February 5, 2011

Dear Family,
This was such a crazy week!!!! I´m so exahusted :) Zone Leader´s Council went really well. We played basketball instead of soccer and a lot of the latins got kind of mad. It was really fun to play though. They were just being stubborn ha ha ha :) On Wednesday we left for Esmeraldas. I can´t believe that we were back in the coast again. It seems like we were just there yesterday. Time is flying!!!! On Wednesday night we went on divisions with the zone leaders in Esmeraldas (there are 4 ZLs). We had a really good exchange. We were walking in the street and we contacted this guy. He was really interested and he invited us in to his house. It was way good :) We talked with him and his wife. Well, they aren´t married yet (that´s very common on the coast) but they want to. They said that they´re going to go to church so we were pretty excited!!!
So this time around we have Zone Conferences again. They´re every 3 months and I feel like we just barely had the last one. For zone conferences we always have lunch so we get to eat food from all over the country. The food on the coast is so good. It´s way better than anything in Quito :) For the training that we give during the zone conference we have to teach with the zone leaders. It makes things kind of complicated. We have to have time before to plan everything out with them. The first 2 conferences have gone really good so we really have enjoyed it. Our training´s theme is "Teach People, Not Lessons" for this month. We start off the training with a bad example. My companion is standing up in front of everyone and he just says lets go to page 169 and he just reads it. He doesn´t make hardly any comments. He´ll ask a question every now and then, but he won´t let anyone answer it. He answers it himself and just keeps going on reading. After reading most of the section he says, "Well, now we want to leave a commitment with you" and he looks at me. The whole time while he is reading I sit down and am playing with our cell phone. Sometimes I´ll answer a call or make a call while my companion is reading. When he looks at me I´m not paying attention at all so he nudges and then I just say, "Oh, well, will you speak with everyone?" After that we just tell them that it´s the Zone Leaders turn. We just show them what it feels like when we don´t focus in them. It´s a really fun bad example that we do :)
Today we went to a place called Teleferico. It´s basically a ski lift that takes you up on top of a mountain. It was pretty amazing. We were able to see all of Quito and we got some amazing pictures. The lift took us up to 4,100 meters or 13,451.4 feet. It was pretty hard to breath up there! Elder Falconi is still with us and he has a panoramic camera so we got some really sweet pictures :) It was a fun p-day. I really need some time to relax. It´s been a while since I´ve done that :)
Well I love you all. Thank you so much for all that you do for me. I love this great work. I feel as Alma the younger (Alma 36:24). This is a wonderful work that blesses so many people.








Love,
Élder Hakes