Pereira, Week 42

I guess now that I´m the only missionary in the family, I automatically  become the favorite...? I hope that´s how it works I guess. 

My new roommates are Elder Bagley from North Carolina and Elder Murillo from Peru! 

Elder Bagley has 18 months in the mission and is pretty chill. He´s a model. We get along great. He loves to work and is excited to be here in Pereira. 

Elder Murillo. The first Latino I've met who played League of Legends before the mission. I liked him a lot before I even found out about that. He´s from Lima like half of the missionaries in the mission. There's literally 4 in our zone. He's silver and mains leblanc adc and vi support. Hes a silly kid. He just left the MTC so Elder Bagley is his dad. 

We have been contacting a lot of People in the streets recently. Usually the way I like to do it is we walk around and find a cute cat and talk to the cat's owner. Normal stuff.

We had a cool experience this week where we gave away a Book of Mormon to some people who had a cute cat, a couple days later we went back to visit them and they told us all about how the book was helping their family. Neat stuff. 

Normal stuff. Colombia is chill. 

Love you all lots 

Pereira, Life in the Rain, Week 41

The last week of the transfer is always hard because all we do is wait to hear our transfers. It was a good week tho. We had 6 people come to church with us including the Garcia family. The Garcia family is great, they're like my favorite homies rn. 

The transfers came in and I'm staying in the area with my comp Elder Saez, it's a weird feeling that I'm gonna be with the same missionary for two transfers, the last time that happened was with Elder Bigelow, my trainer. 

The homies who live with us, Elder Hanson and Elder Gaona will both be leaving the area and 2 missionaries will be coming to replace them.

 

I'm looking forward to this next transfer, it should be a good one.

Fun fact about Colombia, it has the lowest percentage of members of the church of any South American country that has a mission. 

Rip Tyson, have fun at home lol, love my bro lots for the great example he is to me. Love you all lots! 

Pic 1: One of the most legendary photos even taken

Pic 2: When your best friend leaves you to go be a zone leader in Monteria and he has to leave at 11 at night 

One of the most legendary photos even taken

When your best friend leaves you to go be a zone leader in Monteria and he has to leave at 11 at night 

Pereira Life in the Rain Week 40

This week was an awesome one. After lots of weeks without people to teach and no one coming to church we have eight people with baptismal dates and three who came to church with us! I love all the people we are working with. 

I went on exchanges with Elder Rice this week. He was born in the same city as me on the same day! Kinda cray. We came to the mission together and now he´s my zone leader. We worked really hard and he taught me a bunch of cool ways to contact. My day with him was probably one of my favorite days of the last 10 months. 

Yesterday we had the opportunity to travel to Medellin to have a conference with Elder Clayton the president of the Seventy! The majority of the missionaries in our mission were there and it was sups fun to catch up with all the people. When Elder Clayton bore his testimony at the end of his talk it was honestly the most powerful thing I´ve ever heard. 

I also met an Elder Wilson from Gilbert who is the first Gringo I´ve met on the mission who has less time than me... There haven´t been gringos coming to the mission lately. The missionaries who finish their missions this coming week gave their final testimonies. It feels weird because I actually knew all of them. At the beginning of the mission I didn't know everyone so people left and I didn't notice. But now its different and it feels weird to say bye to all the homies. 

I got to catch up with my old companion Elder Piñate which was fun. He´s pretty much the same goob. I love him now tho. He still talks in an accent and gives everyone dirty looks.

Something about Colombia real quick. Something they say here is ¨Si Dios quiere.¨ In just about every situation the people here will use that phrase. To talk about going somewhere or doing something. It literally translates to ¨If God wants.¨ But what people always use it as is ¨No and I´ll blame God for not making everything perfect when I dont put any effort in.¨ We hear it a lot as missionaries. I love the words of James about this topic. Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. 

Let us always submit ourselves to God so that he can draw closer to us. Doing his will and the will of his servants the Prophets will never be something that takes us away from God. God always wants us to follow the commandments. Do the things that you need to do. 

Love you homies lots 

Pereira, Life in the Rain, Week 39

Hello! Hope everyone had a good week, this week was rainy of course for me. 

Sometimes I will see people who have blue eyes, and I think, these type of eyes actually exist?? BlueEyesWhiteDragon.

I forgot to tell a story that happened about two weeks ago! So good old Elder Gaona from Mexico is looking through the Ensign magazines that we have in our house, for lots of pictures. He was mostly looking for pictures to put on his agenda. But there's obviously pictures of good looking girls from the United States too, ¨Monas¨ as they´re called here in Colombia, even tho it directly translates to monkeys.  Anyways, he was looking through an Ensign and I hear him from the other side of the house say, ¨Tatum? What are you doing here?¨ So I go look and he found the Ensign where my sister Tatum is in one of the pictures with other youth friend homies. It was funny, he cut out the picture to save it. 

We are gonna go to the zoo today if all goes according to plan.

I talked to the missionaries who are in my first area of Lorica and it was so cool! They mostly just asked, where does this person live, you never wrote down any directions. There are no directions in Lorica. But they are going to baptize a girl named Wendy that I found 4 months ago! I miss Lorica just a little. They also still use the AC that I bought lol. 

The work is good! We have two families that are really interested in talking to us. Busy busy. 

Love all you homies! Have a bomb week 

Pereira, Life in the Rain Week 38

Hello everyone! This week was a quick one, we have been working super hard to find new people to teach this week. We only found one good person to teach, but she's cool. 

We found out there is a bowling alley in a mall close by, so we're gonna go there today. It'll probably be really dumpy, but Imma get a turkey like old times, so it'll be okay. 

I got two packages this week which made everyone jelly. I got a new umbrella, rip title of my emails, a twitch plays Pokemon shirt, praise helix, and tons of other fun thingies! 

We had two people take pictures of us this week on the street. One of them dropped everything, pulled out her phone, and took a picture. I wouldn't have noticed if her flash didn't go off...

We found out that we can buy a big bread for 33 cents. Its good for my wallet. 

Not much to say, 9 months is a long time, sometimes I run out of things to say. Love all you homies! 

Pic 1. You know who it is

Pic 2. Be wise. Be (more than) a friend.