Lorica, Life with Another Gringo Week 20

Wassup homies hope everyone had a good Easter. Here in Colombia everyone is Catholic so everyone celebrates the Holy Week, which basically means get drunk, just like every other Holiday.

We had a drunk guy almost attack me and Elder Piñate this week. He was talking ABSOLUTE nonsense to us about random things. So we just kept walking away from him, but he kept following us! He was so drunk he could barely stand up. He had to hold on to us to keep from falling over. We tried to cross the only big road in Lorica to get away from him, but somehow he stumbled his way through traffic and found us again. He wouldn't leave us alone. Elder Piñate was about to punch the guy cus he was pushing him around and stuff, but eventually we just ran home lol. 

Out of 4 talks on Sunday, only my companion talked about Jesus. The rest talked about sabbath day observance, and the Branch President talked about keeping the chapel clean. Kinda weird. 

There's this thing here that a lot of Elders in my Zone have started to do and it's collect stickers! There is this type of chocolate here called Jet, and every bar comes with a sticker of a nature thing, like a plant or bug or mammal, or idk biodiversity stuff. My friend Elder Robison will buy a 24 pack of this chocolate every week to get these stickers. He has a sticker book (!!!) to collect all the stickers that they have. All the gringos talk about stickers all the time, there's so much sticker hype, its unreal. 

I was talking to this 15 year old member and she says that she and her group of friends make up "The Combo". I thought that was pretty neat. 

We went to the beach last Monday and chilled as a District which was fun! 

We didn't have water in our house for like 2 days which was funny. 

Today alone I broke 2 things which has been fun. I broke a pipe in our house which is a long story, and a computer that I was on in this Internet cafe FELL off the table, idk how, maybe I'm just dumb. Probably. 

This week we had a couple of spiritual experiences. One of them was finding a man named Carlos. Carlos actually found us. He called over to us as we were walking down the street and we set up a time to come visit with him again. We come back to visit him and he tells us that he was an investigator 3 years ago, but he moved and didnt tell the missionaries, but he kept his Book of Mormon and read it for a long time until someone stole it. He told us that he wants nothing more in his life than to be a part of this Church. Something we don{t get a lot. He told us that he was not married to the woman he lived with so we informed him that he would need to get married to get baptized. He told us straist up: I'm going to get baptized this next Sunday. Maybe he was just drunk, but maybe he felt the spirit so strongly with us in out meeting after not meeting with the missionaries for a long time that he really felt this desire to do all the things he told us he would do. So that was pretty neat. 

Another simple thing that happened is that weve been working with a Lady named Edubijes a lot. We have been praying for her to feel the spirit in our lessons and when she reads. This week when we met with her she told us that she has been feeling the spirit so strongly and that this has been the best Holy Week of her life.

Love the mish, love life. Hope you homies are staying homies! Love you all

Lorica, Life with Another Gringo Week 19

Wassup peeps we're back with another week in Colombia.

This week has been a little difficult getting used to a new companion and all the little things they do and don't do.

This week we started teaching 2 young adult girls, Yorleidis and Laura Flores. They both work with this 50 year old man in our ward who introduced us to them. Idk what kinda work they do. They're both really cool tho. Laura is in LOVE with Justin Beiber! She was so mad at me when she found out I lived in the US for 18 years and NEVER went to go meet Justin Beiber. Like it's just so easy to go meet him. The US isn't a huge place or anything according to all the people here. So ya, the old guy is in our lessons with them and they're pretty rad. 

We started "teaching" a recently reactivated man named Manuel this week. He's like 40 but looks like he's 60. He's got 3 kids and is recently separated from his wife. The guy has been a member for 15 years, but was not active a year back up until now. The guy has lived his whole life with nothing. He lives in a lot with cinderblocks surrounding it. His house has no roof, a mango tree, some chickens, no bathroom, and a little place to lock up to sleep. So me and my comp went over to his house twice this week to teach a little, but both times, Manuel literally teaches us. Theres nothing we can figure out to say to him, that he doesn't know already. Its really quite humbling to talk to this man who has lived his whole life in this same house, he works 12 hours a day scraping fish remains out of containers by the river, has no money to feed his children, but yet he loves this church with all of his heart. He has nothing, yet he feels like he has everything. 

