Transfers

Wow this week was the craziest week yet. On Wednesday morning, Jan. 6, at about 9 AM we got a call that I have transfers. At 12 PM that same day I had to leave for Quito. Right now I´m in a town that´s a part of Quito (like Mesa is a part of Phoenix) called Conocoto. I´m also the senior companion. My new companion is called Élder Salmerón. He´s from Nicaragua and has 6 months in the mission. The problem is is that he only has 3 and a half weeks in this sector. We´re esentially white-washing (2 new missionaries that don´t know the sector). It´s pretty tough too because the companion that I´m replacing didn´t do anything. He slept in till 10 and went back to the house early at night. That means we didn´t have hardly any investigators when I got here. We only had about 4-5. As of right now we have 10 more and we´ll have a bunch more because we received 11 references from 1 lady in the ward. It was really hard too because the area book was a mess. The area book is where we have a record of every investigator and their progress, former investigators, future investigators, etc. The former companion didn´t do anything in the area book and the companionship before that only did a little bit. That was my project today and I fixed it (there were forms froms 2003).

It´s colder here in Quito. At night it gets pretty cold, I´d guess around 45-50 degrees. During the day it´s perfect and I love that it´s not humid. We´ve been working really hard and I´ve had some sweet experiences. I´ve been teaching a lot more with Élder Salmerón so my teaching and my Spanish has improved alot. All the members say I speak really good but I don´t believe them.

We contacted on the top of a mountain the other day. Our sector is huge. it goes from the top of one mountain down almost to the bottom of the valley. We went to a small neighborhood called San Andres. It took us about 15-20 minutes of walking after we took a bus to the top of the mountain. It was worth it because we have about 4 future investigators up there now. Well I love you all. Hope all is well.

Love,
Élder Hakes