Week 57 - Cruising Along

Dearest friends and family,

Hello friends and family. Welcome to the Elder Ericksen weekly update. What can I say? I am crazy busy, which I think has been an overall theme for the last two months. I’ve become rather fond of expressing a good week-to-week summary. It helps me reset my mind. So here I am! I’m going to shoot out a few bullet points for this week:

• In the mission the Latin elders have the opportunity to learn English from the North Americans and part of that is done with little quizzes given over the phone by the office secretaries from Quito. Elder Cuevas has been really excited about learning English and I have been helping him pass off lots of these quizzes. The one observation I have had is that these calls are one of the most stressful events that can happen for the Latin missionaries because it is really hard to understand English over the phone.
• I am eating way more food than any human ever should be allowed to. We have a very large pool of Investigators to visit that are progressing nicely and basically all of them invite us to eat something after we’re done teaching. It’s a very nice gesture every one, but I have been feeling a little sick from all the food lately. A couple of nights ago I got up at 2 AM to puke simply because I was too full. I am always full.
• We have tons of people to visit here and we are stretched pretty thin, especially at night. We have at least 10 different families who want visits every week and who are only available after 7pm. Tonight we did a division where I went out to teach with one man from the church (Luis Guerrero) and my companion went out with a different man from the church (Jackson Mendoza) just so we could cover more of our appointments. It was fun and effective.
• I am super excited about the General Conference of the church happening next weekend. It will be so edifying and emotionally satisfying to see something familiar from the US. The messages also always really lift me up and inspire me.

I love and miss you all despite really enjoying being here in Ecuador. I am a very satisfied missionary.

With love,

Elder Ericksen