Jumundi - Week Nine

We haven’t had any more lessons with Felipe. We talked to him in passing one day, and he really doesn’t like his parents. How can you teach a lesson about eternal families to someone who doesn’t even like their family? We did have another lesson with his mom though, that went pretty good. She said she wanted to read the Book of Mormon with Felipe, but he hides the book when he leaves so she can’t read it, which was really surprising because I always thought Felipe was really chill. HOWEVER, Michelle his girlfriend, has been taking the missionary lessons for like two years and has never liked going to church and never liked talking to the missionaries, and has always been a closed off and cold person. But recently she started opening up to us and making jokes and stuff, I actually felt like we were friends! She also said all of a sudden that she likes church and she’s reading the Book of Mormon, so she’s going to  get baptized on the 10th. Dope lol.

On Tuesday me and my companion did exchanges with the zone leaders, so I got to be a Zone leader in Cali for a day! It was pretty much a normal day except I didn’t know anyone or where anything was, and I was with a zone leader so I had to be really good lol. The only special thing we did was wake up at 5 am to check to see if these elders in the zone were waking up on time, because aparently the mission president went to go inspect their house and found the elders sleeping, at 3 pm....LOL
(I had a weird thought: There are probably missionaries who are terrified of surprise visits from Mark and Krissy like there are in this mission. Weird huh?!)

One of the members of the ward I’m in baptized one of the teachers at the MTC in Bogota and went to her wedding this past week, and he was talking to MTC president, and told him that I speak realllyyy well. So the president asked him to film a video of me speaking Spanish so that he can show it to EVERY NEW GROUP at the MTC. So I’m gonna be famous at the MTC in Bogota! I didn’t even think I spoke that well, but we recorded the video on Sunday. Whatever, I’ll take it!

One thing, my Spanish scriptures were getting thrashed by putting them in my bag everyday, so I ordered cool little scripture cases for them with my name on them and stuff. And i forgot that i need money for them. They’re 100,000 pesos, I think that’s about 30 dollars, but you can do the exact conversion, right? I’ll send you pictures when I get them!

Love you and stuff.

Jamundi - Week Eight

Yeah I'm really happy, Colombia is really cool. I just forget to say a lot of the time.

That's cool about the missionary speaker though . . .
[The letter from home told Drew about a returned missionary who spoke in our ward.  The RM talked about teaching a family that all got baptized except one teenage girl.  The missionaries worked and studied and prayed so hard to convince this girl to join the church.  He said he used all his best missionary "tricks."  Finally, his green companion, said, "Why don't we ask God how he wants us to do it?"  He said when they left it up to the Spirit to guide them, they taught their best, most spiritual lesson ever and at the end, the girl said, "Yes."  They said, "Yes to what?  We didn't ask any questions."  She said, "Yes, to getting baptized.  I want to be baptized tomorrow."] 
 . . . I'm kind of in that situation right now. Family Toro that I write about sometimes is all really excited to join the church and be reactivated, but the 16 yr old daughter is really hesitant. She has a date but she's really analytical, and likes to think of literally every possible outcome of every decision. She also says she hasn't gotten an answer to her prayers. So maybe I'll do the same thing that that missionary said. But she's really cool! Hopefully everything works out. The date for their kids is now October 10th.

This week something kind of cool happened. For the Fast Sunday in September we asked for more people to teach in Terranova. Since it costs money to go there, we have to spend the whole day there for it to be worth it. And this week we met a TON of people in Terranova. One time when we were on the bus one guy came up to me and asked me who we were, and so I told him, and he was like "oh, cool. Can you come teach me? Can you write down my information so you can come visit me?" Yeah, we sure can! We actually went to teach him yesterday,  and he's literally made of gold. I guess God does answer prayers sometimes!

Aside from him, we were working with our 2 less active families in Terranova, Toro and Usma, like always. We also went and met the family of Felipe, and they really don't like each other. The "Lesson" consisted of his mom complaining about Felipe for like 20 minutes RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM and Elder Bello agreeing with her 100%. The dad was sleeping in the other room. Felipe hasn't told them anything about us or that he went to church, so we didn't mention the baptism. I really didn't say anything really because I felt really uncomfortable. When we left I just looked at Felipe and said "Man, que pena" which is how you say I'm sorry in Spanish. When I told all this to family Usma, the dad, Ali, who is a returned missionary started telling us all about experiences in his mission like "in my mission I had this problem, and I did this to fix it, you can do that too!" All the advice was really good. Then they offered to do a group fast for them or have a group FHE one night. They're a family of less actives and the daughter isn't even a member and here they are talking about missionary work like they're a member family. That was really cool.

