Brandon's Ecuadorian Tales

Here's his first e-mail!!!

Familia!!! como estan?!?! how are you all?!?! i miss you all so much! mom, dad, lindsey, desi. I hope you guys are doing awesome! i only have 24 minutes left to write this so i'm gonna use bullet points so i don't have to organize my thoughts...

-The past 3 days have been crazy!!! all we do is go to class, study, eat, and play in the gym for an hour a day. we're always doing something and theres never any time to rest.

-my companions name is elder noe. He's soooo cool! we get along great and hes a hard worker so its awesome! we always quiz each other on spanish and practice bearing our testimonies in spanish to each other-so far we've learned how to pray and bear our testimonies in spanish. we're not very good but we're working hard to get better! the gift of tongues is already kicking in though and its awesome! I keep remembering random words that i haven't even thought of since i took spanish in high school. its sweet!

-our district is made up of 9 elders all going to quito and we're all becoming best friends. one of them is named elder hirschi and hes really good at soccer. we practiced juggling today and got up to 617 together. i think thats a new mtc record.... maybe.

-i've learned that time in the mtc is like the lords time... that is, every minute seems a thousand times longer that it is. the days go by so slow. but we're doing good stuff so its all good.

-all the elders on our floor are spanish speaking elders and they all speak in spanish a lot and its really funny because 1)they have horrible accents and sound SOOO white! and 2)they always try to say things in spanish and think we can't understand becuase we're new, but the stuff they say is super easy so i always understand it. they do some pretty crazy/wierd stuff too. like today they were playing "super ninja". its some wierd game and i dont really understand how its fun but whatever floats their boat haha.

-if anyone wants to write me letters they can send it to:
Elder Brandon Messer
MTC Mailbox #95
ECU-QUI 1102
2005 N. 900 E.
Provo, Utah 84604-1793

me gustariacompartir mi testimoni. yo se que dio nos ama y jesucristo nos ama. porque dios nos ama, El restauro el evangelio y el sacerdocio a traves jose smith. el libro de mormon es la palabra de dios y recibimos bendiciones cuando lo leemos. la iglesia de jesucristo do los santos de los ultimos dias es verdadero!!!!!! digo estas cosas en el nombre de jesucristo amen.

I love you all!

-Elder Messer