On to Ecuador

This HUGE poster was in the airport in Quito. It says, Coca Cola - Take the lid off of happiness. Welcome. You have arrived at the middle of the world.


12/11 The alarm didn't go off! Forget the shower. Just put on clothes and jump in the car. David was up and wondering why we were so quiet. There was no traffic and we made it to the airport in plenty of time. It was a very long day but all the travel went smoothly. We flew to Chicago and then to Miami and then to Quito. On the last leg of our journey Alex was sitting next to Lewis. He is from Ecuador, has been working in Madrid for the last several years and was going home for Christmas. His mother didn't know he was coming and he was excited for the surprise. He was very nice and in our conversation Lewis gave him most of the first discussion. He was very polite and even interested. We didn't have a Book of Mormon to give him but he said he would get on the internet and learn more.

The senior missionaries came to the airport to greet us. They waited for a lot more than an hour since three flights came in at the same time very late at night. We didn't get through customs until almost midnight. The Area also sent a member with a taxi to take us to our apartment. The senior missionaries had put up a Christmas tree inside our apartment to welcome us along with enough food to get us through till Monday. The apartment has everything we need and we felt very welcome and happy to go to bed.

2/12 It was not easy to get up this morning but we met the other senior missionaries downstairs in the lobby and walked to church. We went to the Colon Ward that is only a 1/2 mile or so from our apartment. It was the Primary Children's Sacrament Meeting presentation and they did a wonderful job. There were about 8 older girls and 6 younger boys and 2 little girls on the stand. They all had a speaking part and did so well. They knew all the words to the songs and it was wonderful. We went to the Gospel Essentials class and the teacher was excellent. After an introduction of all the class members and to the topic he divided the class into groups and gave each group an assignment. This is very often used but afterward he numbered the individuals in each group and had them form new groups and teach each other what they had learned. He circulated among the groups and joined their discussions briefly. It was very effective and everyone participated. The class was about evenly divided between members and investigators and I was impressed with how well it worked. The logistics would be more complicated with a large group but it worked very well for our class of about 20. Relief Society went well also. It looks like the church is doing very well in the Colon Ward.

At 4:00 (thankfully after a nap) we went to one of the sister's apartments and enjoyed a great dinner with all of the senior couples and the office elders. The food was American and familiar and the welcome was warm. The humanitarian couple are sort of similar in situation to ours (not working directly with the mission) and will be showing us the ropes since they have been here for six weeks. After one day in Quito we are feeling ready to go to work tomorrow. This is Elder and Sister Yost who are the Humanitarian Services missionaries here in Ecuador. They are from Rexburg, ID.

This was our first day on the job. The senior missionaries walk to work at 7:30 AM. The single sister missionaries need someone to walk with them and all of us work in the same building. It appears that our office building was the Area Office before the South America West and the South America North Areas were combined. Now five countries are in the South America Northwest Area - Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. Our Area Office is in Lima, Peru now. So there is this nice office building that now houses all of the country functions like finance and membership along with the employment resources center and the Quito Mission office. Everyone is anxious to make us comfortable. Lewis has his own office. I have a space but no computer yet. And there is a service center with two computers and telephones for contacting the participants. One girl came in but the other one has had surgery and has not been in for a long time. We will be very comfortable with the office. All we have to do is get the work done! There is a lot of it. It will be easy to improve our record of calls made. There are over a 1,000 participants and only one girl who made about three calls today.

Monday is FHE for the senior missionaries. They have opening and closing songs and prayers, a short Spanish lesson, a regular lesson, a testimony given in Spanish and refreshments. Next week it will be at our home and we get to make the refreshments. This is Elder and Sister Geldmacher who work in the mission office and are responsible for all of the apartments and the mission finances.

12/14 Second day in the office. We walked with the Yosts, Sister Dresen and Sister Naylor. It takes a while to walk the mile and a half because the sidewalks are anything but smooth and there are lights to wait for. Pedestrians have no right of way so you have to be very careful of cars but it seems to be a bit better than in the Dominican Republic. (You might like to read Sister Yost's blog at http://mapayost.blogspot.com/ Go back a couple of posts to see her slideshow about the perils of walking in Ecuador. It is good to keep your chin up, except when you are walking.)

