Brandon's Ecuadorian Tales

Hey!Mom, Happy birthday!!! I hope all your birthday wishes came true!!!
thanks for the letters dad and desi!

ok let me try and answer all your questions real quick:

i ussually just feed the mice about every other day but i dont think it really matters much if you feed them everyday. just as long as they have enough water and dont go too long without food.I saw tanner today just as he was coming out of the temple and i was going in. It was way cool! we talked for a bit and i wrote him a letter so he's gonna write me back and we'll have to talk mostly through letters. I haven't seen boyd johnson yet. idk if i will. we'll see. i saw andrew kinney the first day i was here and i think i saw sam later that night as well. I get to practice the piano every once in a while when we have free time. luckily my companion doesn't mind listening to me for a few minutes! my companion (elder noe) took two years of spanish in high school so he knows a lot. we try and talk to each other in spanish as much as we can. and my p-day is on friday so you can expect emails from me around 4ish on fridays. i'm not allowed to write on anydays except p-day and i can only email on p-day for 30 minutes.

ok now let me tell you about my week:

-on monday we went to the trc for the first time. we had to talk to a bunch of people in spanish and get to know them and teach a short message and ask if we could come back later and share more. it went pretty good. one guy that we talked to was amazed that we had only been there for 5 days and could already speak such good spanish. after we made teaching appointments in spanish we had to go back and teach them the first discussion in english. It went sooooo good! the spirit was soooo strong!!!! Elder Noe and I were really nervous at first but we trusted that the spirit would guide us and it definitely did!!!! its crazy how much help we're getting!!!

-on wednesday we went to the RC (refferal center) for the first time. we had to call people that had ordered stuff from the church and confirm that they got it and ask if they would be interested in learning more. we were there for an hour or so and all i did was call person after person but no one answered for like 55 minutes!!! then right when we were about to quit I called one more person and someone finally answered! I started introducing myself and right after i said my name she said "hold on" and went away from the phone. I was on hold for like 8 minutes but i didn't want to hang up because I really wanted to talk to her about the bible that we sent her. everyone else was already packing up and ready to go back to class but i just waited for her and she eventually came back after like 8 minutes. I asked her if she had recieved her bible and she said yea and we talked about it a little. then i started telling her about the book of mormon and how it was a second testament of jesus christ and i asked her if i could send some missionaries to her house to share a message about jesus christ and she said yes! it was awesome! her name is shiela and shes from georgia.

-i went back to the RC on thursday and once again no one was answering. but i kept calling and eventually got someone to answer. i asked for the person that i was trying to call but he wasn't home so i just started talking to the person who answered. it turned out to be the guys brother and long story short i asked if i could send missionaries to his house to share a message about jesus christ with him and he said yes! his name is zak and hes 17 and from ohio.-we had a devotional on tuesday and got to her from president hinckley's son and his wife. They were so bold with some of the stuff they said!!!! it was so crazy! dad, all that stuff we used to talk about as not being offical doctrine- they just flat out talked about that! it was sooo cool!!

-so i definitely have the gift of toungues!!! its sooooo crazy!!! yesterday i swear i was almost fluent for like 15 minutes! it was so wierd cuz i was speaking perfect spanish for like 15 minutes and then all of a suden i couldn't anymore. and i was saying words that i didn't know and then i looked them up and they were right!!!! it was soooooo cool!!!!!

-one last thing, i official hold the mtc juggling record now haha.anyways, my time is almost up so i'll write again next week, oh and it would be easier for me if you would dearelder me your responses as well as email them to me so i dont have to try and read your emails and respond during my 30 minutes of email time.

I love you guys!!!!!