Christmas week in Ecuador

12/19 We went to the Colón Ward again with the sisters. Sister Yost was not feeling well and needed to stay home. There was some problem with the sacrament (perhaps they didn't have enough bottled water) so we had the talks first and the sacrament after another sacrament song. We went to the Gospel Essentials class again and saw the video The Restoration which always gets to me. It is wonderful. Have all of the grandchildren seen it recently? We sat next to Juan Carlos who was friendly and seemed very interested.

We took a little nap after eating our toasted cheese sandwiches and afterward went to a Christmas concert at a not so nearby stake center. It was surprisingly wonderful musically and a lovely tribute to Christmas. This choir practices four hours every week and in addition to the Christmas hymns they sang Carol of the Bells and did the Hallelujah Chorus in English. The best part was that Juan Carlos came and sat next to us again. He is a university graduate in computer systems, is working in Quito and has a car. He said that he has always thought that there should be more information from God than the Bible and was surprised when he read the first page in the Book of Mormon that it claimed to be what he thought should be available. He is reading and studying and hoping that it might all be true. He loved the music and enjoyed that they also had a screen showing scriptures and pictures and some of the video of the Savior´s birth and life along with the singing. It was good to be there because we had an opportunity to talk with him about how we feel about the Savior and how the restored gospel brings added understanding to all that the Bible teaches. Grandpa had brought his little Spanish hymnario and we were reading the hymns as they were sung. Juan Carlos was especially interested in finding each song and following along with the words. We gave him the hymn book as a Christmas present and he was very pleased.

It was a wonderful evening for us and helped us feel like it is Christmas here as well as at home. It would have been a nightmare for us to get there on our own in the pouring rain and holiday traffic. The wife of the mission president has been involved in the choir, has all six of their children here for Christmas and invited the senior missionaries to come with them in a big van. I'm so glad that we went.


12/20 Second week in the office. No internet connection at home so I need to use office time to do my journaling and at least download my Scrapgirls Christmas freebies. I look forward to getting our internet connection. They said that for sure it will be no later than today. I fear that we won't get it until after Christmas or maybe even New Years. Latins love their holidays, and take their vacations seriously, even more than we do.

Family Home Evening was at our house last night. The Yosts, the Geldmachers and Sister Naylor and Sister Dresen came over. The tradition here is an opening song with one verse in English and one verse in Spanish, opening prayer, FHE lesson, short Spanish lesson, a testimony in Spanish, any business and then a closing song and prayer followed by refreshments. We arranged for our Christmas celebrations. Christmas Eve dinner and party will be at the Geldmachers, Christmas breakfast will be at our house with Christmas omelets made by Elder Hakes and Christmas dinner will be at the Yosts. We are all bringing food to each meal and the four office elders will come to each one and the nurse and her companion will come to Christmas dinner. I guess I wouldn't get a lot of time with my computer anyway. We will come back to work on Monday. I don't know if any Ecuadorians will. We look forward to getting to know the other seniors well. They are lovely people with interesting histories. Sister Dresen is a jew who converted when her children were young. Sister Naylor lost her husband to heart disease about five years ago. He had been a pilot in the Army and they both taught school after he retired. The Yosts have one son who knows ten languages and is getting a doctorate in Asian religions at Cornell. We don´t know much about the Geldmachers yet except that this is a second marriage for them. Oh, and one of the office elders is Elder Arellano who is from Mexico City. We will know him better after this weekend as well.

Here are photos of Sister Dresen above and Sister Naylor below (though this isn't our apartment).



12/21 Off to the office. It was not raining but I was cold most of the day. I wish that I had brought high necked and long sleeved shirts. When we went outside for lunch it was warm outside but still I put my coat back on inside the building. I spent most of the day calling students and emailing those I could not reach by phone. I was doing the list of new participants who are behind in payments. There is a very huge backlog of 150+ past due participants here. Loans were given out without any screening in the beginning and there are many who we are unable to contact or participants who have not paid anything in years. So we are trying to focus on the new ones to be sure they get off on the right foot and understand how and why they should make their payments. Also we have a Renewed Hope program where those who are 150 days past due can make four monthly payments in four successive months and become current. The past due balances are then put at the end of the loan and they have a fresh start.

There is lots to do here. We are hoping to be able to help the participants become successful. I hate calling because I can't understand everything that is said but some of the calls turned out well. The kids usually try to help me understand and respond favorably. I probably made 20 calls but it took me almost the whole day. We were able to solve a few problems with auto debits and helping kids be aware of missing payments etc. Slowly things will get better. I send out birthday messages every day and some of them email back to thank me. That is fun.