Nothing else that cool really happened. My shoes got pretty much destroyed, like the sole was gone and whatever the bottom part is called had huge holes in it. But instead of buying new shoes i just went and got them fixed, and that only cost 30 mil, and new shoes cost like 90 mil. They're a million times better now.

The other picture is what we do in this mission to our agendas. It looks kinda cool huh?

Tell Dad I said happy birthday! This year is the first year in like 6 years I haven't told Dad happy birthday like a pirate. September 19th in Colombia is Valentines day. So if Dad lived here he would be born on Valentines day!

Have a good week everyone!

Jamundi - Week Seven

This week I realized how much I love America, because while we where teaching Felipe (who I think I already explained to you who he is) on 9/11 he said something about how America sucks at football and I was like, hold up, America is number one at literally everything. And he was like, nah, if they played Colombia we would win like 5 to 0. And I was so angry and I wanted to say so many things but I don't know the sport terminology in Spanish so I couldn't say anything really, so I just kinda told him that Colombia sucks and stood up and left. And then when I came back I asked him if he wanted to be baptized and he said yes, also that he wants to go on a mission, and help his girlfriend Michelle and her family come to church, so that was really cool. The thing about him is that he's 17, and has a lot of problems with his family, like they're a bunch of drunks, so we've just been teaching him at his girlfriend's house, but this week we found out where he lives and talked to his mom a little. Were gonna teach him with his family on Tuesday, so let’s hope that they let him be baptized. He's really cool. We talked for like 30 minutes the other day just about random stuff. I think I’d be friends with him if it weren't for me being a missionary.

Also, we have this family of investigadors Family DeLaCruz. The parents are like 50 and they have a son who's like 20 and they're literally kids in the bodies of adults. We´ll be teaching them and the mom will be like "Wow, that's beautiful. Hey, Woodmansee, the beaches in US are really beautiful, huh?" and stuff like that, always changing the topic. One time she left in the middle of our lesson to go cook us lunch. It’s frustrating, but they're really good! They went to the baptism last Saturday, and the members there were really friendly and stuff, but they also went to stake conference the week before. I was talking to her this week and she was like, “Hey, is there another baptism this week? Because I really want to go.”  And I said, “No, but there's church on Sunday that you're always invited to.” She said she liked the baptism better. Why? "Because at the baptism everyone greeted me and talked to me and I felt really good, but at the church nobody talked to me, I arrived and afterwards I left and nobody said a word." Uhhhh, well that's awesome. I promised her that this Sunday would be different and when she came on Sunday, it was because I made sure it would be. SO it’s really important that the members help with missionaries! Because if the members aren't friends with the investigadors, there is no conversion.

All my other investigadors are more or less the same. The district is planning on having a "Noche Blanca" where we have all our investigadors baptized on the same night. We're planning for 10 baptisms, and so far we have 3, the other missionaries in the district don't have any yet but the other missionaries are really good, so I'm sure that they'll have some by then.

My area is REALLY big. about 7 times the area of the other missionaries in Jamundi. If you can look up on Google maps Jamundi, then Alfaguara, then Terranova.  Our area is all 3 of those cities, but technically they're all in the city of Jamundi. We don't really go to Alfaguara that much, because it's where the rich people live and we have to take a taxi to get there. But the members there are really cool--one time we visited a member family there and they gave us empanadas and Coca Cola. They also have a TV like Zack's new one and a PS4, so they're really rich LOL.

I'm in training right now. My companion is supposed to be training me, but he doesn't really ever. We don't ever get checked up on, but we go to Cali sometimes for zone activities. We see the other missionaries in the district like 4 times a week. Where we go depends on where were needed.

NO pictures this week, nothing happened. But maybe next week. LOL. Love you!

Jamundi - Week Six

This week was really good I think. One of our goals for the month of September was to baptize the 8-year-old daughter of a family of less actives, Familia Tulande. They were really less active when I first arrived but after six weeks of kinda teaching them consistently they started coming to church, and their kids (who are members) started going to seminary, and the parents said that they wanted their youngest daughter to be baptized and they talked to the bishop and then on Saturday her dad baptized her! Honestly we didn't really do anything special to help them.  They just kinda came back on their own.

