Brandon's Ecuadorian Tales

Hey everyone!Thank you for your letters and packages this week! It always makes my day to hear from you guys! Congratulations on your new calling mom! Your gonna be awesome! Hows everything else going back home? Whats the weather been like? Its been getting colder here but it hasn't snowed yet so thats a plus. Mom, The lady in the trc just wasn't the nicest person last week. I think she was having a bad day or something. I'm not sure. But she turned out to be nice in the end so that its all good. And yes your definitely right about learning the laungauge. We can only learn so much here. I'm sure when we get to ecuador our pace of learning will start to pick up a little. We just finished our last grammer principle yesterday so hypothetically we know everything. We just have to put it all to use and remember every single grammer rule on the fly and learn a bunch more vocab. I'm not really sure on ideas for christmas... I'll have to think about it and get back to you. I liked the ideas you had though about ctr rings in spanish and book markers. I think pictures would be a good idea to. speaking of pictures, i'm gonna burn a cd this week and send it to you. I haven't taken that many pictures but theres quite a few. I'm not sure about that water filter thing either. It sounds way cool but i'll have to ask when i get down there and see. They gave us instructions about how to purify water and they looked kinda sketchy. Like we have to boil it and then put bleach in it. and some other wierd stuff. i'm sure i'll find out more when i get there though. and yea i've gotten stuff from all the grandparents and i'm all loaded up! You all know how to take care of me! :)I dont have my ecuadorian address right now but i think its posted on my blog. if not i'll give it to you next week or when I get there.

We got our travel plans today. It was pretty exciting. We leave monday morning (nov 2). We fly out of salt lake at 6 am land in dallas at 9:35 am then leave for miami at 11:25 am. We arrive in miami at 3:10 pm and then we leave for quito at 6 pm and arrive at 9:55 pm. so I can call you either from salt lake, dallas, or miami depending on what time is best for you all. please let me know this week and i'll finalize it with you in my email next week.

anyways, this week has been pretty good for me i guess. last saturday night some elders in our zone tried to have a sleepover with like 14 guys in the same room (they're only suppose to fit 4) so elder noe and I had to break it up. Some of them were kinda mad at us at first. we told our branch president about how we felt like some of them were a bit mad at us and he just smiled, and said "welcome to leadership". haha it was kinda funny. then he told us that sometimes we just have to lay down the law no matter how much ppl dont like it. Mom and Dad I'm sure you know all about that as parents.On sunday we had to teach preisthood meeting because the branch presidency had another meeting to go to. We taught it on personal revelation. We taught for an hour and it went pretty well considering we only had an hour to prepare for it. i'm getting used to just teaching on the fly with no preparation. I guess thats a good skill to develop as a missionary. Its something that I never would have though i could do before my mission but now its just like normal.

On monday we got to leave the MTC! It was pretty much the most exciting thing thats happened since i've been here haha. An elder in our district had to go to physical therapy so elder noe and I had to go with him. Everyone saw us and started talking to us. it was kinda cool. We talked to one guy that served his mission in canada when president monson was the mission president. He told us all about it.

On wednesday we went to the RC. I made some outbound calls in spanish and was able to send a couple church DVDs to some people in puerto rico. I also got an inbound call from a lady named nancy. She asked if I could pray for her because her and her 3 kids had been homeless for a while. She asked if we had a service that could give them some food and I gave her some phone number from lds.org. Then I told her about God's love for her and talked to her about her family. Long story short I sent the missionaries to her and she is excited to hear the message they have for her. I hope it all works out for her! Can you all pray for her?I did sealings in the temple today and it was awesome! There are very few times in my life that i've felt the spirit that strong!anyways, i'm out of time but I love you guys! have a good week! and let me know when is the best time for me to call next monday

!Espero que ustedes tengan una semana fantastica!