update

the past month here has flown by! we moved into a new place at the beginning of the month, because the owners of the house we were living in came to ecuador. they will be here for about 3 months, so we moved into another house a few towns over for now. the last week of september was busy with the move, lots of back and forth on the bus and in taxis with our suitcases packed full of stuff! we were really sad to say good-bye to dunkin, but we know he's excited to have carol and darwin back, and they are so happy to be back in ecuador, too!

october 1st also marked the start of our spanish lessons! we have lessons twice a week with a local sister named monica. her english is excellent and she's a great teacher. one of our friends, frank, is also in the class, and an older sister from our congregation. we have to make 25 flash cards for each class and monica gives us tons of other homework, too. the classes have been great, we're learning the proper conjugation of words and sentence structure and she explains little things we'd probably otherwise never know. classes are saturday afternoon and monday morning, which are also the days of our meetings so from friday to monday we are super busy with homework, service, meetings and preparing for the meetings.

a field service update: josh is now conducting a study with a man we met at the market. at first it was really brief, at the market by his stand (he sells paintings). then he asked us if we could come one morning a week to his house, before the market starts, so that there would be less distractions, so we go there at 8am and study for about 20 mins and then run to meet the service group. today we found him at the market and decided that this week we'd come to his house at 7:30am so that we would have more time.

i have 2 studies that have been regular and consistent for the past few weeks... the first one is with a college student, she's about 20. she has tons of questions and she really thinks about things and gives great answers. she was thrilled to get her own Bible! last week was a little overwhelming, because her father sat in and he had tons of questions. the good thing is that i had an amazing sister with me and she was able to answer all of them. the father was really nice, but he pretty much doesn't believe in God or that there is much importance to knowing what the Bible says. it was really cool, because the girl i study with was actually trying to convince her dad that it is important to know the truth! i was worried he wouldnt want her to study any more but he said he wants all his kids to make their own decisions in life. the other study is with a younger girl, she's about 12. it's been about every other week so far, she's not home every tuesday when i go. she is super quiet but really pays attention and thinks about her answers, so we'll see how it goes. i plan to ask her next week if she enjoys my visits, because i am not sure if she really wants to study, or if it's just like her mom wants her to.

last week was my first talk (in spanish) and the week before was josh's first reading (in spanish). josh was also the chairman yesterday for the first time! in spanish they call the chairman the "presidente" which i think is hilarious.

lastly in exciting new news, we bought a car! more details on that later, but it's been quite a bit of work..... we had to go into quito a few times to test drive things and look around. then a whole day in quito for paperwork. then we've spent 3 days now locally trying to finalize all of the paperwork. it's bit a bit of a nightmare because the guy we bought it from started the paperwork when he bought it, but never finished it, so now things in the system are all messed up. anyway, we THINK we have it all figured out now, with what paperwork we need, and we should be able to finalize things on monday.

our kingdom hall is currently undergoing renovations so our meetings are now in a school in town, which is actually a bit easier for us to get to. KH construction here is different from in the US. they don't have regional building committees here like we are used to. instead, there are a few construction groups in the country each based out of one area, and they travel around the country and assist in any construction needed. the group that is working on our hall is based out of quito and there are about 6 or 7 of them. they take the lead in the building and the local sisters help with the cooking and the local congregations help with the construction. this past month has been so busy for us with everything else i've already mentioned that we haven't been able to assist yet, but we are hoping later this week will work out.

thats it for news from ecuador!

xo