January 20th, 2014

First week

Hey there everyone. So ya Im finally here in Ecuador, things are going great! Its a lot different than I had expected, but its pretty beautiful. Im in an area called duran, its just north of guayaquil. The culture here is pretty interesting. There are stores everywhere, all down the front street and from peoples houses. If you walk down a manzana(a block of houses) most of them have stuff to sell from there window. One thing that I just cant get used to is all the dogs in the streets. Theres dogs everywhere. And theyre all natty and disgusting. I swear sometimes it feels like im walking through a sarah Maclaughlin commercial. But ya the people are all super chill here, everyones suprised to see two gringos walking around.

Oh ya so my companioin is definitiely not from el salvador. Hes from oregon, and hes whiter than me haha. People say that this never happens, having a gringo as a trainer, and especially cause hes only been here 3 months. That makes it a little difficult cause even though we only speak spanish to each other, I dont really pick anything up cause he only has pretty basic spansih. But its all good, im learning a lot about the mission life from him. Its not like we cant get anything done cause were americans, he can understand everyone and communicate well. I think itd be much easier if i had a real spanish speaker to learn from but thisll work out. WE also live with two Guatametecos, they help a lot.

The work here in duran is pretty good. We finally got a baptism on satuday. So thats it, my work heres done im coming home. No but there are a lot of people who are prepared for the gospel here. Just the other day we had a pretyy cool expierience. So we had these two investigators before i got here, two girls 15 and 12 i think. So after a few days of trying to reach them we finally got in a lesson with them. Their mom who was meeting us for the first time sat by the lesson, i think cause she thought we were freaks trying to feed her children garbage. After the lesson we asked the girls to be baptized, they really excited said ya. So we asked the mom for permission to baptize them. She had tears in her eyes and siad she wanted to be baptized as well. It was so awesome, We have them on date for Feb 1. But Ya we have 4 people on date for this saturday, itll be really good.

So ya the mission life so far is good, Im adjusting well I think. Ecuador is beautiful place and Im looking forward to the next week. Good luck with all
Elder Crisp