I ride lots of small busses with chickens and dogs and Ecuadoreans

 

 

                   He said he had to wear an eye patch for 30 days but this is an eye blanket ...

                                         and look how much he's grown - he's a giant!

 

Hey Mom, 

 

This is me and Elder ____________.  He's a great guy and he speaks English really well too.  I think I'm going to be able to call you around 2:00pm your time on Mother's Day, but everything here is really unreliable. We have to find a place where we can do it. Webcams are rather scarce here.

(I asked what was going on with his heath)  I've been improving. I almost passed out during a meeting, so I went to the hospital and I received some injections and took 5 pills a day for 5 days. Yesterday was the last day. I'm not really light-headed anymore, but the headaches are still there, but I still need to finish the treatment that the eye doctor assigned. I have an appointment Thursday with the ear doctor that the optometrist sent me to, and on the twentieth or so, I have to go back to the eye doctor.  It hasn't stopped me from working.  I still do everything just like normal.  I just have to suck it up in front of investigators.
 

That's fine about having to cancel my debt card.  Sorry someone was using it.  I don't have to pay for the appointments at the doctors so I won't be needing it anyways.
 

What do I do?  I teach a lot. We had our first two baptisms on Friday, __________ and __________ ____________, and I baptized ___________.  It was cool because these are investigators that I started with. They weren't working with anyone before I showed up.  Also, I ride lots of very small busses with chickens and dogs and Ecuadoreans.  I usually have to stand hunched over but that's okay.  I love it.  Our areas are fairly far from our house so I take about 4 busses a day.  It's a lot of work but it's fun.  I have various study times in the morning for 5 complete hours (personal, companion, language, training, etc.) and that's the worst part of each day.  It's much easier when I'm outside walking around talking to people.  The headaches are worse then but I have people to distract me.
   

What else.. I get lost in conversations a lot still.  I can speak to pretty much everyone, but I'm far from fluent. We teach a lot, and I love the members here so much. There's an older lady named Hermana (sister) __________  here that I love to visit. She's like my Ecuadorean Mama because everytime I walk by her house, she tells us to come in and she feeds us.  Her husband is inactive, but we're working with him a bit. They lived in Utah for a long time, so she speaks some English and loves to speak to me.
 

That's wonderful about Matthew and the books!  I'm so glad he likes reading.  Make sure he starts a new series.  And Regan too with Junie B. Jones. Tell them I miss them both too, A LOT!  I miss all of you but I've already served an 1/8 of my mission.  Can you believe it?  Anyway, I bet you all think I forgot Regan's birthday present, but I didn't. I just haven't been able to send anything yet. I have the gift. It's small, but I think she'll like it. I've had it since her birhtday. I will try really hard to send it next week. It's difficult because it's about an hour bus ride to the postal office, and I have to get permission from president to leave my area, but I will try

 

Oh, I forgot to mention that it's a possibility that I'll be changing missions in June or July.  They are creating the Guayaquil West mission which will be part of my current mission.  So if I am sent there, I could serve in the Galapagos Islands because it is going to be apart of Guayaquil West.  

Love you all and keep me updated.

Michael