Apartment Change

First day off the plane, in the airport






With President and Sister Sloan upon arriving

¡¡Dear Family!!
Well this week was pretty crazy. It was really good because we taught tons of lessons, but bad because one of our investigators needs to talk with the president. Actually it´s with The first couselor in the mission presidency because we found out that President Sloan received a 2 month break from mission president to recover. He´s going to remain here in Ecuador, but he does nothing with the missionaries. He´s in the mission home with only his family. Right now we have 15 baptisms as a zone for this month and that is really good. Élder Estrada and I are planning on having 1 this week and 5 the following week. We´re praying hard that they´ll all be safe and everything will work out. The goal for the mission is 200 for President Sloan. Right now we´re on the way of completing this goal. I have É. Estrada again for this transfer. I´m excited because we both know the sector well and this sector is really blessed. One of my district members in the MTC is now a district leader and trainer for this transfer. There´s another Élder that came on the plane with us that is going to train as well. I feel bad for them a little bit because it´s so fast, nut they´re going to have to learn really fast what to do so that´s good too. We´ll see what happens. This week i had one wierd night where i was sick. It was only during the night though. I didn´t sleep hardly at all because I had a really bad fever, but the next morning it was gone. I was just dead tired the whole day because I didn´t sleep the night before. I think I´m still losing weight but i can´t weigh myself so I don´t know. We changed apartments this morning too. It didn´t take too long but it was a pain to have to clean it. Our new apartment is a lot smaller but it´s safer and better than the old one. I keep trying to send pictures, but myldsmail.net is really slow with pictures. I´ll try to send more after this letter. The scripture for this week :) is in Jacob 6:12 "be wise". I forgot what it says but I wrote it down in my planner to send to you so I hope you like it :) My Spanish is doing a lot better now. I can understand most of the time now and I can say what I want to say in broken Spanish. They understand what I'm trying to say but it's not perfect.
The rule for the Christmas phone call is that you call to a phone here and we talk. Aparently it's really expensive to call from here. I haven't heard what the rule is on phone cards though. I think you'll call here at like 11AM-2PM Arizona time but we're going to plan it next week and give you and official time. The call has to be 40 minutes or less so we'll have to remember that. Oh yeah another rule. The family isn't allowed to make fun of the English of the Missionary because the missionaries don't like it :)
I haven't received any packages yet. The only physical mail I receive is the DearElder from Papa every week or so. Christmas here is weird. There really aren't that many lights and not very many people have christmas trees either. And it's hot and humid like normal. Actually it's more humid because it's rained everyday this week. Well I love you all. Talk to you in 2 weeks :)

Love,
Élder Hakes