Hi

Pondering life.

Hey guys. It was a great week but went by sooooo fast so I really dont know what to tell you! Ill hit 3 things today-- exercise, street life, L's baptism.

Exercise. Elder B and I bought some vanilla protein powder last week and have been going wayyyy hard every morning. We have tons of water bottles/broom sticks that we use, a few cement weights, and a bed frame that we use as our bench/perfect pushup/dip bar. Knowing that you have a delish banana vanilla cream protein shake waiting for you makes working out much more excited and easy...and cant forget the #gainz

We cook.

Street life. Brian asked me when we skyped about the street life...and I told him we dont really have too many exciting things happen to us....well I was wrong. This week we had a few cool stories. One night as we were heading home and crossing this kinda sketchy bridge we saw 1 guy on one end, another in the middle, and one of the other end. And we got weird looks and strong/bad feeling about them, and just as we got to the other end all 3 started following us. But we already had promptings that something was up so were already walking pretty fast, and then we picked it up even more for about 5 minutes until we got a panaderia (break shop/little store) were there was a handful of people, and after waiting inside for a few minutes they left and we went home a different way. 

Two nights ago we saw a group of like 20 people burning a motorcycle. Turns out 2 robbers tried robbing a woman, when a group of people threw them off their moto and then more people came over and helped them and then logically they burnt the robbers motorcycle, and woulda burnt them if they didnt run!!

Last night at like 11 at night I heard a ton of wreckage outside...so I went to the window and then noticed all the neighbors looking out their windows....Ended up watching 2 really drunk guys crashing their cars (or prob stolen cars) into each other like 20 times and just destroying them and then every few minutes getting out and yelling and throwing broken car parts at the other cars....They drove off (hopefully didnt drive off the mountain) after 5 minutes before the cops came...crazy stuff.

L. L got baptized on Saturday! He is a beast. 71 year old dude whose son has been a member for 15 years...and finally listened to us and had a change of heart and is now sooo much happier and is truly the man. He is hilarious too... See pic!

Well, love you all! Got a week full of meetings (trainers conf, zone conf, district meeting) so i know this weeks gonna fly. Hope you all smile at a stranger today! Its fun.

Elder Sorensen

´´I dont repent for this love´´ classic soccer fans.

....And for gma´s question of the day!!

Since today is Memorial Day in the USA, I was wondering if they observe the same holiday in Ecuador? 

What holidays are most important to the culture? 

What traditions accompany these holidays.

No, not that I know of or have seen today. They probably have a day similar to Memorial Day, just on a different day of the year!!

Here the biggest holidays are New Years Eve, Christmas, and something called Carnival. New Years Eve is like halloween, everyone dresses up crazy with tons of masks and a lot of adults dress up as girls and run around the streets bugging for money...a little strange but hey! Also on New Years Eve there are a tonnnnn of fire works, its like a comb of Halloween and 4th of July in the states! Christmas is pretty much the same...except that most of their celebrating takes place on Dec 24. A big dinner, christmas party, staying up until midnight, things like that. And Carnival is a week long holiday in February (or march.... i think feb) when everyone basically just goes crazy and places huge water fights and also egg/flour fights. Its pretty crazy but for the most part all take it with a good attitude and is mainly done without bad feelings...unless your a gringo, we get attacked if we arent large or careful.