Burnin' Down the House!

Hola!!!

Well, another big surprise!!! Guess where I am??? Cuenca?? No!! Guayaquil?? Tampoco!!! I am in . . . . LOJA!!!!!

Don`t freak out!!!! I didn`t get emergently tranferred, I´ll be back in Cuenca on Saturday. What`s happening is that President is giving a capacitation to all the zone leaders, district leaders and senior companions. Hermana Castillo and I tecnically have the same time in the mission, but she came to Ecuador while I was still in the MTC, so President decided that she was going to stay in Cuenca and be capacitated and I was going to go to Loja. All the senior companions from Loja are going to Cuenca, so we had to come down here to hang out with the people in Loja. So I´m with Hermana Montezuma, who is from Esmeraldas, Ecuador (it`s part of the Quito Mission) and we`re having a killer time. Hermana Montezuma was trained by Hermana Montenegro, so we`re getting along really well, haha.

Well, remember when I said that I was worried about the trial of faith that I knew was coming?? It came this week!!!! Leonel was baptized on Saturday, he was really excited, came early and everything. We told him to be at church on time the next day so that he could be confirmed. Well, we got there right behind the Flia Flores that lives right in front of him, who brought his little sister Evelyn. We were like, oh, Leonel must be here already!!! But when we asked her, she said he didn`t come!!!! WHAAAATTT??? We spent the next 15 minutes calling but he didn`t answer. Finally we got a hold of his mom, who said that he was sick and had just left to go to the doctor or something, but we weren`t completely sure if that`s what she said or not. But he never showed up and by the end of church we were just feeling miserable-this is the first time that something like this has happened to me in the mission. It was a huge bummer and we never did get ahold of him all that day, and then we had to explain to the district leaders and the zone leaders what happened and that we actually had no idea what was going on with him because we hadn´t been able to talk to him all day and it was pretty embarrassing, but they were all really nice about it. But I felt bad because I knew I had to leave the next day and there wouldn`t be anything I could do about it in Loja, plus I felt bad that I was leaving HNA Castillo all by herself to talk to President about it. But we really did do everything in our power, and we`re pretty positive that something relatively awful happened to keep him from coming, because he was really excited about being baptized. He`ll be confirmed next week, I know it!!!!

But we`ve been working hard, finding and teaching. We found this really cool lady in a tienda this week, named Carmen. She understood everything we were teaching her, and I was pretty much filling out her baptismal record in my head while we were teaching her. Everyone else is doing good. We`re working hard and seeing the results.

We had a HILARIOUS experience yesterday-we almost burned the house down!!! The house didn`t burn down, which is why it was hilarious. So last night we decided that we wanted popcorn, but all we had was the kernels and the stove. Okay, neither of us had ever made popcorn over the stove before but we were sure we could do it. HNA Castillo put it in the pan, turned on the stove, and I went to go pack a bag for Loja. When I came back in I said, hey it smells like it`s burning, but we took the lid off and it was fine, so we went back to packing. A few minutes later I came back and noticed that the kitchen was filled with smoke-I took the lid off and the popcorn was completely black!!!! AUGHH!!! We ended up having to open every window in the house because the whole place FILLED with smoke, it was hilarious!!!! But we were sad because we really wanted popcorn, haha.

Now for the questions-Elder Caro called me and he was able to get the package out, but I haven´t gotten it yet and will probs not get it until next week. And all the warm clothes came and I am very happy!!! It`s like I went shopping even though it`s all clothes that I already had!!!

Well I wanted to write more but this keyboard sticks like crazy and is driving me up the wall. Love you all and sigan adelante!!!

MUCHO AMOR

Hermana Chamberlain