Pasto - Week Five

My companion pretty much doesn’t speak English. But I speak good Spanish now so I don’t have problems talking to him. My legs don’t hurt as much now, so I guess you could say that I’m getting used to walking the hills here.

The week was pretty good. I played the piano at a baptism this week (of an 8-year-old) and I don’t even play piano. It was interesting. I did a lot of service, today we had to move a giant pile of big heavy rocks from one spot to like 6 feet to the left of where they were, so my hands and arms are like super destroyed because Colombians don’t know what gloves are. Everyone thinks I’m from Utah, (I’m so glad I’m not from Utah) and we still have 4 people who are really excited about the church and stuff.

The pictures I have are me with fairy wings, cuz the new beginnings for young women’s was this week so the YW president asked us for some help.  [We didn't get Drew's photos.]


Love everyone!

Pasto - Week Four

This week we put another baptismal date and so now we have three! And we have plans to put three more. This week we invited an investigador, Jorge, to be baptized. He’s the boyfriend of one of the members who’s literally been going to church for 6 months, and just recently the member, Amery? asked us to come and teach him. I think she waited so long to ask the missionaries for help cuz the missionaries who were here before were really disobedient. So this week we taught the lessons with Amery and her younger brother Duvan, who’s really cool, he’s like 20 and waiting for his mission call and always goes out with us, and Duvan and Jorge are in a band together so they’re good friends, but we invited him to be baptized and Duvan bore his testimony, cuz I guess he had a time of rebellion and hated the church or whatever, and he was like "I KNOW this is true" and everyone started crying. Except for me. But it was really cool.

The other person I’m stoked to teach is this punk kid Luis, or Luigi, he goes by both. Like, we taught him with a bunch of his punk friends and they just kinda laugh at us, but he’s genuinely interested, and is reading the Book of Mormon and stuff. He didn’t go to church this week cuz it was stake conference and the chapel was really far, but he has a lot of promise.

And also this week I found and bought a GALAXY JERSEY for 45 mil, which is like 13 bucks. I was super surprised to see it cuz it’s literally the first MLS jersey I’ve seen in Colombia and I see a million jerseys for sale every day. It’s super nice, but it’s kinda small, like it fits me but I’d like it a size bigger. So if I find a bigger size I’ll buy it again and send this one to Riley. I think it’s kinda funny how i came to Colombia with t-shirts of my favorite teams and now I have 90% legit jerseys.

Pasto - Week Two

All I really did this week was get to know the area. I really like my companion, but he told me that he’s been pretty disobedient for the past few months. But for a reason...His girlfriend of like 2 years or so just broke up with him and he was like, so sad he couldn’t work. He showed me all the letters she sent him (she sent him a handwritten letter every 2 months, with pictures!) and every letter was like a novel and they all said things like "we’re gonna get married for time and eternity, from your future wife and mom of your children!" So I guess it was pretty serious, lol. But we’re working hard now and he even said to me this week, “Dude, I feel so good!” The only real problem is that his other companion just flirted with all the girls so all the investigators we have are teenage girls and little boys, and I’m not really down for that.

The ward is super good though. The ward council in Granjas had problems. All they did was argue and not do anything. One time I sat next to the elders quorum president (in Granjas) cuz he’s really cool and he was just playing games on his phone the whole time, and I was like, “Dude, why are you playing video games during ward council?” And he was just like "They’re not gonna listen to me anyways, so when they fix the problem I’ll start paying attention.” I thought it was funny cuz its exactly what I would do--realize that there’s a big problem but not do anything to fix it. The only bad thing about the ward is that all the young women hate each other so they just go to different wards, and we have to go tell them they can’t do that, but they just say that they don’t like the other young women. Lame.

Yesterday was the birthday of my companion, so we celebrated that. It was fun. They requested that I sing happy birthday in English. I didn’t know how to play happy birthday. I improvised.

I’m literally in the coldest part of the mission. Every house has a heater and really thick blankets. I get to wear my cool sweaters now though at least. But the house is kinda small. Our area is really poor.

Love you!

Pasto - Week One

This week was pretty good I guess. We started it off really good by putting two baptism dates for 2 investigadors who are really really good! But then they didn't come to church. I guess from what they told us on Saturday that they see attending the church as a serious commitment and that they want to know more before they actually go. I tried telling them that it’s not even a serious commitment or whatever but I didn't want to push them hard either. So they actually don't have a baptism date. Cuz they didn't go to church. But they're really good.

