Jamundi - Week Twelve

This week was the last week of this transfer, and since I'd been here for 3 months I didn't know if I would get transferred or not. Elder Bello already was here for 6 months so he was for sure going to leave. And just this week is when we contacted a lot of new people and started to have people go to church and start to progress after like 3 months, lol.  We get notified of the transfers on Sunday night and leave Monday morning, so Sunday night Familia Toro invited us over for dinner and to play games and stuff with them, which was cool.

Afterwards Hermano Toro got all teary when he said that no other pair of Elderes has cared so much about them or has showed the amount of patience and love that we show them, and that when he tells his kids that were coming over they get all excited and that they love us and they'll miss us so much if we both leave. It was really special for me and stuff. It turned out that I'm still here in Jamundi, for I hope only one more transfer.

This morning I had to go to Cali to say bye to Elder Bello and get my new companion, Elder Vaca. He has like 10 months in the mission and is the new district leader.

 But now that I'm still here and I'm senior companion until my new companion learns the area, I want to keep visiting familia Toro until their kids are baptized. The thing is is that Juan Camilo wants to get baptized at the same time as his sister Camila, who isn't sure if she wants to get baptized. But the parents are reactivating!

I feel like I did a lot this week but I don't really have anything to write, ya know?

It rains during the night in Jamundi but then the clouds leave during the day and i'ts all hot here and then at like 6 the clouds come back and it starts to rain at like 9 all night. But I'm not in Cali, I hear it's worse there. On Sunday a lightning bolt hit the ground in our neighborhood! It was really freaking loud, but there wasn't anything near it so nothing really happened.

Love you guys

Jamundi - Week Eleven

We had interviews with the mission president this week on Friday, so we had to go to Cali for that. We were there for a while but honestly my interview with both Hermana and Presidente Pricoli were only like five minutes long each, while everyone else took like, 15 to 20 minutes, but I’m assuming it's just because I’m not doing anything wrong. We had to memorize D&C 84 33-44 for the interview though, so I did that and Hermana Pricoli told me that I told it better than most of the Latinos and that I don't have a gringo accent. Presidente also told me that I don't have a gringo accent, so I’m pretty happy about that!

I also finally got my Colombian ID, and it looks preeetty cool.

Also when I said that the Toro kids were gonna get baptized this week, I lied because their Dad got called into work for the whole weekend on like Wednesday, so we had to cancel it. Well, for them anyway, but we still baptized Michell Usma! And when I say that we baptized her, I mean that I did it. Woo! So now I've officially baptized someone. She was really happy and content, but a lot of things happened that were bad so that the service was kinda iffy. First, we didn't have a ward mission leader until this Sunday so we had to plan it ourselves. Second, her parents argued a lot about the time because Ali, the dad had to work or whatever, so we changed the time of the baptism like five times. Third, I don't know why but the water in the font was literally black, like you couldn't see the floor. I say I don't know why because we got there early and cleaned the font really well, with soap and everything, so I think it was the water. So Michell is gonna have to remember her baptism with black water. I told her it was the sins of all the other people we've baptized. And Fourth, we didn't even have baptism clothes for her, we had a jumpsuit for fat people. So she (understandably) refused to change into it until we went to go do the service, so it took a little longer than normal.

Because of this we don't have a picture of us outside in all white, but we have a picture of us inside with normal clothes if that counts for anything...

Despite all the things that went bad, she really liked it and her family did, too. Jamundí 1 brought some investigadors to the baptism and they said that they felt really special, so I guess I did it right. But . . . baptism number 1 already down, yayyy! I think we’re gonna baptize the Toro kids this Saturday, and the dad said he was gonna have a serious talk with Camila and stuff so hopefully she’ll get her stuff straight. Originally she said she wanted her brother to get baptized first, and if nothing bad happens to him then she’d do it the week after, but since she saw Michell get baptized (who she said "Is more difficult” than her) now she’ll be willing. These families have been inactive for years and have tried to come back like 3 times before but now its actually happening, which is cool.

And today is the birthday of Elder Smith, who is in Jamundí 1. So we're gonna bake a cake tonight, and we played volleyball today with like all of the young men and women, some families in the ward and with the Usmas and Toros! So that was fun.

Love you guys.

Jamundi - Week Ten

A lot of stuff happened this week. On Wednesday I finally got my cool scripture cases!

 I feel like I have the best scripture cases in the world, but the bad thing is that now I don’t have any money, which sucks because my scandals broke, so now I have to buy new ones...

On Thursday we went to this cool place called Gato Monte. as a district to visit an eternal investigador.

He’s way more active than most of the members, but he lives with his girlfriend and kid, married to a different woman, and will probably never have money to pay for the divorce because it costs like a million dollars. But he lives up this giant mountain and has a big farm, so we spent the day visiting with him. He’s really cool--he taught me how to play The Girl from Impanema and Tears in Heaven on the guitar! lol

On Friday Elder Bello and I went to Cauca (like, a different state in Colombia) to give a blessing to this family who lost their baby son on Tuesday. They live really far away in a city where the church doesn’t exist, and we spent the whole day there. I guess we were the closest missionaries to them. It was really sad but really spiritual. I’d like to visit them more if they didn’t live so far away.

Saturday and Sunday was conference, so we didn’t really so anything but watch that. For three of the five sessions, the four missionaries were the only ones in the chapel watching, lol. But we got to eat pizza for priesthood and had a lot of investigadors attend Sunday morning! It was frustrating to start to hear them speak in English, only for a Spanish voice to come and be really loud. But I understood like 75% of it and took a lot of notes, lol. In my notebook I have them titled PAGINAS DE REVELACIÓN or pages of revelation lol.

And then today we painted a house.

The house of Familia Toro, who are gonna get baptized on Saturday! I might have ruined my clothes...

Love you!

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.