Sister Sloan and Sister Yost in the kitchen of the mission home. The Sloans have two daughters living with them and four children who are married and/or going to BYU. Their family home is in Lehi, Utah.

We were given the assignment to help the Yosts serve lunch at the Mission President's home. For Christmas, President Sloan and his wife were bringing in all of their missionaries for a day in Quito complete with meals. Apparently Sister Sloan has gone all out to treat the missionaries as pampered guests. They love it. The senior missionaries who work with the mission and others who have time help prepare and serve food. The missionaries from Esmeraldas were there today and were treated to sweet chopped ham in rolls, potato casserole, cut up fruit and soup. They had hot chocolate and mostly homemade cookies for dessert. The food was delicious and it was fun to meet the missionaries. It was our first chance to meet President and Sister Sloan. They are both impressive and down to earth. Sister Sloan is obviously very well organized and welcomed us warmly. President had only a few minutes to talk with us but was very happy that we asked for an opportunity to work in a ward or branch that could use some support. It seems that perhaps we will work along with the Yosts for a period of months in several units one after another. He would like us to teach how a ward council should operate. I like that idea because we can travel together and perhaps provide support for Primary and Relief Society. We may have very long Sundays. More photos from the mission home. The back of our mission president's head is visible below.

And just in case you thought missionaries are always serious and solemn, especially while in the mission home under the eye of their mission president...

12/15/It looks like we will have regular office hours as a default. The single sisters need someone to walk with them to the office and home again in the evening.

The light above my desk needed to be replaced so that took a while. The people in charge of physical facilities spent time with us. They have agreed to install another computer and phone to be used for the service center. That will give us three stations and they will arrange to have a space for a fourth when that is approved and funded. I will move into Lewis' office and they will arrange two desks for us. The previous space will become an extension of our Quito Centro de Servicios for FPE.

We had scheduled a time in the conference room to have a video conference with Samuel Gomez (Coordinador FPE del Área) and Henry Utrilla (Supervisor Centro de Servicios). But when the time came the Area had a conference going with Human Resources. We didn't have our cell phone yet so it took a while to communicate and set up something else. Our office phone wasn't working. Finally we communicated by email and got Skype to work with the videos and were able to talk for an hour or so. He told us that the previous South American West Area and the South American North Area were combined in August of 2009 to form the South American Northwest Area to administer Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. They needed to combine the policies and procedures of two different areas and now form the second largest Area in terms of participants. We have almost 10,500 with 1,300 new ones every year! They say it is very fast growing with the resources to support it growing more slowly than the number of participants. In the beginning there was little screening of participants and there is a huge number of old loans with problems. They want to continue working on those problems but put even more effort into training the new participants on how to follow through with their commitments to prevent future problems. So there are lots of concerns but also lots of very good things taking place. We have our work cut out for us but these men understand the goals and how to reach them. We are grateful for strong leaders and we understand that our Area Presidency is one of the strongest supporters of PEF in the whole world. I am assigned to be the Service Center supervisor in Ecuador. I am worried because we have three people currently calling and a workload of about 1200 participants to contact each month! I will have plenty to keep me busy.

We went out to lunch with the Yosts after our call. There is a bakery just around the corner that makes sandwiches and sells bread and desserts. We got two little pizzas for $1.80 each. They are about the size of Pizza Hut personal pizzas and not bad at all! I took half of my pizza home, we should share next time. We also bought 2 rolls con mermelada that were like a croissant filled with jelly and topped with honey. Delicious. Better not eat those every day. There is a nice kitchen and dining room in our building where we can eat lunch. On the walk home from the office we were shown an English bookstore and where the Institute building is located.

Our landlady came to our apartment and we filled out a contract and paid our rent and a deposit. She is very nice and a profesora of Spanish. She also speaks English quite well. She agreed to take out some of our furniture and decorative objects so we will have more room.