After work I downloaded my photos to my laptop and tagged and rated them. There was a note in our mail cubby in the lobby of our building that they tried to install our internet but we were not home. They had agreed to call us first but we never got the call! I hope they call tomorrow.


12/22 Went to work. The biggest thing we accomplished was destroying all of the files on the PEF students. For some reason they printed the Personal Progress Report off the computer for every student and made a file. All the info is online and it is updated daily. We pulled all the papers, removed all the staples and shredded all of the paperwork. They are moving me into Lewis' office and rearranging things. We have stacks of files laying about. I hope we can get it all back together. Went to the store to get the things we need for all the Christmas meals. Got back and found two missionaries and Sister Naylor knocking on our door. We had agreed to go Christmas caroling with the Gospel Principles class members but had forgotten. We quickly changed, found our hymn books and flash lights and left with them. We couldn't find an empty taxi. It took 1/2 hour and still no luck. The missionaries called and by the time we could have arrived they would have finished, so we went back home. I felt bad for Sister Naylor but we were happy to return home. The best news is that they are coming to install our internet connection tomorrow. YEA!


12/23 We stayed home today to await the guys who would install our internet connection. They came. They were more than an hour late but they came. Things did not go smoothly but after another hour they were able to get it done. Lewis' computer worked great but they couldn't get our router to accept their connection and provide it to my computer. They tried for a while and gave up. Fortunately Lewis didn't give up all afternoon and finally he figured out how to make it work. I have internet access and can communicate with our family. What a great Christmas present. Life is good now!

I spent the day making cornflake cookies and toffee bars and cutting up peppers and onion and sautéing them along with mushrooms for the omelets on Christmas morning. I will cook bacon that morning and make french toast and provide juice. Hopefully we will have a fun breakfast together on Christmas morning.
I also changed out the external hard drive that has been making weird noises for the last couple of weeks. I got everything moved to it and started up Mozy again. I had downloaded all of the photos from the MTC and the ones I have taken here. It is so great to be in business again with my computer and my photos and everything to be backed up. I should be able to get some more fun photos of our Christmas in the next few days.

Emily wrote that Evan and Emmett have been very sick. Emmett has RSV and has been hospitalized for three days. He is home now and improving but they sent home a suction machine for Emily to continue to use on him. I will call her tomorrow. It has been a scary ordeal for their family. She reminded me that Evan was in the hospital at the same age when he was injured. She said that having her baby in the hospital at four months is not a tradition she wants to continue. We pray they will be better soon.


12/24 Went to work this morning. No rain. My office has been moved and improved. I am in with Lewis and we have two desks facing each other with a low partition between us. The two call center stations are behind me. They will finish it next week by moving us a bit closer to the wall to allow room for a partition between me and the call center. We also have two additional stations in the next room. But we will not get the two additional computers we need until next year. We'll try to look on the bright side. We have new chairs that are wonderful and the office set up is very nice. The office closed down at mediodia since it is Christmas Eve.

We called Emily when we got home and Emmett is much better. She still has to suction him but he is eating normally and is back to his happy and smiley self (except when the suctioning is taking place). Edgar's family was over and they were making tamales in lots of flavors. They will all have a great dinner together tonight and Emily is only responsible for the salad. She sounds sick but says that she is feeling OK and is so grateful that Emmett is better. She said that the doctor sent them to the hospital because Emmett was so bad that without help he would not have the energy to get the air he needed. What a difficult ordeal for them all. She said that during the discussion about Emmett in the doctor's office, Evan said, "What about me? I am sick too." Yes he was, but fortunately not as sick as Emmett. We also talked to Jennifer. She came down with the flu last night and has been unable to function today. Fortunately Aaron was able to stay home. She may not enjoy Christmas day very much but with Aaron's help all will be well. We cleaned the house a bit for company tomorrow and took a little nap.

This evening we went to the Geldmachers and sang some Christmas carols, had an opening prayer and Lewis was asked to read the Christmas story from Luke. Then we took a plate of food to their neighbor, an elderly gentleman who lives alone. We sang Silent Night and he was very pleased to enjoy the food and hear us sing. We had meatballs, breaded shrimp and sweet and sour vegetables over rice, vegetables and dip, a cheese ball and crackers, and lots of desserts - my cookies and rice krispy treats and chocolate dipped pretzels and nuts, cornflake wreaths and macaroons. Everything was delicious and it was fun to be together. After eating we played BuzzWords. A fun game to play in teams and try to guess phrases that a key word appears in. Unfortunately the boys beat the girls, but by only by a couple of points. And they had the help of one sister. Sister Geldmacher gave me a tiny manger scene. She asked if I had one and when I said no she got one she had purchased for her family but turned out to be an extra. It is lovely and now sits under our Christmas tree. She also gave all of us a table runner that was woven in Otavala. They are beautiful and I love mine. The Yosts passed out presents also. They gave us a small calendar with paintings of the Savior by Simon Dewey and a little coin purse that says Ecuador on it. We felt a bit bad that we didn't get gifts for everyone but delighted to receive such nice items and have something to open even before Christmas. Thank you fellow missionaries. It was a fun evening and now we need to rest up for the big breakfast in the morning.


