Random things to share

The most recent Young Single Adult to move into our ward is Carolina. She is from Guayaquil which is the other big city in Ecuador. It is where the temple is located and is on the coast way down south. She is a returned missionary and wonderful. She had lots of friends come up to Quito to visit her and five of them came to church with her. We had a great class with lots of students and lots of great participation. They wanted a photo after church and I am so glad they brought it up. I wasn't bright enough to think of it. Here we all are with Carolina on the right next to me:



I read a quote that made me laugh. You guys are way too young to remember George Burns. He was a stand up comedy guy back in the days of when I was young and so was TV. He had a wife named Gracie who was the original (for me anyway) less bright blonde. At the end of their performance he would say, "Say good night Gracie" and she would say, "Good night Gracie".

Anyway here is his quote: "Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city."

You can quote me as saying: "Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family even if they are in another country - which is not my preference."



Here is a photo of the senior sisters in Quito. We are in the kitchen of the Mission home at the Hermana Conference. Sister Sloan on the far right is the wife of the Mission President. The rest of us all live in the same building.


We got a call from the senior missionaries last night and they said, "Where are you? Are you going?" We forgot that we were all taking the four office missionaries out to eat at Rusty's because Elder Hakes is getting a transfer back out to the field. He has been an Assistant to the President for longer than we have been here. Rusty's is a hamburger place that was started by an American who married an Ecuadorian. It has a very nice building and they even have root beer! The missionaries love it and we enjoyed it too. You can get a simple (SEEM-ple), doble (DOHB-le) or a triple (TREEP-le) - one, two or three meat patties. I had a simple and couldn't eat it all. You can choose from four types of fries, the usual kind, the thicker potato wedges, a mita, mita (mitad = half you get 1/2 onion rings and 1/2 french fries...and I've forgotten the fourth choice. We all got mita, mita. The onion rings are great. They were not all rings but they use fresh onions and fry them right in front of you. They say the owner is often there. He is a very old man now. He opened his first hamburger restaurant here in 1979. Mayonnaise a big deal here. It seems they put it on most everything (along with aji). (Did you know that they do not sell mayonnaise in jars here but in a bag with a small round opening with a screw cap. Seemed strange to me but it is much easier than trying to scrape out the last of it in a big jar.) So when you get a little cup of mayo and ketchup too you can make fry sauce. The slice of cheese they put on our burgers was orange the color of Kraft macaroni. That worried me but the bun was like the big ones you get in the states, the meat tasted good and it had fresh lettuce and onion and tomato and it was all good. Not as good as In-and-Out but good.