Some of the pictures I put up are my companion sleeping during personal study, and our freezer overflowing with ice, cuz it’s that good.

Also we had a meeting this the ward mission leader, and we came up with this really dope plan, cuz the ward only has an attendance of like 120 but there are 220 active members, its just that they only come tp church like every other week, so we came up with this plan, we were gonna have a 5 family home evenings, but like huge ones in different parts of the area with every member family in the ward. We were gonna do divisions with the members too so we could do 4 at the same time. We were gonna do this activity cuz we have these little cards that have like 20 things on it like "scripture study, fhe, prayers, church attendance" and you could rank yourself from 1 to 5 on all of those things. Then we were gonna be like "let’s see in what kingdom of glory you're all in, if your score is less then this number you're in the celestial kingdom, this number terrestrial, and this number celestial" and we were 100 % sure that nobody would be in the celestial kingdom.

So we had all these things planned out and...I GOT TRANSFERRED. What?

My goal for the mission was to baptize at least one person in each area. But I was only in Granjas for 1 transfer. So I already failed my goal =/ and I didn't even get to say goodbye to anyone. We visited a lot of member families so Quinto could say goodbye and took a bunch of photos but I don't have any cuz I was 100% sure I would stay. But I at least got to take pictures in the morning with the security guards, or the "MYNIÑOS" cuz they always call us myniños. Nobody knows why. But now my companion is still there and I’m in PASTO.

I only have a little bit of time in Pasto. The area I’m in is called BELALCAZAR. It’s really cold and 100% on an incline. I’m always walking up or down a hill. That's pretty much all I know about the area. I also lost my p-day cuz the bus ride from Cali to Pasto was 12 hours. So that's why I’m writing right now. My companion seems pretty cool. His name is elder Yanzapanta. He reminds me a lot of Nick, but he has like 15 months in the mission and I’m senior companion again, so he must have done something disobedient.

I’ll tell you more about my new area. I just got here. I still can’t even say the name of it yet cuz it’s like Belalcanzaraskhfgjk or something. It’s cold.

Love you!

Granjas - Week Four

This is what I did this week. On Tuesday we had a conference with all the missionaries who were in Cali, like in the city of Cali. I saw a lot of my friends there. Elder Kayser, who was my friend in the MTC for 6 weeks, and Elder Chaiña, who was in the MTC with me for 2 weeks were there.

 It was good to see them, but I was jealous of Elder Kayser who right now is in what people call "the best area in the mission" and he started his mission in what people call "the 2nd best area in the mission" and looking at what I have, well yeah. I saw Elder Bello, my dad, he was like "dude, your Spanish is incredible!" cuz it is. lol I saw Elder Almeida and Elder Smith and Elder Vaca who are still in Jamundi. Every district had to do this Christmas presentation in English. We decided to reenact the story of the Grinch, and my companion was going to be this Grinch, but he didn't do ANYTHING that we planned on him doing, so it was kinda awkward. They gave a missionary manual cover to everyone, which was kinda cool.

I liked Christmas because I got to talk to you and I got to drink cold Dr Pepper. We actually ended up playing with the Nerf guns for like hours. I ate all the Reeses pieces and the Skittles, and I only have 3 more things of Pez. So thanks for the package!

This one family in the ward always wants me to sing Christmas carols with them because the family doesn't have a bass, so I sang with them a lot. We've already sung in sacrament meeting twice, lol.

I also bought myself a Clippers jersey. It's really cool! I'm just sad I can't wear it, because it doesn't have sleeves...So I'm looking to buy a plain white shirt right now, lol.

And then we had Christmas dinner with a family in the ward. They´re really nice. So that's mostly everything.

Here's something lame. My companion told me he had to talk to his family on Thursday because they were going to be traveling on Christmas. so I sat there in the internet cafe for like 2 hours while he talked. Then he was like "hey, when do you talk to your family tomorrow?" and I told him at 3 to 4, and then I heard him start telling his family "yeah, tomorrow at 3 to 4 we'll talk again!" So I was kinda upset. But then the internet place only had 3 cameras (not enough for him) so he didn't get to talk 2 times. Hes kinda mad at us for that. That's my companion for you. Disobedient and doesn't care.

love you all!