But the service was really good. In the program they put that the missionaries were gonna perform a musical number, and I wasn't informed until like three hours before, and my companion really can't sing, and the other Elders in the district had an appointment so they couldn't be there, so I ended up singing a solo in front of everyone! It was short and not really anything special but a lot of people told me that I was really kinda amazing, so I guess I’ll take it LOL.

The families that I wrote about last week couldn't go to church and we couldn't really teach them that much because it was the 15 birthday of Michel Usma on Saturday, and in South America the 15 birthday of a daughter is literally huge, so they were busy planning all week and got home at like 7 a.m. on Sunday, so neither of the two families or Felipe the boyfriend came on Sunday, but we taught Fam Toro like two times this week and put baptismal dates for the two kids! The family is excited n stuff, they're going to be baptized on the 19th by the stake president who is really good friends with the father who is excommunicated, because that's what he wants. But we’re really excited for them.

Nothing else REALLY important happened this week, except for normal teaching, all of our appointments falling and the usual LOL.

There's honestly not that many things to take pictures of, I don't know what to say. I’m understanding a lot, but sometime's I'm really lazy and if I don't know what like 50 percent of the words mean I can't figure out the meaning and when I can't figure out the meaning I stop listening and think about something else. I'm trying to do better . . .

I eat literally everything cuz I like the food here, and I'm discovering that I actually like things that I thought I didn't, like corn on the cob, LOL. We eat lunch at a member's house every day, buy bread for breakfast every day, and for dinner I normally just make eggs with salchichas or sometimes I make French toast or something fancy. The other day for Sunday we made chicken Alfredo for lunch, wow, that was really good!

Colombia isn't really scary, some parts of Jamundi are kinda poor, but everyone is really nice. Every time we enter a house they give us free juice without even asking us if we want any. Now when we go to someone's house and they don't give us juice I think that they're being kinda rude, LOL.

For something spiritual, something I like is that every time I recite the first vision (which is kinda a lot) I feel the Spirit literally every single time, so that's always like a good reassurance of what I'm doing isn't for nothing.

Love and miss you.

Jamundi - Week Five

This week, this week.

We had a baptismal date for that kid, who put his own baptismal date, but it fell through. Not cuz he doesn't want to get baptized or anything, but his date was for this Saturday and we’d only taught him 2 lessons, so he wasn't ready, and he still isn't sure why he even wants to get baptized. Also his mom and his stepdad wouldn't let him because they all want to get baptized on the same day, but the mom is married to another man still, so she needs to divorce him and then get remarried, so that's a process.

We did divisions this week, and I was in my area with Elder Smith, who arrived like 4 days ago (when we did them) and we were in my area, so I had to make the plans and stuff. So even though he has more time in the mission (2 transfers, I think) it was like I was the senior companion, so that was kinda stressful/cool LOL. He pretty much told me that there are a lot of things that my trainer does wrong, and when we visited one of our investigadors, she said "your other companion is very undisciplined, huh?" LOL. But he's been here for like 6 months so I think I’ll get a mom* next transfer.

Also, Felipe, our golden investigador, finally was able to go to church! He said that he really liked it, but there were things he didn't understand and that he wants to know more. Were gonna put a baptism date for him this week. We were gonna do it yesterday but things happened and we couldn't teach him. The thing is, he's dating the daughter of a less active family, familia Usma, and the daughter isn't a member, and Hermana Usma is siblings with Hermano Toro, and familia Toro is another less active family whose kids aren't members. I feel like this week we need to work really hard with them, reactivate the families, and baptize their kids. Idk, I just feel like they're really important. The thing is, Hermano Toro is excommunicated, so I don't even know how that works. I think when Felipe is baptized it'll motivate all of them to do the same. I feel like these two families are a big reason of why I’m in Jamundi right now.

Oh yeah, to answer your questions.  We don't regularly eat with members. We have a pensionista that gives us lunch every day, the same member every day. It’s like a calling, so eating with other members (like we did last week) is different.

In Colombia literally every business is run out of peoples’ houses. Food, internet salons, hair cutting places, everything is just in a house. We have an investigator who has an internet salon right across from our house and he lets us write for free, so that's cool.

