Arrival in Guayaquil, Ecuador

Dear Family and Friends,

Lewis and I are happily settled in our apartment on the temple grounds in Guayaquil, Ecuador. We arrived at night on September 19th and started working in the temple the next day. President Groberg and his wife picked us up at the airport, brought us to our apartment and made us feel very welcome. They and the other senior missionaries provided us with enough food to be comfortable. The apartment is lovely and we feel quite spoiled. Another senior couple, the Martins, have been taking great care of us. They took us shopping and have been instructing us in the life of a temple worker here. We have found that eating at the food court in the malls here is a traditional activity and we have happily participated a couple of times.

There are three other senior couples from the USA and four native Spanish speaking couples living here with us in the alojamiento. In the building called the alojamiento, we also have a Church Distribution store, a Family History Library, overnight apartments for the temple patrons who must travel a long distance, as well as a big kitchen/dining room for the visiting patrons. The children especially love the elevator.

I have not yet taken photos and will add them when I do. I took the photo above in 2011. We do not have a working telephone but will have both a landline when the system repairs are completed in this building and a cell phone when we get to the right place to purchase a new chip for our cell phone. Our computers work well. We read emails daily and can Skype. If you would like us to call you, just shoot us an email and we can call you inexpensively.

We have found ourselves very busy getting settled and learning new things. Lewis is at a meeting this afternoon in the temple for new male coordinators and missionaries. We went with the Martins this morning to another ward to see a family history presentation they gave to both the youth and the adults of the ward. We have seen lots of youth and a surprising number of adults in the baptistry with their own family names. It is exciting that the work is being done not only for names that have been "extracted" from institutional records but also for so many direct ancestors of the members here in Ecuador. The youth (with their computer knowledge and enthusiasm) are helping the older generations to be effective in their family history research.