Week 70 from Quito Ecuador

This has been a fun week.  Monday the Acuña family, from our ward here, invited us to attend FHE in their home with them.  They have two boys, one about 8 and one about 11.  Sister Acuña’s mother and sister were also there.  It was an enjoyable evening.  As is typical with meals here in Ecuador dinner was a very light meal of a cup of hot chocolate and a ham and cheese sandwich.  They have their main meals at breakfast and lunch. Many of the restaurants only serve breakfast and lunch.

This month we made a couple of changes in the assignments of duties in the office.  President Richardson wanted Sister Allred to handle all the process of the records for baptisms. Instead of me doing part and she doing part she is now handling the whole process.  So I’ve been training her on what I had been doing, which was to gather the records from the missionaries and make sure all fichas “baptism records” have been turned in for those reported.  This leaves me with a big chunk of time with not much to do.  I have been spending a lot of time on updating the mission history.  It’s turning out very nice.

The Quito mission has a couple of missionaries assigned to the office for a period of time.  President Ghent has asked them to work on their mission history and suggested that they take a look at what I have done with our history.  They asked me to send them some examples of some of what I have done so they could use them to incorporate into their history. I had done some of the same things in their history before the mission was divided but I don’t think much of it was updated since the split.

President Richardson gave Lynn and I permission to travel to Guayaquil to attend the temple there. Thursday morning Lynn and I left early to catch a plane for Guayaquil.  It took longer to get to the airport than it did to go from the Quito Airport to the Guayaquil airport.

 The Guayaquil Temple has patron housing that is very nice and we stayed there for $4 each a night. The temple also has a cafeteria that serves a very basic meal for only about $2.50 and we ate all our meals there.

Patron Housing

View of the temple from our room.

 We arrived at the temple at about lunch time on Thursday.  We were able to get my temple cards printed and then eat lunch in the cafeteria.  The temple is only open for three sessions in the morning and three sessions in the afternoon during the week and is closed during the afternoon.  We went back for dinner and then did a session in the evening.  Friday we had breakfast, did a session, had lunch, took a bus tour of the city and then return in the evening for dinner and another session.  We met the two senior couples who are serving in the temple and also talked with the temple President and his wife.  It was a great trip.

The Guayaquil temple is probably three times as big as the Monterrey Temple but has about the same amount of attendance.  On Saturday we counted about eight buses in their parking lot. They say that the Otavalo Stake sends a bus every week.  I can remember us having, most of the time, twice that number of buses at the Monterrey Temple on Saturdays.  The Guayaquil Temple is busy on Saturdays but has more room, with two session rooms and sitting for 60 in each room, as compared to the Monterrey Temple with its one session room that sits only 40.  The Monterrey Temple did not have patron housing.  The patrons who came there on Saturdays would travel through the night, arrive at the temple as we were opening and just hang out in the Stake Center across the driveway from the Temple.  The Monterrey area really needs another temple. Maybe someday they will get one.

The bus tour that we took on Friday afternoon took us around the city. We were the only two on the bus so they did the tour dialogue in English. We caught the tour bus at the Marcelon Centro Comercial, which is a long water front commercial area and park.  It has a large botanical garden at one end and many eating areas and children’s playgrounds all along it, along with several statues commemorating different things.  It runs along a large river which is one of two that run parallel to each other and empty into the Pacific Ocean. We were told that the current in the river would sometimes go in reverse because of winds.  There were several bridges that crossed the river.  One of them was reserved for only bikes and pedestrians.  No cars were allowed on it except emergency vehicles when necessary. One thing I noticed was the city of Guayaquil is a lot flatter than Quito, not many hills and mountains to climb.  There was a large replica of a monkey that we passed a couple of times that was interesting. Another thing I found interesting was the supports for the overpasses. Many of them had art work, some in ceramic, on them.  It was very pleasing to look at.  There was a lot of interesting architecture and many pleasing parks to see.

Link to more pictures of the trip to Guayaquil