Elder Jayden Dawson: Lorica, Life in the Hot City Week 7

Heyo! Hope everyone had a great Christmas! Here in Lorica it doesn't really feel like Christmas since its 90 degrees with 70% humidity, but we're loving it all the same! Most missionary work slows down a lot between Christmas and New Years, but Elder Bigelow and I are doing our best! We have started teaching about 4 new people this week and it's awesome to see them accept the Book of Mormon and desire to change their lives!

Something fun this week was that Bigelow and I bought a pineapple for 50 cents! It was suuuuuper good and juicy! The only downside is that it made our mouths bleed really bad... The next day we splurged a bit and bought an expensive pineapple for $1! It was of higher quality and didn't make our mouths bleed.

One day we were visiting some recent converts just to check up on them and see how they're doing and they were bathing their baby. Everything was normal until the baby POOPED and they DIDN'T take the baby out. I was baffled. They CONTINUED to bathe the baby for another 5 minutes. Two days later we went to the same house because they were going to make us some authentic Colombian Christmas food, super hype! When we got there they informed us that the baby had gotten sick, and the family used up all their money to get the baby some medicine. So we just had juice and corn tortillas with cheese. The juice they gave us was made from tap water, we're pretty sure, and I've been sick for 4 days as a result of that lol.

Skyping my family was super awesome! I got to talk to my brother, not in Spanish because I'm a scrub, but it was nice to see how far he's come since he started his mission in Guatemala 15 months ago.

My Zone had a secret Santa gift exchange thing which was funny. So ya, secret santa, everyone gets someone random in the zone to buy a present for. There's about 16 people in my zone and my comp and I get another companionship to buy presents for. We have no idea what to buy so we just get 2 Peppa Pig dolls since every child in Colombia loves Peppa Pig. At the exchange everyone is getting nice shirts, starwars stuff (Rip me for 2 years), and all this nice stuff. And me and Bigelow awkwardly give our people these 30 cent stuffed animals hahaha, it was great.

Christmas Traditions in Lorica are basically non-existent as far as I can tell. People like to festively sit on their porch and listen to the same accordion music that they do every other day except 5x as loud. They like to drink a lot. Everyone buys their own Christmas presents that they want. And NOBODY has a tree, which is a bummer.

The first picture is a Nativity Scene without Jesus... We assume that the baby Jesus was stolen, nice. The second one is me and Bigelow lookin good in our shades. We´re going to the beach today which should be a great time!

Anyways, hope everyone has a nice New Years, stay safe!