Birthday P-Day!

11/2/13

Thank you so much everyone for the birthday wishes, love, and support!
 

I am so lucky that my birthday is on PDAY! This morning my other roommates came into my room early in the morning and woke me up singing "Happy Birthday" in English with their Latina accents holding a huge cake! So apparently it is a tradition in Ecuador to bite the cake after you make a wish....they neglected to tell me that it is also tradition to slam the person's face into the cake while doing so!!! So here I am taking a bite out of the side of the cake and my face getting slammed into the side while screaming! I ended up with icing all over my face and hair and Hermana Blas got it on video so it is pretty funny to watch. The assistants to the Mission President also called me and sang me "Happy Birthday" in a nice remix between Spanish and English (they are both from Columbia.)   It was so sweet and a great start to the day.

So I got my package in the mail 3 days ago but I was good and waited until today to open it. I Started with the picture album and It was so nice to see photos of everyone and when I got to the end of the pictures with Dad, Mom, Tanner, Ryan, Brannon, and Bryce with families they had baptized on their missions I started crying as soon as I saw Dad and Mom's pictures in Chile and Japan and I was pretty much weeping by the end of it. That has been the BEST gift EVER and means so much to me.  I am so grateful for the wonderful example my family is to me. I have put a photo of my first baptism next to them to finish the album. Mom that was such a meaningful gift and I will cherish it forever.  Also thank you for the gifts! It was a lot of fun to open them all!

Today we went to the Park of Iguanas downtown which has some really pretty buildings.  The park was pretty despite the fact that I am not a huge fan of IGUANAS!  But it was neat to see them and as long as they weren't running at me I was good. Little kids were picking them up and such....crazy!  Today Ecuador is celebrating the day of the dead and I am celebrating the day of my birth! Just a fun fact for today. Also some people celebrate Halloween but we really only saw a few people dressed up.

Yesterday 23 new missionaries arrived so we were at the Mission Home pretty much all day. We did preventative teaching and handing out care kits of medications the missionaries won't have access to in Ecuador without a prescription including Tylenol and ibuprofen. It is so weird to me that we can't buy those without a prescription but you can buy antibiotics and pretty much anything else. The new missionary orientation is actually pretty fun the office elders always do skits which are WAY entertaining! My companion leaves on the 18th to go back home to South Carolina and I am going to miss her so much!

I am so incredibly blessed!

Con Amor,

Hermana Lyman