Pereira, Life in the Rain Week 37

I bought an umbrella this week! It was a pretty good purchase.

Well I hope everyone had a good week! Mine was better than last week. Theres' still a lot of work to do in this area, but were slowly making it better. 

Steps if you don't have a job in Pereira. 1. Buy Avocados from any store. 2. Sell them door to door because EVERYONE wants avocado for lunch. 3.(Optional) Say: Its an avocado, thaaaaanks! 

I am the English leader in the zone, which basically means that I'm in charge of verifying with people if they're studying and learning English. Something fun that we have started to do is that from 10-10:30 when we're getting ready to sleep, we all speak English. If someone talks not in English, we pretend to not hear them. We´re all learning a lot about English! There are so many things that we say in English and I try to explain them and I sound like an idiot. Like the difference between ¨I have one sister.¨ and ¨I have a sister.¨ Because they both translate to the same thing in Spanish, so they have a hard time understanding crud like that. 

We have 7 days to leave our house because our landlord says were too noisy and he doesn't like us. So this week we looked for tooooons of houses, but it's a struggle because the house has to have two bathrooms. Houses in Colombia never have two bathrooms. We found houses with like 6 bedrooms and one bathroom. Blargh. 

Not much else, tons of work tho! 

Love all of you guys lots! Hope you have a good year! 

Pereira, Life in the Rain Week 36

It rains a lot here, but knowing my luck, it won't rain this whole transfer and the title of my email will be irrelevant. 

Elder Gallardo left on Wednesday, it was sad, but I know he'll do well in the coast. I know the two missionaries who are going to my first area in Lorica, so I gave one of them letters for a bunch of people. It was super cool to write letters of support to the converts I had in Lorica, Marly, Luis Jose, Edubijes, and Laura Flores. 

My new comp Elder Saez got here Wednesday as well. He's 22 and from Lima Peru (Perusalem) (There are SO many members in Lima Peru if you weren't aware) But things have been good so far. His accent is interesting. He talks in a deep voice, that's the only way I can describe Peruvians.

 

The work here in my area is slow. We changed the limits of our area so that we don't have to take any buses. So we gave up half of our area where all of our investigators were to get half the area of the other missionaries, but we didn't receive anything from them haha. It'll be hard to get going with new investigators and things like that, but I know my new comp is really good at that stuff. We have already found new people to teach and help though! Yesterday we found a really cool family. Originally we were just going to go there to help out two kids with English, but then the parents joined us and we started talking about what we do as missionaries. 

I bought an Ukulele this week and we make our neighbors even more mad muahaha.

I'm actually so white. Everyone comments on it because they're so confused how its even possible to be this white. 

I met an Elder Weber this week and he lives in Power Ranch. I literally know where that neighborhood is. Spooky stuff. I'm pretty sure that's my stake actually....

Elder Gallardo left us his Risk board and we thought, you know, it would have the risk pieces in it, but we were wrong and Elder Gallardo bamboozled us from many miles away. 

Love you all! Have a good summer week! 

Photo 1. Me and Elder Saez

Photo 2. Me on a rock 

Me and Elder Saez

Me on a Rock

Pereira, Life White Week 35

Rest in peace Elder Bigelow, my father. He finished his mission this transfer and will be leaving the glorious country of Colombia soon. 

Literally all of the roads here in Pereira are one way. Every single one. 

For transfers I am staying here in Pereira, and my companion, Elder Gallardo, will be leaving to the COAST! My new comp will be Elder Saez, someone I already know, from Peru. 

I still can´t eat beans. Vegetables are so bad. Everyone in the ward knows I hate veggies and they always joke about it. Its all good tho. At least I don't get too many veggies. 

Sometimes our neighbor gets really drunk (Every Saturday night) and sometimes he thinks he can sing (Every Saturday night) and so some nights we cant sleep (Every Saturday night). It makes it hard to go to church at 8 AM on Sunday. The attendance of our sacrament meeting has greatly declined since we changed hours. Not sure if I mentioned this already. But at the start of the meetings this week there were only 35 homies. 

We took a ride on a jeep up to a farm in the mountains this week! It was fun because it was dangerous and we had to hold on for dear life to not fall off! 

One of our favorite things to do is reenact the 1st Vision. 

I´ve said it before, but there really is a power to the 1st vision. It´s a testament to so many gospel truths that we know. That God and Jesus Christ are separate personages, that God really is our loving heavenly father, and that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and does only what the Father would do. Most importantly it teaches us that God speaks to men in this age and generation. 

Picture 1. All of the homies at lunch.

Picture2. 1st Vision, Colombian version

All of the homies at lunch

1st Vision, Colombian version

Pereira, Life White Week 34

Being the 4th of July, we listened to the most patriotic music we had, the Chilean National Anthem, and the Colombian National Anthem. WOOOHOOO! 

Hope everyone had a good week and will have a poppin 4th of July! 

Things here in Pereira are super hot for some reason! The work is good and me and my comp are good friends. My comp will most likely be leaving the area after next week which will be sad, I really hope I get another Latino. Lovin Pereira. 

This is my first area in the mission where we can have DOMINOS PIZZA delivered to our house, we usually do it like 5 times a week. NBD. It´s actually one of the sponsors of our Liga Yugioh! Along with Cocacola, and Old Spice. The three things that we use the most in our house lol. 

Why does everyone know who Jackie Chan is?

During weekly planning this week we decided that FOUR OR NOTHING would be our motto for the week. But now its looking like nothing is going to be the baptisms we have for the last week of the transfer. Kinda sad, but such is the life. The people who had baptismal dates still want to talk to us, but they are all just missing something to take the next step. 

We´ve been working with a lot of ward members to try and get them to attend institutes and we´ve had a lot of success in motivating them. Before, there was one person attending, and this week about 7 went! 

Hope you all have a good week