La Iglesia en Ecuador

AHHHH church was SOO amazing today!! I´m sad though because Marcella or Marty didn´t come..lame...they just dropped me off and went somewhere while I was there! SO SAD! BUT Robinson is coming next week for sure so that makes me very happy! I seriously love the church though...The gospel is so amazing to me. The fact that I can come halfway across the world and the church is the same. The only difference is it is in Spanish. I guarantee you can´t find that in any other church, and I know that is any other church you cannot find the worderful spirit that is there. I amazes me as soon as I walked in the door from the amazingly crazy outside ( it is insane here...literally...) I instantly feel at peave and at home, even though I am a million miles away from home! I love the church :) Everyone there was SOOO nice! Just wlking in the door I was told Buenos Dias and kissed by like 5-6 people! I doesn´t happen when you visit a different ward in Utah...then after I sat down the bishop came down from the stand and welcomed me, th sister missionaries came over and welcomed me and then two ladies that were sitting behind me packe dup all of their stuff and came and sat next to me. And then a guy that was sitting a few benches over did the same thing and came and sat on the other side of me...I love it :) I did notice that there were quite a bit of moms with kids there and then dads with kids there. I wonder if it was because their spouses weren´t members or what..it was sad to me though whatever it is. There were a lot of them . I just wish everyone could hear the gospel ya know? It´s like I just want to annouce it to the world and hold a mass baptism in the ocean or something,! Ahh there is so much missionary work to be done! Being in Utah and Idaho my whole life I don´t think I ever realizd just how much there really is to do. It´s amazing. But yeah sacrament was awesome as soon as it was over I was swarmed with people haha, literally the entire ward. The lady sitting next me asked what part of the US I was from and I said Utah and holy cow you should´ve seen how excited she got! She kept saying oh the temple oh the temple! And I had some of those pass along cards with me with the temple on them and I pulled one out and was like yeah here it is, and then came the swarms EVERYONE wanted one, if I would´ve known that they loved stuff like that i would´ve brought more! i passed out all of the pass along cards that I had with me and i had to tell them I would bring them more next week! Those were technically for people that aren´t members already but I don´t mind at all because I have 200 of them and there are only like maybe 50 people in the ward haha so I will still have tons! And they love them so they are going to good use! I just wish I had more to give them, I brought a few spanish ctr rings and gave some to the kids and they thought it was the greatest thing ever. There are so many things that we take for granted. Like a simple picture of the temple, or those green ctr rings that they gave us every year in primary haha. Things like that are like gold to these people. Or like the pictures of Christ in our churches, the churches in Utah have the most beautiful pictures of Christ, and we have tons of them, there was not one picture in that whole building today. I brought one with me that I bought right before I left that I am going to give them, it is just a 5x7 picture though...I wish I had known this stuff and I could´ve brought more! And pictures of Pres. Monson and the apostles! They have nothing! I will know for next time what I need though. Sunday school was great as well. Relief Society was awesome as well! So at the beginning I was helping set up chairs and everyone was coming over and asking my name and the Relief Society president comes up and has a paper and my name is written next to closing prayer and she says is this how you spell your name (she had written Karen) so I fixed and then she informs me that I am saying the closing prayer...oh great! I haven´t prayed in Spanish in forever! I was so nervouse. It was probably the worse prayer in the history of learning spanish, haha I just said a prayer to myself before hand to have the spirit help me to know what to say and how to say it. Because I was nervous! They also had me read a paragraph during class, HAHA oh boy, i am such a gringa :) haha No accent whatsoever, but they were so sweet and helped me and after I finished they kept saying (in english actually) Good job good job! haha with their cute little accents :) I can barely understand them when they speak english, it almost still sounds like spanish sometimes haha. But yeah it was awesome, afterwards I was sitting out front waiting for them to come pick me up and a girl came up to me and started talking to me, she was about my age I would imagine, It was really good to talk to her. They were just so sweet. I can´t wait to go back next week! I am so happy I got to go today! Silvana kept trying to talk me out of going haha, they wanted to go to a party and take me to some hot pots or something but I told them that it was really important for me to go to church. And she said you only have 1 1/2 more weeks with us and your life to go to church come with us! haha (absolutely love love Silvanta, but sounds like satan talking to me...) But I explained that in my church it was important that we attend every week and not just sometimes and she said ok that´s fine haha. I am soooo happy that I went! The rest of the day was really laid back, while I was at church they went grocery shopping....haha....but she came home and made an amazing meal! SOOO good :) And then we just kinda hung out, I wrote in my journal, etc... Really nice relaxing day! Good to prepare for tomorrow! Which is gonna be crazy busy, I am working the ER tomorrow and it is Independence Day here...yeah gonna be nuts, Marcella and I are going shopping after I get off too.