12/25 We enjoyed a very delightful and Merry Christmas. It started with breakfast at our house. The four office elders came in addition to the senior missionaries. Elder Hakes made omelets to order for each of us. We could choose from onion, two kinds of peppers, mushrooms, cheese, ham and fried pork (we thought we bought bacon - it looked just like bacon and had a picture of a pig on it but we bought costillas, ribs...I cooked the rest of the things ahead and planned to have the bacon cooking when they arrived so it would smell good. Oh well.) Brother Geldmacher had made sausage because he couldn't find any he liked here. He gave us some for breakfast and it was very good. No one complained about the lack of bacon. We had french toast as well. Lewis had made bread and we had several kinds of syrup. Sister Dresen made buttermilk syrup which was delicious. It all came together and everyone was happily stuffed. The elders were anxious to get to the office so they could call home and all of us were looking forward to talking to our children and grandchildren. That was the highlight of the day.

Elder Hakes, Elder Arellano, Elder Di Natale and Elder Vomocil

At 3:30 we went to the Yosts for Christmas dinner. Again everyone brought things and the food was delicious. The Yosts baked a turkey and a ham. Sister Rogers and Sister Nelson joined us. The Yosts borrowed another table and were able to set up three in their living room. There was room for everyone and everything looked so Christmasy and festive. We very much enjoyed our time together.


After dinner we reached David and so were able to talk to all eleven kids and Rosario today or yesterday. We are so proud of all of our children. We miss them but can feel close with Skype and emails. They are such wonderful people doing great things in their lives.

One thing I learned was some of the details of Morgan's surprise 16th birthday party. Susan and Randy and their girls and Paige went. Also, most of David's family was there. Morgan had learned something was up but she was blown away by the scope of her party that was held at the church. The cultural hall was decorated with a disco ball and amazing lighting provided by a ward member. Nancy's friend had made huge tissue paper flowers that hung in clusters from the ceiling. The food was wonderful. The DJ was great and David's family are wonderful dancers. The most memorable part was a photobooth that Aunt Kathy rented for the evening. It was a big box with a curtain like the old fashioned ones. But inside it contained a computer, a little printer and a seat that contained lots of props. Everyone could use it as often as they wanted and Sarah wanted to use it constantly. She yelled at the teenagers to hurry up because she couldn't wait in line any longer. She explained to her mom that she tried to be patient but she just couldn't. Apparently it was a big hit and everyone got all the photos they wanted and Morgan got a disc at the end that contained all of he photos that were taken that night. What a nice memento of her special evening. She told Susan, "You are not going to the football game. You came just for me?" I think she did feel honored and special but Susan and Nancy are telling all of the kids that there will be only this one 16th Birthday party and you all got to attend. Don't expect this on your 16th birthday. Sarah had heard Susan tell someone on the phone that they would probably sing to Sarah at Morgan's party. Near the end of the party Sarah complained that no one had sung to her. So Morgan gathered all of her friends that were still there and they sang Happy Birthday to Sarah. She was pleased but still insisted on her own party when they got home. Susan and the girls had to put one together real quick but it worked out and Sarah was pleased. Nancy says that Cohen still insists that he is not five yet because he hasn't had his own party. December is crazy packed full for the Evan's family!

I learned that the Preisler family gave out the presents under the tree to the person the present was from. That person then gave it to the recipient who opened the present. They focused on what they were going to give a lot more than they focused on what they wanted to get all season long and it made for a more thoughtful and appreciative holiday for their family. I love that idea!

It was a wonderful day. We got to open our packet of letters that were written especially for us. Thank you to each one of you who wrote or drew us a picture. We appreciate the love and the photos and the good wishes. We got to talk with all of our children. We have friends here and enjoyed good food together. Life is wonderful and because of our Savior we can enjoy family and joy for all eternity if that is really what we want. That defines what I hope for all eternity. Will you all please be my family and friends for all eternity? It is joyful to be together in our hearts even when miles separate us.

Love you. Merry Christmas!