Elder Shaydon Gates: Tsunami Warning For Galapagos Islands

4-7-14

Elder Ashton told me that he communicated with you, you will have to talk to president to get permission to come down.. So in other words.... COME ON DOWN TO THE BEST MISSION IN THE WORLD!!!

Okay so I was thinking about the following, I would love to go to church in Centenario, that's in Guayaquil. Like my last interview with the president will be on Monday, I’ll have my interview with president and a little meeting with my group, then usually we go out with our companions and visit the converts. So if you guys came on Tuesday that would be perfect, I don’t have a problem with being out in Ecuador for another week, I have no problem being in the best mission ever for another week ha-ha. we could just go directly to Cuenca and start there, on Tuesday on Wednesday we go to Cuenca and we stay maybe two days there, and after Cuenca we would go to El Guabo and Santa Rosa for Thursday and then come down to Guayaquil on Friday and spend the rest of the time in Guayaquil. Just to let you know, Guayaquil isn´t the safest town ever hahaha, I remember I’d talk with a member that lives in Cisne and he told me that he would okay with driving us around Guayaquil, he would be our guide dude. Ha-ha we can trust him, we would just visit sectors that I’ve been in, and I would love to Visit Centenario and go to church there, that where all of my super active converts are ha-ha. And yeah maybe we just fly home on Monday or Tuesday, the temple is in Guayaquil and I want you to meet President Torres also if that possible for him. But yeah that's the way I’m looking at it, and to come to the Galapagos... that going to be a little hard, because just to enter the island, you have to pay 100 dollars, this is by far the most beautiful sector that I’ve been in so I don’t know, I don’t think it would be possible to come here due to the expensive costs. Just to come here would be like 1,800 dollars so yeah don’t worry I'll take a lot of pictures ha-ha.

Right before Elder Cabrera Left

Okay so just to let you know, I’m literally in paradise right now ha-ha, I have a new companion, his name is Elder Espinoza, he´s from Gilbert Arizona, he´s a really cool missionary, he got here in November of last year, I was there in the airport when he got here ha-ha. My companion Elder Cabrera had changes ha-ha. So yeah he got here last Friday so he wasn’t here for all the fun with the tsunami ha-ha..

New Companion - Elder Espinoza from Gilbert AZ

Puerto Ayora

Speaking of tsunami, I gotta say that was one long night ha-ha. In the island, there are basically two parts, the low part and the high part... pretty simple right? the low part is where the main city is, the city is called Puerto Ayora, it’s the largest city in Santa Cruz, that's where the sister missionaries work at, the last 3 blocks of the city Puerto Ayora is our sector, and we also cover the whole high part of the island, the high part of the island is 20 minutes away from Puerto Ayora in taxi. There are about 4000 people in the upper part. So that night when there was a warning, we were already in the upper part. We get a call from the sister missionaries saying "There’s going to be a tsunami, what do we do?" ha-ha so pretty much the whole city of Puerto Ayora went up to the upper part to wait for the warning to pass, it was apparently a red alarm... that means it was a pretty big deal. So yeah we basically just stayed up on the higher part for the whole night, it was us, the sister missionaries, and the senior couple ( their names are Elder and Sister Pettinguil). And we just stayed with members up in their house for the night and then went down... it was a VERY long night ha-ha. But yeah there was never a tsunami that hit so we were all safe.

I was Dead

Me Sleeping During The Tsunami Warning

Chilling with the Sisters during The Tsunami Warning

Okay so we are working with a guy who is the Ex husband of a member and he is trying to get his life back together by getting to know the church. He’s very excited, he went to the priesthood session on Saturday and went to the afternoon session on Sunday, it was awesome. He’s excited. So pray hard for him so that he can be baptized this Saturday. also we are working with a lady named . . . , she can also be baptized this Saturday but she needs a little bit more excitement, please pray for her!!! We want all 2 of them to be baptized this week.

It's really Green in Bellavista

I think we will be changing houses this next week, I spent 65 dollars last week, basically on transportation. Everything is expensive here and we are always having to travel from sector to sector. So yeah it’s kinda hard but it’s possible. The mission gives us a little bit more money so that we can survive. But yeah the members here are awesome! Everyone here loves the missionaries a lot. I’m getting a nice sexy tan going on so yeah my arms and face will be nicely tan and everything else will be white as a ghost hahaha.