Week 48!

Hey mom! This week was pretty alright.  We had a lot of fun contacting with the churches "Light the World" thing they are doing again...but how wierd.  That was my farewell talk.  I'm already about to hit a year!! Ah! I don't believe it.  I'm already coming up on the halfway mark.  Holy cow.  

Haha the contacting was pretty good.  We made sure that just about all the members in the ward received a few "Ilumina el Mundo" cards so we'll see if we can get them all to hand them out :) we also did a ton of street contacting, and found a few new people to teach, so you can't go wrong there.

This week we also had exchanges with the zone leaders this week. It was fun, the only problem in that whenever we do exchanges...every appointment falls through.  Hahaha, that's just how they always go though.  It was even weirder because we didn't have water for a big chunk of the day...so we didn't get to shower until after lunch, hahaha.  All is well, all is well. 

Today was transfers!  Elder Hancock and I are both staying, but sadly 2 sisters from my district (Hermana Dorado, and Hermana Miranda) got transferred.  I know Dad said that some sisters could be a pain in the butt, but here they seem to be the best workers, haha.  They both left this morning, and I'll get to meet the new sisters this Friday when we have district meeting.  It's also weird...we had a district of 4 elders and 4 hermanas, but they moved the elders to another district...so now it's just me, Elder Hancock and 4 hermanas in the whole district.  All is well, I can tell it is going to be a successful district.

Saddish news.  We didn't even have LUNCH on thanksgiving...the members don't love us enough I guess, hahaha :), I kid.  So we ended up calling the sisters from our ward and asking if we could tag along with them for lunch...in the end, not so bad.  When we got home at night we tried to celebrate, but all we could really do was eat ramen noodles and watch the cool Bible videos the church makes.  WOOO.  WHAT A PARTY.  

Thanks for everything mom :) you're number 1!  Thanks for everything.  I'm sure everything will work out with your job :) 

Also...I've tried the google drive thing 100 times and I can't get it to work.  It keeps telling me to set the correct time and date...but no matter what I do it doesn't work.  I'm sorry :( ill keep trying :)

Week 47!

Hey mom! Congrats on the JetBlue grad! Sounds like a tough experience but I'm glad its over.  Good thing it all ended up well.

This week was pretty alright for us. Not a lot happened.  We weren't able to find that many new investigators, but that's okay, we were able to work quite a bit with the people we were teaching last week.  Lot of work to do :)

Also, this week was kind of weird because we had some other random things we had to go do.  The stake held a blood drive this week, and they asked all the missionaries from the stake to come help.  We all went and had to contact outside of the church and try and get people to donate blood.  It was kind of interesting...a lot of people know we are missionaries so it was a quick "No" and walk away. So some people you had to tell them after they already denied "It's just a blood donation" and they sometimes turn around and go "Ah, cool" and take a flyer and go in, haha.  I think the best part of the blood drive was when we ran in and grabbed a hymnbook and sang as loud as we could to contact.  We would have 3 people sing and the other would hand out flyers.  Haha, I don't know if it really worked but we had a lot of fun doing it.  

Also...today we literally took a portal back to freaking Costco.  It's a store here called Pricemart, and its just Costco's divorced wife or something.  We have a member who let us borrow their card and so you KNOW we hit that up.  We found all kinds of good stuff.  It's kind of hard though because they are basically American prices, and they sell everything in bulk to it's a bit much for a missionary budget.  We did what we could though :)  It was super weird...we are just walking down the aisle dying at everything we see, and all the sudden we hear a bunch of people speaking English.  What the heck??  So we look at them and go "hey, uh, are you gringos?" and they go, "Oh hey!! What ward are you guys from?" and we were like, "huh? Gringos...and members??" haha, it kind of freaked us out.  That doesn't happen too much down here.  They were super nice, and gave us some shopping tips.   They (or their husbands) work in the US embassy so they all live down here.  Super crazy run-in.  They were super nice too, they invited us over for Thanksgiving dinner even.  Sadly, it's outside of our mission, but they were super nice to invite us.  They even bought us lunch after.  Super cool experience, haha!

