Elder Thayne

Subject: It's raining It's pouring...


Well, the rain has started, officially. And finally! Hopefully that means they'll quit doing power outages again (when I told you they had stopped, it was only for a week, haha). It's only been raining for a couple hours, but the streets are already flooding. Maybe a little bit of trouble with drainage...?

Anyway, this week just about killed me. You see, it was my first week as secretary without Elder Cambra to direct and guide in every action. And it was really scary! It's always tough on new secretaries because, well, the first week of the transfer is the hardest and there's tons of work to do. But so many things happened this week that I never had to do when Elder Cambra was here. I was running around like a mad man all week nonstop. So yeah, it kept me on my toes.

Okay so I didn't tell you a whole lot about my sector last week, but this is pretty cool. It's called Las Peñas, and it basically covers all of downtown Guayaquil. It's HUGE, and we hardly even touch a small part of it. Like I said, last week, it covers Santa Ana Hill (the one with the lighthouse) and the hill next to it (called Carmen), where there's a big statue of a black Jesus on top. I haven't been up there yet, but someday I'll get there. But the coolest thing about the sector is the ward. THIS is a missionary oriented ward. And it's incredible. Talk about a big group of people that just want to share the Gospel. Other wards here tend to be a little disorganized, but this one has really got its act together. My first night there I got a nice typed out letter on letterhead telling me that I would be giving a talk on Sunday with my topic and everything, and signed by the whole bishopric! The members here give us all sorts of references and we've got an awesome ward mission plan. We have TEN ward missionaries, so there's always someone to go visit people with us, and they teach all of the recent converts so we don't even have to spend hardly any time teaching them. Anyway, yeah. Unfortunately, we didn't get to spend a lot of time in the sector this week, but it should be better next week. I think there's a reason that they put the two busiest missionaries in the office in this sector! My companion is Elder Kjar, he's from Mesa, AZ. He's pretty easy-going. He likes computers and programming and stuff. I think he'll be an awesome companion. I was a little sad leaving Elder Zuñiga, because he was really a great companion. But oh well, I'll be fine. :D

Random thought: Elder Maldonado baptized Martha Areas (remember her?) last Saturday in 25 de Julio! She finally got over the evangelical church and decided to get baptized. But he said that he and another person had to baptized her 8 TIMES before it worked out. And after the 4th time, they gave her a blessing right there in the font to help her do it! YIKES. But hey, how exciting!

Tatiana got baptized last week (and oops I need to send you photos) and it was an awesome service. I was asked to play the flute for a special musical number and I was like, hey how convenient, I have a flute! So that was fun. Tonight her brother, Luis, is getting baptized and Elder Kjar and I are going to take an investigator to it. I'll be sure to send the pics!

Okay, well that's all! Have a good week, and Mom, don't get too overwhelmed with that relief society stuff!!!
Elder Thayne