12/16 We came early to the office for our Skype conference with Salt Lake. Then we figured out that it was at 12:00 noon rather than at 8:00. Two hours difference but later rather than earlier. We had to delay our appointment with Yolanda, our landlady, a bit but it all worked out.

The conference was to introduce the new e-learning available for PEF. It is wonderful. It consists of many short videos showing PEF functioning. There are interviews with participants, bishops interviewing students, stake leaders teaching, volunteers contacting and so on. It will be wonderful to show rather than just telling. We will find this very useful. It will be online and we will get computer CDs soon and after that they will make CDs that can be shown on the building library equipment. You can choose to show just what will be most helpful to any particular audience or individual learner. We invited Paola to view it with us and she is excited also. Apparently she has done training in the past and is willing to help us in the future.

A young man who works for the cable company came to our office to sign us up for an internet connection. It was much more convenient that going to their office and standing in line. He says we will have it installed by Tuesday of next week. I can hope that is true. Life will be great when I can use my computer with internet at home. I've missed my freebies from Scrapgirls and my Google Reader will be bursting at the seams.

We made it home in time to meet Yolanda. She came to take the furniture and decorative items that we do not want to keep in the apartment. It feels better to have a little more space and less stuff. I still need to organize and it is time to vacuum but we have done a load of laundry and things are coming together.

We went on a wild goose chase to look for a narrow table to hold my laptop and external hard drives. Finally found the stores that were recommended but they did not have what we wanted at any reasonable price. Lewis is thinking of making one but I predict that making one would involve more cost. We'll see.

12/17 Went to work in the rain and spent most of the day going through Lewis' filing cabinet. We threw away lots of stuff. Hope we don't regret it but no one needs pounds of training materials for obsolete processes.

We got very wet at lunch time. But it was our own fault. We went out to lunch with the Yosts and two sister missionaries, one of which is a nurse as is Sister Yost. The two of them have responsibility whenever any of the missionaries have a medical problem. It had rained on our way to work but the sun was out and it looked like no more rain. Not so, it was pouring by the time we were eating and we stayed to get the check because the others had appointments. When we left the restaurant we went the wrong way and it was raining very hard. We bought another umbrella. When we realized that we were lost we went back to the restaurant and started over. We got back to work just fine but in crossing the streets got our feet soaked and we were quite wet before we bought the umbrella. Back at work we took off our shoes and then dripped on our plastic carpet protectors at our desks and wiped it up with paper towels. It is very cool but not cold so we were fine.

We had gone to Pizza Hut. It was very impressive. Much more attractive than any Pizza Hut I have been to before. Our food was served on large heavy square white plates. I heard one crash to the floor in the back of the restaurant so they may not be very practical but they look nice. They had a lunch special where you can get two items for $5.99. You could choose from salads, pasta dishes, bread sticks, pizza or desserts. Those who had been there before were smart and got four different items and split them between the couple or companionship. The food was very attractive and they made squiggles on the plates like they do at Cheesecake Factory. And the "personal pan pizza" is much larger than we are used to. We asked the waiter how much an additional pizza to go would be and he said $7.95. (!?) So we got the pizza at a discount and an extra item and a drink besides. It’s making me hungry. I want to go back soon. But one must wait a long time to get the food and the bill. Our waiter had way too many crowded tables to attend to.

12/18 Saturday was the first day that we did not have to get up early and Lewis got up long before dawn to make bread. We had found whole wheat flour and also some quinoa flour and Lewis wanted to experiment. He made about 7 loaves and we gave a loaf to each of the two other couples and the two single sisters who each live in their own apartment. It was good but there is room for improvement. We organized a bit more, vacuumed and mopped the floors. I ironed all of the clothes that were wrinkled from being packed our suitcases. We gave up on finding or making a table to serve as my computer desk and went back to MegaMaxi and bought two very large TV tray type tables that will work fine. Together they cost $66 but anything else would have been much more. So we are in pretty good shape and only need our internet connection. We had bought a $35.00 desk chair on our first trip to MegaMaxi with the Yosts. I'm ready to have my computer with internet available to me so I can blog and make birthday photos and communicate with our family and read my favorite blogs.