Hola mi amigos and amigas?!
We just got back from an amazing two day assembly. Of which we didn't understand any of. On Saturday we had to catch the bus at 5:15 in the morning. And so we ended up arriving in Manta three hours early for the assembly. Which means we got to help clean and set up. The assembly hall is an open air auditorium with lawn chairs for seating. And the whole thing is surrounded by really busy dirt roads so dust is everywhere and just keeps coming. So our first order of business for the morning was to take rags and wipe down all the chairs in the auditorium. And then we swept and mopped several of the walkways getting it ready for the inspection of the CO. Maxine and Courtney helped us find the scriptures so we could kind of follow along. Our two elders both had parts. Eden is from Australia and Steve is from Georgia USA. During the assembly we stayed in a hotel with Eden and his wife Sarah, Luis, and we shared a room with Maxine. We got to go around the town where we got awesome street food. Wonderful wonderful wonderful wonderful hotdogs that had crumbled potato chips on top and some sort of pink mayonaise. We also got to go shopping. I got board shorts. Because Courtney is going to teach us how to surf tomorrow. We got to eat dessert at get this, the most exotic place we could find... KFC. That's right, they have Kentucky Fried Chicken! Last day of the assembly we got bathroom duty. But me and Veronica were just glad to finally feel useful for the first time since we got here. It was an amazing feeling to have all the love of the brothers and sisters shown in the fact that they ALL helped. Which meant we got all the cleaning done in a quarter of the amount of time it would have taken in the United States. And there was twice the amount of work. On the bus ride home me and Veronica got separated. She was in the back with Courtney, and I was in the front with a girl who looked anything but interested in me. I finally went ahead and asked "Como te llama?" She replied in a soft voice something that for the life of me I could not pronounce. But the ice was broken and we had a two hour conversation using a Spanish/English dictionary and a lot of hand motions. We talked about everything from "yes she does have a weird name" to "she knows who Michael Jackson is and she knows exactly when he died"! Also that she likes Justin Beiber and the Jonas Brothers just like any other fifteen year old girl. I also found out that she is in our congregation and she has actually only been studying for a little while. I'm excited to see her again cause she was so patient with me. The whole time I was talking to her Veronica and Courtney had the back whipped up into a singing frenzy. The children sang Kingdom Melodies all the way home, very very loudly. And the whole time Veronica was getting hit on by all the teenage boys. She's very popular. We are slowly learning that here, generally everything you plan wont go as planned. You just gotta go with it learn to adapt, regroup, and get on with it.
Ciao