Granjas - Week Three

Colombia has Santa. Christmas here is literally the same. People always ask me if Christmas in the US is like this and I'm like, yeah, its the same thing!

The ward didn't have a Christmas program. But the ward mission leader is big into choir and since I'm an amazing singer he always asks me to go sing or go Christmas caroling with him. lol We sang in sacrament meeting together with his family, and we went Christmas caroling with some of his friends. I had to sing tenor with him because no other tenors showed up in this choir of 25, and so I sight- read all these arrangements of Christmas music. I thought I did alright.

This area is still pretty trash. I literally haven't even taught a single investigador lesson since I got here. I guess part of the problem is that a lot of the people here are just super lazy. We had an activity this week where we were gonna show the movie Meet the Mormons and the plan was to have members bring their friends so we could contact them. This was announced at church like a million times last week and the week before, but literally nobody came. We watched it just the 4 of us missionaries. The bishop didn't even come. The ward has like 800 members but only an attendance of 130. I don't even think any of the wards in this stake should be wards.

I'm talking with the stake young men's presidency about organizing a soccer tournament between the wards. There's six wards and they all have their own chapel so we can do home and away games and I'm thinking of doing round robin pools to seed the teams and then do a double elimination tournament. The idea is that the young men invite their friends so we contact them, like we always did in churchball. Invite friends to win I mean. The young men like never come to church here. And I wanna be in charge of it becauseI don't trust the Colombians to do it, and I have all this experience running Smash Bros tournaments, so I know what I'm doing, lol.

A problem I have is that every Sunday after we make food my companion and this guy from the other companionship go to sleep and I talk to this kid from Idaho, Elder Killpack for like 3 hours and it just stresses me out, because all he wants to do is talk about how awful the church in Colombia is and how screwed up the mission leadership is and how the church here doesn't progress, and every week it stresses me out. lol. It just kinds stinks how there aren't any good things to really talk about. mission-wise.

I think w'ere gonna try and talk at 2 or 3 on Christmas day after lunch. But the problem is is that we still haven't found a internet salon that'll be open on Christmas with cameras and stuff. And we're not allowed to go to the houses of the members. It might be a search, but expect to hear from me this Friday!

Love you!

Granjas - Week Two

This week was literally my worst week ever stats wise on the mission. I got to my new area and my new companion literally doesn't know anyone. It's pretty much like we're opening the area and I'm senior companion. Tuesday night when we were planning he says "Okay at 2 we're going to go for this person....and there's nobody else." And I was like what? There's no way we only have one person to visit tomorrow. So I looked in the area book and the list of less actives, and on my second day in the area I planned the whole day out. I guess nobody likes him very much because he;s really disobedient and flirts with the hermanas, and he talks back to all of the leaders, but if he's with a good companion (like me!) he'll work hard. I get along with him pretty well, but I get along with almost everyone pretty well. We've just been visiting members less actives and recent converts sharing this "A Savior is Born" thing that the church is doing. I literally didn't teach a single investigator this week and I don't even know any. The ward members don't really work with the missionaries but we're going to change that pretty soon. I've gotten to be friends with a lot of the members so far. My plan is to make friends with all the members so they actually want to come with us and not just because they're obligated.

It's just the two of us in the apartment. The view is really nice. And I got the package on Saturday in the zone meeting. I think it arrived sooner but they just are now giving it to me. Did you put a picture of the holy virgin and the divine child Jesus on it? lol. 

We got a text message this week that just said "you can't watch the Christmas devotional, you have to work" from the zls. 

Something funny, I met this guy in the ward who is like 70 and bought tickets to the Rolling Stones in Bogota this March, and he was telling me alllll about it. He bought the most expensive tickets so he could be in the giant pit in the front and I'm pretty sure he's gonna die. 

Something spiritual, we were visiting some members and we asked if we could leave them with a prayer. They're about 60 and it's just a married couple living alone. The husband started saying the prayer and it was literally the most powerful prayer I've ever heard. And it wasn't even for anything special. He started crying during the prayer. If we all prayed like that I think we would see the results a lot clearer. 

Something interesting, The ward mission leader sings a really good tenor, his wife alto, and his daughter soprano, and when he found out I sing an "amazing bass" he said that we were going to go Christmas caroling just the 4 of us (none of the other missionaries can sing!) 

Love you!