Mi Querida Familia,

It sounds like everyone had a busy week! With tests, the ACT, PTSA activities, and feeding hungry missionaries I´m sure everyone was excited for the weekend to start! 

Mom, thank you so much for taking care of the whole housing situation, I´m really excited to live on campus! I know several people from my mission that will be living in Heritage Halls as well, so I´m sure it will work out really well! 

This week was really crazy! My new companion, Elder Norris, is really great, and maintains a great attitude even though he´s not feeling well. He´s really different from Elder Gemmell, because Elder Gemmell was a really calm, man of few words. Elder Norris is really active and excited. I can hardly keep up sometimes hahaha. =) He´s from Mississippi and he´s very much a southerner. He has talked to me several times about cars, guns, and other things I know little about, but I´m learning=)

For this week we´ve had an Elder Clarke visit us in the office because he got a really nasty spider bite and they were worried about his health. So they brought him up from Vinces to spend a couple of days in the clinic and a couple of days with us in the office. Obviously I was worried about his health, but I was also really happy that he came in because he told us all about what´s been going on in Vinces! It was really interesting to hear about how much the work has progressed and how the people that I worked with are doing. It really is a small world in the gospel, and I´m so happy that I´ve been blessed with some great sectors.

The weather here exploded this week! For four days in a row it was down pouring here in Guayaquil! Our shoes didn´t have time to dry all the way, and everyone has said that this is the phenomenon del niño, and I believe them. The rains are supposed to continue, so we´ll see if we can manage to keep dry. 

In our ward and stake, there´s been an added emphasis in working with future elders, so we´ve been having some good experiences working with our elder´s quorum president. He´s a young returned missionary whose wife is about 3 months pregnant with their first child. He´s very exicted to work with us and always lifts our spirits. It´s always so rewarding to get to work in a great ward with great members. =)

Thank you all so much for everything that you do for me. Really I feel your support and it makes everything so much easier. 

I hope that you all have a great week! I love you all! 

Elder Hales =)

Jonathan with Elder Norris

The beautiful Guayaquil temple