Love you guys!

*The mission lingo is that your first companion is your dad, but your training period is 2 transfers. So if you get another companion during your training, that's your mom. Also your first area is where you were born, like I was born in Jamundi, and when you finish your mission, you die, and your companion killed you. LOL

Jamundi - Week Four

So I told you about my broken shoes last week? The shoes are fine now, the dad one of our investigadors fixed them and shined them WHILE I was wearing them. I kinda felt like a king. And then he offered us free vodka! LOL

Three things happened this week that were really cool. The first is, I don't know why, but a lot of the members invited the district over to eat dinner, like three times this week. So we got a lot of free food. I'm not gonna complain!

The second, is, you know that 17 year old kid I told you about (or at least I think I did) that is dating the daughter of a less active? Felipe? We taught him 2 more times this week, and man is he made of gold. He kept literally all of our compromises, and (we had to visit with a member cuz the dad wasn't there) the member we were with asked him that if he wanted to get baptized if he knew this church was true, he said he would. Woo! We felt that it would be better if we put a date after he went to church this week, but the parents of the less active family were in Cali, his family has issues, and the daughter didn't want to go to church, so he didn't know how to get there...but he told us he really wanted to, so that counts?

And today, we had, I don't know what its called in English, like, emergency transfers? The transfer period isn't over, but one of the Elders in the district had to leave this morning and we got a new elder (not like new new like me.) So we had to wait for him in the morning as a trio, and when we found him he had forgotten his bags on the bus, so for like 4 hours this morning we had to frantically try and find the bus he was on and get his bags. He's a gringo too, but has 5 months in the mission, but my Spanish is a little better. haha The elder that left, left a ton of stuff too, so we all took it for ourselves. I got this really nice speaker! Sounds good. I'm gonna put conference music on my flash drive, so I can use it.

And the lame thing. This week on like Thursday Elder Bello bought this little ball maze game at the store. And he's like a little kid, man! He stayed up til like 11:30 one night playing it. Whatever, it didn't affect me. 

But one day, I think it was Friday? After lunch he said we were gonna go back to the house and do 12 semanas, but he took the ball and went right to the bathroom and locked the door, and I could hear him playing it. So I started doing language study, and read Preach My Gospel and whatever (cuz stuff happened and we couldn't do it earlier) and it had been like 40 minutes and he was still in the bathroom playing that game. So I thought, this is stupid, I'm not doing anything. So I decided to be a good missionary and pray for courage and words to tell him to stop being stupid, and I did. I think we've been working a little harder ever since. Lol

Love you all.

Jamundi - Week Three

This week was more or less the same with the numbers and whatnot, but I think the lessons we did have were a lot better. There's this recent convert in the ward, named Juan David. He's 16 years old, he's really cool. I think he and Blake would be really good friends LOL. Anyway, he gave a Book of Mormon to one of his friends at school, and his friend started reading it, loved it and the first thing he said to us when we met him was that he wanted to get baptized. Cool! His name is Yordi (the y in Colombia is like a J, so Jordy) We taught him and his parents twice this week, and the whole family is super interested and whatever. One cool thing the mom said is that she noticed a change in her son when he started reading that book, and she really wants to have that change too. Cool! So when they go to church next Sunday we're gonna put a date for all 3 of them! I'm not gonna baptize them though. I think it'll be more special if Juan David got to do it, and I told him he was gonna do it. It'll be more special for him than me, and I'll have more chances to do it later on. 

We had a zone conference this week, and we got to eat Dominos pizza again, lol. That was the best part. The lessons and stuff were good too, but I have to think really hard to understand when people talk really fast or not directly at me and it's hard to do that for a long time, but I'm still getting better! When I follow all the rules and the schedule in the morning I find that I can understand better than when I start personal study late, or go to bed late or whatever.

Also my shoes are already breaking. My companion says that my shoes make me look like I have 8 months on the mission, there's no way these are gonna last a year lol. It's a sign of hard work I guess? idk. 

Tell Zack I said happy birthday! 

It's weird that Chloe is married already lol. I'm older than she is! Is Darcy gonna get married in a year too? jk 

And we went to the zoo last week as a zone. It was fun, but I always feel weird talking to another North American. Its like, should I speak to him in Spanish or in English? It's weird, but everyone here is really cool.

Love you all!