Llegamos!

We have arrived!  Wednesday was an exciting day.  We arrived in Quito at about noon.  What a city.  Coming from drought ridden Southern California, the views coming into Quito were stunning.

We were met by President and Sister Richardson, who we are replacing, and their two Assistants to the President, who we will have the privilege of working with.

We live on the 7th floor of a complex, at exactly 9,280 feet elevation (per iPhone compass).  Here´s the view from our balcony our first morning in Quito.

We jumped right into meeting our 184 missionaries (this number will vary every 6 weeks).  They are organized into districts (of 4 to 8 missionaries) and zones (2 to 4 districts), with leaders assigned to each.  We met with the four zones located in the Quito area and introduced ourselves and talked about our goals for the mission.  We then had a chance to chat with each of them about their experiences.  Awesome young people.  Here is one example.

I think I´m the tallest one here!

We have Elders and Hermanas from much of Central and South America, in addition to the US.  Missionaries we met hail from Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Guatemala...and we have only met half of them!  

And, we have jumped right in to the local cuisine...farmer´s market on Saturday where we bought fresh, organic fruit and nuts, bakeries for postres and bread, and, of course, ceviche, plantains and arroz con mariscos!

We didn´t unpack until yesterday, and then went to a baptism of a neat family.  They could not be happier to talk about how the gospel of Jesus Christ has helped them in their lives.  They were having a lot of problems and were on the verge of giving up and saw the missionaries as an answer to their prayers.  They now feel they have hope that things will get better for them.  

Today we went to church at our geographic Ward (congregation) and also met with several local church leaders to introduce ourselves.  We leave tomorrow for a tour of the outer zones, toward the coast, the north and the east to meet the rest of our missionaries.

We couldn´t be happier.  Such good people here.