Bogota Life in the Dream House Week 4

Heyo homies. Had a pretty spooky experience that I wanna start with. So it was Sunday night, and we were in class, learning about past subjunctive or something with our teacher Hermano Polo. Our room has a door that opens up to the outside and that door is about 20 feet away from the fence that protects us from the evilness outside our compound. Anyways so you know just learning when suddenly BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM from right outside the gate next to our door!  Red lights flashed and the room was in panic. Hermano Polo was the first one to dive out of the room, others hid in a corner. I was right across from the door and was just frozen. Hermano Polo was yelling at others to get out of the room and hit the floor. After about 5 seconds of being frozen someone yelled for me to move so I did some parkour and dove out the door myself. Gunshots still sounding we were pretty spooked. Suddenly the sound changed and it was more like a fizzling sound. We looked at our teacher with confused looks and he looked at us with confused looks? He went back into the room curiously and looked outside, beckoning us to come back in and see what the noise was. Fireworks. For some reason the Catholic Church next door decided to light off FIREWORKS for a wedding at 8 at night in the middle of the city. So ya after that we all went back into the class and laughed at our near death experience, recreating how we reacted to being shot at. 

Other than that not a lot has been happening. We had a cool devotional on Sunday where a member of the 70 came and talked to us. At the end we all sang I Hope They Call Me on a Mission in our native languages. No one was strong enough  to not cry during that. Most of the Latinos here have it rough. I'd say half of them are converts to the church which is just amazing that they have the faith to be out here. Probably a third are the only members of their families. I can't even imagine not having a family to support and love me right now. I haven't met a latino that is 18 and here, I've met very few that are 19, most are 20-22. So many of them have come from basically poverty to being here where they think they live like kings haha. I've been humbled a lot by all the Latinos here.

Since its Tuesday that means that we had 7 Nortes leave, lots of great guys, and 60 Latinos. Tomorrow we'll have a brand new bunch of Latinos and 7 more Nortes. Me and Elder Hatch also  moved rooms! Our room has the same amout of beds, but is twice as big now which should be niiiiiice!

Today was an interesting cultural experience. We got to go to the Bogota Emigration office which is basically the DMV. We sat in a room for like 5 hours and waited for them to call our names so we could go sit at a desk, say nothing, get our fingerprints and then go home. We mostly just talked about jokes and things we miss. All of us are going to miss StarWars and we cry every night. Afterwards we got to go to SUBWAY WHICH WAS GREAT! I got my normal sub without vegetables and people thought I was cray, nah.

Spanish is going good! No complaints! Im still learning a lot! Every day we get personal study for an hour, I spend this time reading the Book of Mormon which is great! We have a lot of spiritual devotionals with our teachers and we all get emotional often. This week our favorite teacher Hermano Gomez pulled our district into a room and started crying and told us it was his last day working here. Its super sad cus he's the chillest guy and a great example. He treats us all like his friends and not students which is great. Him and his wife are moving to Provo to go to school so Ill probably get to see him after my mission! He told us that he doesnt remember anything he learned at the MTC when he was there, but he remembers the teacher there who treated him like a friend and thats exactly what he did for us. Apply that to your life how you will, but I would suggest to be kind to everyone you meet because you'll never know how it will impact them. 

Love you all hope you're all safe from fireworks!

Elder Ralphs and I

Me and Elder Hatch

To Mom:

Prostelyting went well! I´m the best one at spanish, but im very stubborn and dont like to talk unless I know it´s correct so it´s hard for me to want to stop people and try and talk to them haha. Me and elder hatch got 9 contacts in 3 hours. A group of 3 missionaries who just left got 36 tho! They just stopped people, said "hi we believe in jesus, do you want white people like us to come visit you? Yes, okay great, write your info here". But we went mad about our small number. Our singing went awesome! President said he loved it, but then later in the day, he said that we spend way to much time practicing our songs instead of spanish, so who knows how he actually feels. Its so hard to not get in trouble lol! We try to do the right thing! Its whatever, no one is getting sent home. shirts have stains on the collar, but today I figured out how to get them out! I just got a letter from tyson that was sent november 5th. Soooo hope you sent it to my mission haha. Thanks!