Wassup homies, hope you all are doing well! Im south of the south of the south of the border if that makes sense Colombia is a pretty chill place! The MTC life is pretty rough tbh lol. We gotta be up for 16 hours which is obvi hard for me since I usually take 2 naps in my days where I stay up 12 hours. This MTC in Colombia is very very small. There are 22 white dudes, 30 Latino dudes, and 8 Latino girls. I got to this MTC Tuesday night and sense then its been pretty intense, the night we got here something broke in the kitchen and water started going down the halls, luckily me and my roommates were up to tell the MTC president, which he wasnt too happpy about, now that I think about it maybe that's why he doesn't like me... Anyways, my companion right now is Elder Hatch and he's a pretty cool guy! He is very spiritual, likes following rules, and definitely keeps me in line. He's from Florida and likes, Idk, Church I guess? In my room are 2 other Elders who for the most part speak only Spanish. Elder Campos is from Argentina, has an accent that I can't understand for the life of me, has 3 girlfriends waiting for him when he gets home, loves soccer, and is absolutely hilarious. He speaks only English that he knows from movies, and music, so we gotta tell him to watch his mouth when he gets angry sometimes. One time he told me and Elder Hatch in the morning that he had a present for us so we waited for it all day and were super excited, and then that night we asked him about it, he pulled up his shirt and said, "Honey, I'm pregnant." Elder Barrenzeuta is from Venezuela and is a little business excecutive. He's very professional, and doesn't know any English except "WOW!" He's pretty cool though, no complaints, except when he steals my keys, loses his and mine, blames me for it, and then finds them both in his pocket a few minutes later. Communicating with Latinos in Spanish is hard because they have no tolerance for people who don't know Spanish. I can communicate pretty well though! Out of the 8 Elders in my district, the people I go to class all day with, I feel like I know that most about Spanish which means while they are learning in class I'm usually not paying attention which usually leads to me having to do pushups. Most days have been the same, get up by 6:30, personal study, breakfast class, at around 9 until 12, lunch at 12, class from 1-4, work out from 4-5, dinner at 5, and finally class and planning until 9:30. The food here is edible for me luckily! Nothing to write home about. I'm obviously the pickiest eater on the earth, but luckily the food here isn't straight veggies, eggs, and beans, usually only 2 of those per meal. We eat a lot of rice.
The Elders in my district are super chill. I'm probably the closest with Elder Ralphs, lets just say that if we were companions, we would get nothing done. We can't sit next to each other in class anymore. He reminds me of the purple guy from Lilo and Stitch who creates stitch and has to go find him on Earth, in the best possible way. This morning for P-Day we got to go to the Bogotat Temple which was an amazing experience! Drivers here are literally insane. I saw a lady standing in the middle on the freeway selling cheese, which was 3 lanes and everyone pretended it was 4 lanes, cus people here just use lane lines as suggestions. I took lots of pics, but I'm running out of time to write , and idk if I'll be able to send them, rip the dream. I know I probably forgot to write a lot of stuff, but we don't have long to email. Shoutout to all my homies, love and miss you. I'm doing great, love it here, learning a lot. I miss Bob Ross.
To Dad: Im doing good. Food is fine. Eggs, hot chocolate, and bread for breakfast. Rice, meat, and veggies for lunch, and usually a special thing for dinner. No repeats for food for lunch and dinner so far, they usually rotate between meat types, and then dinner is like lasagna, or hamburgers last night, idk, usuallly meat. The older missinaries have a *rice belly* from eating rice literally every day. I dont like the rice, it tastes like seaweed, but I recently learned I can just dump bbq sauce on it.
To Mom: Hey Im back on. Dont know how to do apostraphes, or how to spell it. Its good! I get an hour starting now! Ya all those pictures loaded, thanks for that! I didnt get checked at customs, and then at whatever the next part is I just walked up to a man in a cubicle, he spoke some spanish to me, I handed him everything I had, and told him I didnt speak Spanish. I did meet up with the guy I met at BYU, he actually speaks Spanish so hes only here for a few more days, frowny face. Hes super cool and so is everyone in my district. Everyone in my district, 9 guys, are going to medellin. Elder velasco, the one I met at BYU is going to baranquilla, but ill prob see him on my plane ride home! Thanks, love you a lot!
