor looked up the recipe and made some!  It was some good stuff, not perfect, but it was good.

We're waiting to see what happens on New Years this week, we here that it's "apocalíptico" and we got a message from the Assistants saying that we were to "BE IN THE HOUSE BEFORE 9PM"
From what I heard, people take their little paper statues out onto the streets and light them on fire.  Some of these statues are ten feet high, and the fireworks are also supposed to be crazy!  We will wait and see. :D

I'll talk to you all next week!

~Cameron