September 21, 2009

HEY FAMILY,

Thanks for all the information and all the answered questions! Now i know a little bit better whats going on. And now i can let the mission secretary know about all the changes. So, it seems we have a prehistoric whale living in our backyard. Maybe that will do my side project when i get home. When i have spare time i can dig up the whole skeleton and start putting it all back together. Then i can donate it to a museum and they can name it after me (and jeffrey since he found it). Sounds like fun. But i didnt imagine that it was so big. The thing was like 15 inches across and it was missing another part of the vertebrae. The whale had to have been huge. Thats pretty cool though. I must say i was surprised when i saw the fotos.

So this week was really cool for me. Tuesday i went to the temple for the first time in over a year, which was awesome. It was the first time doing the full session in spanish. LAst time i had the headphones. Then this morning we did service in the temple gardens which was also really cool. The temple is just full of really awesome people. The temple presidents wife came out and gave us all sugar cookies which were the best cookies ive had so far in ecuador. then the gardner brought me and a few select number of elders into to back gardens behind everything where no one ever goes. Back in this garden they store the sacred forbidden fruit. They had tons of trees with mangos, coconuts, bananas, papaya, and other fruits that you guys have never heard of. then after that he showed us the forbidden fruit which was a little yellow fruit that was fuzzy like a peach but it tasted almost like a plum. It was quite delicious. But the weird thing was that i, nor any of the other elders who were there, had seen that fruit before. suposeldy its a rare fruit, which is why they call it the forbidden fruit. Another weird thing about the service today- when we walked into the maintenence building there was a huge extra Moroni hanging from the ceiling, so i asked him, whats that for? And he told me that Moroni was the original that they had when they built the temple but they had to change it. What happened was like 10 years ago there was a huge infestation of butterflies who came and layed their eggs all over moroni. During that same week there was a volcano in the mountains that errupted and spewed ash all over the country. so the ash that was flying in the air stuck to all the sticky butterfly eggs and moroni turned black. they said it was pretty odd waking up one day and moroni had turned black. they thought it could be a sign. Anyways, they eventually cleaned all the ash off but it stained moroni and they were forced to change it, so they have the other moroni waiting in case they choose to build another temple close by and they need a moroni. Interesting story. So the temple visit was really cool. We also talked to an elderly couple from Texas who are serving a mission but they just work in the temple for the whole two years. She told us it was awesome and we should plan to do the same thing when we get old.

Well, with my companions...... its gotten a little better but its not good. President wrote me a pretty big letter today asking me what was going on and giving me counsel on what i could do. So i updated him on everything and he said he might be calling me tonight if he still has doubts or questions. More than anything, theres just a lot of laziness and disobedience which isnt good, especially since we`re zone leaders and we should be setting an example, so we`ll see what happens. Theres just three more weeks until my companion goes home, so president might just say, do the best you can and hang in there for three more weeks. But its weird because we`re not working very much and we`re disobedient, but we have two people that are getting baptized in three weeks, which is s free gift from God because we dont deserve it. We im doing good. Ive had lots of time to read and study, now i just wanna put it all in practice.

What else, everything is going pretty well. Im still happy. The elders in my zone strengthen me a lot. Im surrounded by good people. Oh, something else. In the transfer, it seems ive misplaced my debit card again. It might be in my bags or it might be in Milagro or it might be lost, but i havent really looked for it. I wanna do an experiment. I wanna live like a normal missionary and live with the money that the mission gives me. So if you could take the money out of the card (because i dont know where it is) and if i find it and need it some day, ill let you know, but ive been relying on that card too much, and i need to be more thrifty and use my money more wisely, so i wont be needing it.

Well, thats about all i can think of for this week. Thanks again for all that you do for me. I love you all!!! I have the best family in the world!!

Elder Irwin II