After our cool Costco experience we headed over to a mall called Hayuelos (where JUMBO is) and went bowling as a zone. It was cool and really a lot of fun.  I'm still pretty awful at bowling but that's okay I still love it.  And heck, Elder Hancock freaking killed it.  Who woulda thought, haha.

And that's kind of the week! Not a ton happened, but  just enough to keep it interesting :)  Love you guys, keep on living large.

From Jessica Wilcox (pictured): Saw your cute son at PriceSmart today and want to share! We invited him to thanksgiving, but we live in the Bogotà north mission so they didn’t think they could come! He seems to be doing well. They were so cute, we gave them some cash to buy lunch and they tried to give us the change back.  It was fun to run into them.  Keep my name somewhere in case you or he needs some help (we forgot to tell them our names).  We American members down here get it and are happy to lend a hand! 

Week 46!

Hey mom! I asked about Skype, and they say it's like a three day thing, where we can choose which day, so we should be alright.  Sounds like things are super busy for you guys! I'm glad you are ending your training, it sounds tough.  Yeah Christmas is gonna be weird, but hey I only have to deal with one out here, then I'll be home and the next Christmas will be rad.

Things here are good!  The good news is, Andrea and her son Sajam came to church! They got a lot of friends and they really seemed to like it! They even brought 2 friends along with them so it was a really solid experience.  Things are starting to look up really well this week.  We are super excited.  

We set a goal this week to find 6 new investigators, 3 from members, 3 from contacting.  We totally got just that! Last night, we were short the 3 investigators from contacting, and we didn't really have enough time to find them, so we were slightly bummed about that, but we got to an appointment early, so we decided to contact some doors.  We contacted a bunch with no luck, but then we hit one last door, and the lady let us in.  We got to share with her, her husband and another guy who lived there as well.  It was basically a miracle.  They talked about how there are a ton of churches, and so many of them just open up for money.  So we explained that an honest prayer can help up find the truth.  When we got to the part of the lesson where we talk about the Book of Mormon, they both (the couple) went, "Of course! We always knew that there were more books!" They were super excited about the BOM.  Everything cool.  

Today I might have taken a little early Christmas present...sorry.  The sweaters I have were starting to look pretty rough, haha, so I went and bought myself some.  I tried to find a good deal so it wouldn't be too expensive.  Thanks ;)   ALSO.  We went shopping at that place called Jumbo (the one where I found A1 with Elder Nielsen) and we found...wait for it...DR PEPPER!!!  It was pretty pricey because it was imported, but dang it was good.  Good times. 

That's kind of the run down of this week! Thanks for the write, and everything.  Love you guys! Talk to you soon.

Elder Hancock and I having a grand ol' time

Week 45!

Hey mom! Thanks for the write! I'll look into getting permission to Skype Christmas Eve, that would def be better.  Also, on the scriptures, I don't need the smallest ones, just smaller than the ones we bought.  And, if you could somehow get your hands on the quad that has like a little buckle or cover kind of thing that would be ideal as well.  Just for convenience :) 

This  week the mission work has been pretty alright.  We had  a lot of time out of our area which was kind of hard.  We almost missed like 3 whole days (Well, we missed three days, but not the whole day) due to interviews, meetings and baptismal interviews.  It's all good, that's just the mission. 

This week we were able to find two new investigators that were a reference from a member (which is almost ALWAYS better than knocking doors).  She is the aunt of a real recently returned missionary.  She took the lessons from the missionaries a while back, maybe a little less than a year ago? But never really got to the point of baptism.  BUT the good news is that now she lives with two recently returned missionaries so they are probably going to help her out a lot.  She also had a son who we are teaching.  They both are really cool, and I hope they can gain a testimony.

Today is a holiday here in good ol' Colombia (who knows what...probably some random catholic holiday) which means we got to go to the temple! The coolest part was getting to see my "dad" Elder Sotoski!  Haha, I haven't seen him even once since my training ended, so it was really cool to see him.  Plus he got to meet his "grandson" Elder Hancock.  So we took a cute family pic.  Good times.

After going to the temple, we went to a place called Mundo Aventura, which is like a mini lagoon. It was a lot of fun.  We got to go with some of the people from the zone.  We had a lot of fun there.  

That's pretty much whats cookin' down here in Colombia Bogotá South. Things are good.  Love you guys, talk to you soon :)