Week 65!

Hey, Mom! What a weird week. 

First off, we had exchanges with the assistants.  It was really cool.  I got to spend the day with and Elder named Elder Sorbonne.  He is quite the saint.  I learned a lot from him.  He showed me a lot of tips on diligence and how to help members participate in the mission work.  He had this really good idea to go buy some bread to go give out to all the members and verify how they are going with there referrals.  Bread is a really good way to win someones heart here.  So we just dropped buy a bakery and did what he called a "member run"  where you go drop by every members house and see how they're doing with sharing the gospel with their friends.  So we ran by, gave them all bread, and verified with their referrals.  Super good idea, haha.

So we had planned to do a Visitors Center thing this week, which is where the mission sends some materials to the zone, and we do an open house at church with the stuff.  The goal is to make the chapel seem like the visitors center in SLC (real reverent, real cool).  But like the day before, they called us and told us they forgot to send the stuff down, so they wanted to see if we could just change the date.  Unfortunately we had already been planning with the branch for over a month so it was too late to cancel.  So I definitely had a mini breakdown and nearly lost my mind, but amidst my "Out-freaking" I found the solution.  We needed to go BACK to Bogota to get the stuff so we could have the guarantee that the materials would get here on time.  So we got on ANOTHER 4 hour bus ride to Bogota, haha.  Just to grab the stuff and come back, haha. Worth it though.  

So we came back and did the event.  It was super cool.  We had a lot of fun with the event, probably not as many referrals as we would have liked, but still a ton of fun.  Lots of member support.  Plus the members all loved it, and since its not too hard to do, we are going to try and do it more often.

Today for P-day, we wanted a real "Llanero experience".  Llanero (ya-nero) is what they call the people here because they live in the Llanos (the plains).  So we went and got Carne a la Llanera.  It's the smoked meat they do here in Colombia, and its comes specifically from Villavicencio.  Suuuper good.  Plus we found A1 here so you KNOW we were loving it.  Good times :) Can't wait to show you guys Carne a la Llanera when we come down.  Good ol' times.

Sadly...we are going BACK to freaking Bogota today.  Like the 3rd time in 7 days.  Oh well though, I gotta.  It's for the leadership counsel.  So we go and present the zone plan and the goals and stuff.  Should be good.

Thanks for everything!  Much love, talk to you next week.

 

Week 64!

Hey, Mom!  It's been pretty uneventful down here too.  Truth is, it's just been HOT. I have never experienced such heat in my life.  We honestly thought we were dying the whole week.  Every day it was like "Dang, there's no way it'll get hotter than this, it's gonna cool down tomorrow," and it just got hotter, hahaha.  AAAAAAND as if the heat wasn't strong enough, they cut the electricity in our house for a few days...so we are COOKIN'.  All good though, we are about to head into Bogotà...again.  So it'll be colder there.

This week we went to Restrepo (the far away part of our area) again.  It was cool.  We got to hang out with the Silva family again, which is always a great experience because they are just killer members.  There isn't a church out there, so nobody really has heard much about the church before, so they're totally awesome about sharing the gospel with their friends.  Hermana Silva, since they live so far away, teaches her son a "home-schooled seminary class" and some of the neighbor girls saw and said "You teach a religion class?" and she said "Well yeah, kind of" and they asked if they could join her class.  So they had been going to seminary for a few days, and then the Silva's took us over there to teach them about the church.  At first they were just kind of like "Ah yeah, cool whatevs." but then later they were super interested in all of it. They are planning to come to church next week, so I guess we`ll see how it goes.

Much love for everyone down here from the Llanos.  I hope everyone has a good week.  I included a video a member sent me of some "Joropo" the traditional dance of the llanos.  Enjoy, talk to you all soon.

https://youtu.be/czcRHth3YKk

Week 63!

Hey, Mom!  Sounds like an interesting week!  It sounds like everything is going well with you guys.  This week was pretty good.  We were able to find some new investigators, and finally able to get someone baptized.  She's just a 9 year old girl, but her mom is less active so little by little we are helping the family out.  It's kind of funny, the last time elder Nielsen and I got baptisms, we were together...in Leticia...like forever ago.  Haha, it's been rough, but we started and ended our "baptismal drought" together.

This week we also started teaching a family.  Their names are Fernando and Olga.  They are super nice people.  They talked about how they really need a change in their home and in their family, and they think this could be it.  Recently we had a training with the president, and he  talked a lot about the power of the Book of Mormon.  He said we should be reading it a lot with our investigators, to help them gain a testimony, so that's what we did.  We read some good parts of the Book of Mormon with Fernando and Olga, and they really liked it.  They are an interesting sitch too.  Apparently Elder Nielsen contacted Olga in the street forever ago, but they never ended up getting to meet with her, but then we miraculously contacted them one day.  They must be pretty prepared because the Lord gave us two chances to find them, haha :) 

So things have been pretty good here in Colombio.  Living the dream and cooking in the sun every day.  Much love, thanks for everything.  Talk to you next week.

Week 62!

Hey, Mom!  Sounds like a pretty good week in the ol' Utar.  Things down here are pretty good as well.  Livin' and lovin' the people...and the work.  

This week was a lot better than last week.  We got to go with this awesome member family (The Silvas) to a place called Restrepo.  Its a part of our area, but it's super far away (30 minutes in car) so we don't really go there very much.  But we had some members with us, and they had some fire referrals for us to go visit.  Which was perfect.  We got there at about 9:30 or so, and they had the whole day planned for us...even lunch, haha.  So we went and visited a bunch of part member families (those are the best, haha) and taught a lot of people.  

The first family we visited was a lady who is a member, but her parents aren't.  So we went and visited the parents and shared a good lesson.  Like any old country folks, they talked a TON.  But it was still pretty good.  We shared the lesson, and they didn't seem to understand much, but then at the end we asked the lady if she would offer the closing prayer.  She said no, and we asked why.  And she goes "It makes me want to cry" and she started crying.  She said she was just so happy that we had come so far to visit her, and she said she just felt like we "Cleaned her heart."  It seemed like she was feeling the spirit really strong, and just didn't know how to react.  It was a cool experience for sure.

Then we went and visited a member who lives in the dang middle of nowhere.  It's about a 30 minute hike to her house, and it's just them.  They have one neighbor, but it's kind of far away so you just feel completely alone.  The pictures don't do it justice. It was BEAUTIFUL.  The hike up was short, but super cool.  They are a pretty poor family, and they don't have much, so the Silva family (a bunch of saints) had us all carry a bag of stuff up there.  Books of Mormon, other church books, clothes, all kinds of stuff.  It was cool to see how excited the kids were to have people over, and how happy the mom was to finally have a reason to come back to church.  

Then we were walking around Sunday night.  The week was almost over, and we just had nothing to do. Just walking around like dang zombies.  We sat down for a sec to just think about something to do, and Elder Nielsen goes, "Hey there are some houses we've never seen before, lets go contact them."  So we did, and the first door we knocked was a shirtless guy who was kind of like, "I just got done eating, what do you guys need?" So we were a little like, dang.  But then he opened the door and invited us in.  Then he invited his wife, and two kids to come listen too.  So we got to share with all of them.  The understood the whole message really well too.  It was a really cool experience.  I guess God just blessed us because he knew how rough last week was.

Thanks for everything mom, love you.  Talk to you next week.