Querida Familia!

I couldn´t believe it when I saw the size of Mom´s cast! She is by far the most careful out of all of us! It does make me laugh a little though thinking that the two women in our family are the only ones who have broken bones now. :P Remember Mom how much we love you! I know it must be hard to have to take some down time, but remember that we are all more than happy to show you some extra love!

It sounds like everyone has been doing really well! I can´t believe that Emily is officially done with school! I do think it´s a little funny though that she is going to go right back to school in just a few months. I know that she will be such a fantastic teacher.

We´ve been staying really busy here in the office. Our mission president is traveling around the mission doing interviews with all the missionaries, so every once in a while we´ll get phone calls with some extra tasks that he needs done, but can´t do because he´ll be in another area. We´ve been managing though. =)  

Yesterday President called me with some really interesting news! I can´t remember if I told you, but an apostle is coming to visit our mission in June. We don´t know which one it will be yet, but President called and asked me if I would be willing to work with the West Guayaquil mission and put together a choir of missionaries to perform when he comes! I have to pick out 10 elders and 10 sisters, and I´m going to direct the music for the actual performance, and lead the practices. Luckily there is a lot of talent in our mission so it shouldn´t be too hard. It should be a great experience and I´m so excited. =)

Then on Friday, our mission president invited us to lunch because the sister that makes all the lunches for the zone conferences and new missionary trainings turned 60.Her name is Hermana Lilian. We got her a small bouquet of flowers and sang O´My Father to the music of Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. It turned out pretty good, and we were all happy that she had a great birthday. Because we help out with all the zone conferences we have come to know Hermana Lilian really well. She was really happy about the whole thing. =)

We´ve also really been blessed to be working with a couple of really good families right now. I don´t know if I´ve already told you about Hermano Alex, but he´s a less active member. His sister is a member from Ventanas who would give us lunch on Saturdays! When he heard that Elder Norris and I both had met his sister he was really excited to listen to us. He went to General Conference and was really touched by Elder Christofferson´s talk about fathers. He´s been making a lot of progress and is starting to give up an alcohol addiction. Really it has been such a blessing to see how the atonement has taken affect in his life.

Tomorrow should be a good day too because we´re having an area broadcast from Peru where the area presidency will speak to Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia. It should be really exciting! We´ve been privileged to have a couple of great conferences lately!

Thank you so much for your support and love! I´m so proud of all of my siblings, and Mom I really hope you have a quick recovery. Let Dad hold down the fort for a little while. I´m sure he´ll be more than willing. ;)

I love you all, have a great week!

Elder Hales =)