Yackety, smackety blah, blah, blah!

Audrey Hepburn at the horse races

Dapper Dad sporting a Panama hat (made in Ecuador)

Dad and I somewhere over the rainbow

Hello all you dudes and dudettes (duds for short),

First of all, don't try to relate the above photos to the content of this blog--you'll only be puzzled and frustrated.

It has been nice to see and hear from most of you vía the family blog, with some scattered emails, IM's and text messages thrown in. It really is amazing how much technology has changed our lives and our world. I remember as a child my parents bringing home our first black and white television set. That was replaced by a color set some years later. Meanwhile we listened to music on our hi fi stereo with the LP records. The records were replaced by 8-track cassettes (about the size of a toaster). Dad and I played 8-tracks when we first got married (we had no TV for about 1 1/2 years) which were soon replaced by small cassette tapes and now of course CD's and MP-3's and iphones and iPods etc. You older kids will remember our first computer that cost about $4,000 which Dad used at work and brought home when I needed it. The screen was about 8" X 6" and it had less memory than a CD. Then came our first PC and shortly afterward, the dial-up internet. We now live in a world where it is illegal to pick your nose without first googling various techniques and how-to videos. The changes come fast and furious and one must always be willing to learn how to text and twitter and post videos upgrade to the latest version of Microsoft Word (which has been a recent frustration for me).

Anyways....in our efforts to keep up with all this technology, we must endeavor to have real conversations, real contact, and cling to technology-free silence which allows us to think, to be inspired, and to really know ourselves and others.

Here in Ecuador, we are experiencing a little less heat. We still have a great deal of sickness in the mission but hope we are getting a handle on the major things. I broke out with what I thought were mosquito bites until I kept finding them on my upper legs, my torso, and even in my belly button (yes, I can still find it). I have no fever or malaise, no eruptions on my face or arms, but they are bothersome little buggers--probably 50 of them. I would take a picture of my belly button but then I would have to remove my navel ring, which is a major hassle. Just picture, ummm, digamos, Miss California (since she's been in the news) with her shirt raised just enough to exhibit large raised bumps near and in her belly button. That's pretty much what I look like.

We got through another "week one" and are moving on to, you guessed it "week two"--zone conferences first in Guayaquil and then in Machala, Cuenca and Loja. We love being with our missionaries--they are our focus and our worry and our joy, yet not as much as you are our joy and our worry and our focus. We love and miss you all and are so glad that each of you has been here except that now we don't have that to look forward to!

Be nice as rice and mellow as yellow. Hold to the rod. Keep your powder dry. Buy low and sell high. (That should get you through to the next time).

LYLACF