day 2

today was amazing! woke up and went to church. ran the sound booth for them, b/c the only people that know how to take care of the sound board, play in the band. last night i played the bass with the band when they were practicing b/c their bass player was gone. it would have been fun to play this morning though... mi amigo, fabriscio, has been hangin out with me since i've been down here. he's 21 and speaks enough english for him and i to communicate. so far my mind fills full of spanish words that everyone defines for me. pray that they will stick and my simple oklahoma mind will not be overwhelmed or overloaded, especially with learning 100 new names tomorrow. back to my day, went to lunch with fabriscio after church with his family. we were sitting at a big table and a local man named david who is probably in his late 40's or early 50's sat next to me and started talking to me, in english. very nice guy. turns out he is a mechanic for MAF, which is a missionary group of pilots here in shell, ecuador. after lunch we went back to galo and eugenia's house, which is where i live (i hope to put pictures up in a couple of days). galo's grandpa, 82 years old i think, was hit by a car last night while riding his bicycle, so galo and euge went to quito this morning to visit him. he is doin ok, but hurt hand and what i could make out of galo's broken english, a concusion. i talked to galo tonight and he said he will come home tomorrow or the day after, they just wanted to watch him for a couple of days. be in prayer that everyone will return safely and unhurt, especially grandpa galo. back to my day, again... played basketball with about 15 teenagers and young adults this afternoon. was absolutely incredible! good exercise and compared to most of these guys, i'm pretty good. scott, you are not allowed to come down here and show me up, so if you want to visit, that's ok, but the court is my turf and off limits to you :) we had church at 7 pm tonight, and while walking to church i found out that my knock off north face coat that only cost $44 on ebay is not completely waterproof. the left sleeve has a leak and so does the right ribs area. so tomorrow i'm goin on a hunt to invest in an umbrella. i figure the combination of my coat, which joey told me, "smells fake, kind of like small malaysian fingers," and a south american umbrella, i can most likely get to places on wet days in a fairly dry fasion. walking home from church i needed to find some dinner, and walked straight to the place that i have been telling most of you about since returning from being here in november. the ribs place. so i'm walking up to open street restaurant, it is on the south side of the square that holds a replica model plane of nate saint's plane that he flew onto palm beach back in 1956 and the restaurant is open to the sidewalk, which is where you order. there is a long line, so i almost go to my house and contemplate coming back to order later. but as most of you can figure out i decided against that and went directly to the food. i'm wearing a camdenton lakers basketball mesh shirt thingy that someone gave to me from the church at osage hills, and these people in line are obviously from the states b/c they're white as ghost, loud, and talking amongst each other. someone from the group reads my shirt as soon as i walk up and they go, "hey, we're from eldon!!!" that's right, eldon, which is just up the road 20 minutes from osage beach where i live. they are here on a mission trip as church, helping one of the local nazarine churches build a fourth story on their church. turns out, that two of the people that i used to work with at the mexican restaurant, vista grande, are here with the church. so i've managed to be here for less than two full days and have already met some people all the way back from lil' ol' missouri, i can see my dad shaking his head, clapping his hands, standing up and saying, "you're just like me cody." i'm not lying when i say that every vacation we went on growing up, my dad could not go anywhere without running into someone that he knew from a previous time in his life. and also while we were eating, my friend david, the maf plane mechanic, walked up to eat dinner and reconized me. so i'm making friends here outside of my small group that are kind of forced to be my friends, ie. church, school, and people i'm living with.

i have a big day tomorrow and can't wait to tell all of you all about it. thanks for your prayers and know that i love it here.

ps- get a skype account and find me: cody.james.gilmore or codyjamesgilmore@yahoo.com - i have a web camera and we can chat for free and i can see your pretty smiling faces and you can look at my ugly hairy smiling face, which my dad and brother say when video chatting with me that if i had a tape measure behind me and could turn to the left would pass for a filthy mug shot. over and out!