Elder Thayne

Okay, first things first. I got one of my christmas packages today. I don't know how it got here so fast, but it's here. It says missionary supplies, t-shirt, and candy. So yeah... it'll just be sitting in my room for a month...unopened...all alone...without any friends...just a box, sitting there on a table...

No, maybe I'll put it in my suitcase so I don't have to stare at it anymore.

Okay, so this week!

Being in the office is pretty cool. I kind of miss being out on the streets teaching all day, but the office has its benefits. For example, President and Sister Johns made us all a turkey dinner for Thanksgiving and we all went over to their house and stuffed ourselves! We actually ate lunch with the President three times this week. Also, the house we live in is super cool. I went from one of the ugliest houses in the mission to the nicest one. There are 8 missionaries living here (the 8 that work in the office) and it's really big, and comfortable, and clean, and it has air conditioning, and a hot water heater, and even a washing machine and dryer!

BUT this week has been SUPER busy. We have to take care of all the arrangements for the new missionaries coming in the and the old missionaries leaving. Fortunately, there were only 4 leaving. But we a big group of 18 come in, 10 latins and 8 americans. The americans didn't catch their flight and so they came a day late, so we had two separate orientations, one on tuesday and one on wednesday. The orientations were pretty fun. It was cool meeting the missionaries, and watching them go through the orientation and getting their first companion and everything just like it was for me 4 months ago! Elder Maldonado is training one of the latins, so I got to see him again too. AND, on thursday, there was a big meeting for all the zone leaders in the mission, so the ones that live outside of Guayaquil come in the day before and spend the night with us. And coincidentally, one of them just happens to be Elder Tezen. It was weird seeing him again because it feels like so long ago that we were together, but yeah, it was fun. Also on Thursday, there was an inspection of the church-owned cars here in Guayaquil, and I got to drive one of the President´s cars to that and back. It was pretty wild driving here because the people drive like CRAZY.

On Wednesday, we went to the sector for the first time. My new sector is called Garay, and we have to take a taxi to get there. I've met a few of the members and we've had some pretty cool lessons so far. But yeah, I don't know a whole lot about it yet.

Anyway, I think I owe you some fotos, so I'm going to send you a big batch of the best ones. After going through power outages, losing my memory card, finding out that it's corrupted, and doing a recovery of all the files, I'm finally ready to send you some pictures. :)

Well that's my week! Bye!
Elder Thayne