A while ago my family/homies tried some maracuyá (passion fruit) suckers that they bought from a Colombian store and they told me that they tasted a little funky and weren't very good. So I bought one this week and I thought it was GREAT, like the best sucker I've had in a long time. 

Hope you all have a great week and remember how blessed we are.

To Grandma:

Thanks for the update, I don't have much time tho, so I gotta be quick. Things here are a little hard, but still good I guess. In a package I like little gadgets and gizmos usually to show little kids. My mom sent me a strawberry plant that I liked. Idk. I like any kind of american candy. Usually chocolate melts, so like peach rings and starbursts and things like that. Love you lots thanks for the update!

Just about sums up our companionship so far. Elder Piñate on the phone saying, "No we can't understand your directions."

Me being a hood rat swag daddy at our weekly branch fellowshipping night thing.

Lorica, Life with Another Gringo Week 18

Epaaa homies! Its been a long week without my BFF Bigelow, but my new Comp is here, Elder Piñate! Yes he is white. He is from Miami, Florida and has 11.5 months in the mission. I don't really know a lot about him, but he's pretty quiet and funny sometimes. The best way I can think of to describe his personality is that one time we were eating Lunch and I watched him take 3 spoon fulls of nothing in a row and he acted like nothing happened. Things are good tho, I think I'm his first white companion so he likes talking in English to me. We both need to improve in Spanish.

Bigelow will call me to tell me how cold it is in his new area so I hate him. He also says that the roads in his area are like walking up a line with an undefined slope. Benefits of being in the coast, everything is flaaaat (Stanley). 

Both of my roommates stayed, Escribano and Bravo, so that's still the same. 

We have picked up the amount of work being done in our area and are trying to work a lot more with the members to capacitate them so that they know more about the church and how they can help us as missionaries. 

I don't really talk about Investigators a lot because things are just normal with them. We are going to try to start working with this part member family to get the rest of them baptized, obvi if they want to. The rest of our investigators are slowly progressing so there's not much to say. There usually aren't any crazy lessons where I just blow their mind with some next level spiritual action. But needless to say things are going well!

Nothing weird happened this week with food which is suspicious. We're still waiting on the Stake President to choose someone to be the 'mom' of Lorica to give us food. 

Didn't take any pictures this week oops.

Hope all of your weeks are Next Level and that you all floss your teeth.

Lorica, Life in a Tropical Wasteland Week 17

RIP in peace Elder Bigelow. He is getting transferred to the coldest city, Manizales, in the mission and I am staying in the hottest one. My new comp will be another Gringo (Something that no one in the branch will be excited about) from Florida!

The most popular haircut here for old ladies is "The Bruno Mars", their skin color is coincidentally the same as Bruno Mars' as well making me do usually 3 double takes per day. HOLY MOLY IS THAT BRUNO MARS never mind its a little old lady. I'll try to get a pic/autograph soon tho. 

People's opinion of me is 100% based off of whether I eat all their food. It's rather silly. No one here can fathom how its possible that I can't loooove Colombian food. Except for the like 3 return missionaries who know how much it sucks to be surprised with something weird. Since they eat garbage all day every day they have no idea why I can't love it. Their food is brainwashing them. And then if I tell them, hey I don't like beans, can you not give me beans, they get offended. They tell me, how can you know if you don't like these beans, you've never tried this secret blend of herbs and spices. So I go fine, try them, almost throw up, and then offend them even more and say, sorry, I don't like your cooking either. Its a lose/lose all the time. 

Bigelow and I went exploring on Tuesday which was pretty neat. We found a cool farm with baby cows and horses and it was suuper pretty.

I wish I had more to say, but it was a pretty normal week here! We had some exchanges we went on, found some new homies, taught some homies, all good stuff. 

Hope you all have a good week! 

If you look past the garbage and humidity, Lorica is pretty pretty. Featuring Explorer Elder Dawson. 

When you're in a taxi and the driver puts on the Colombian National Anthem...