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 

Pereira, Life White Week 33

I´m actually 1-3 of the way done with the mission now which is pretty scary. 

Everyday at 6 PM in Colombia, the majority of the radio stations play the National Anthem. 

Congrats to Colombia and me for beating the US. 

Last week playing soccer on PDay I scored my first goal for probably the first time in 10 years! I was wearing my American flag socks, Arizona flag bandanna, and my Bob Ross shirt, 1000% Murican. When I made the goal I was temped to do a reenactment of Joseph Smith´s first vision as a celebration like other missionaries do, but instead I took off my bandanna. put it around my neck like a cape and ran around like I had just won an Olympic Gold medal. 

We have four investigators with baptismal dates which is fun! We are going to do everything possible to help out all our homies.

People like to criticize Chilenos for being prideful and my comp doesn't like it. At least they beat Argentina. He literally kissed my cheek when he heard. I almost called the mission president. Pinche Chilenos. 

We taught a Catholic Lady this week named Diana who had SO many questions for us. We taught with the spirit and it was all awesome. She really does have a doubt tho if families are part of God´s plan. She thinks that in order to be holy, you should never marry, nor have children. It was something I had never heard before. I bore her my testimony the same testimony I can bear to you that I know that families are a part of God´s plan. I know that the only way to be happy in life is to follow this plan of God and create families so that we can learn and grow. (I feel so weird not writing this in Spanish btw) 

I love all you homies and hope you have a great week! 

To Grandma:

Thanks for the letter! Tell papa thanks for his too since I'll just respond to this email. Thanks for praying for me, it means a lot! It's summer here, but it just rains all the time since its like a rain forest. The food in Pereira is okay. There's lots of restaurants and we can DELIVER DOMINOES TO OUR HOUSE !!! We do that like 3 times a week. Our house is kinda crap, but we might move soon. Love you lots!!

Pereira, Life White Week 32

The title of my email is Life White because Pereira actually has no sun so I'm like a marshmallow. It also rains here 4 times a day and I left my umbrella in a taxi bout a week ago. 

There´s really not a lot to say that isn't about Yugioh... Basically we all translated my companions cards to Spanish so that he can play with us, he's garbo, and throws his cards when he loses, but its normal.

The drug problem in this city is pretty out of control. The amount of drug usage that isn't weed is pretty scary. Pereira is also number 45 in the world for murder rate which is fun. DON'T WORRY THO MOM I'M SAFE!

The soccer hype here is unreal. When Peru missed that last penalty kick I could just feel the city explode, it was nuts. My companion is from Chile and we live with a missionary from Mexico, so the 7-0 jokes he´s been coming up with are pretty prime.

Loving life and the mission rn. I´m learning so much everyday as I teach. I hope you guys are all loving the gospel as much as I am! Love you lots, have a great week 

Pereira, Life White Week 31

The US turned out to be pretty good at soccer, maybe I will consider partial citizenship...

Things here are going great in Pereira! This city is awesome and there´s tons of work in my area. I´ve honestly never been happier in my life than I am right now serving the Lord in Pereira, Colombia with Elder Gallardo. 

I forgot to mention last week that I FINALLY found a JET ALBUM and I have like 200 out of the total 300 stickers that I need. Lots of hype for that. Everyone in my house collects these stickers religiously. 

My companion buys a 1.75 liter bottle of coca cola everyday plus at least one half liter bottle during the time we work, so he has drunk at least 15 liters of coke this week. He's a good guy.

This week in my house we started and completed the ¨Liga Yugioh 1st Edition¨ which was a double round robin yugioh competition with 3 of the 4 of us in the house. I won it with my superior dueling skills, but Elder Hanson and Elder Gaona put up good fights!

¨Liga Yugioh 2nd Edition¨ should feature my companion Elder Gallardo as a competitor, but he doesn't read English very well... Poor kid, he´s like Mokuba. I´m Seto Kaiba.

When I tell people I'm from Arizona they all point at their nose and ask, ¨Narizona?¨ Becasue nariz in Spanish means nose. Ha ha ha, classic comedy. It´s happened like 12 times tho here which is interesting. 

Photo 1. Me, Elder Gallardo, and the recent convert Liliana. This week she told us that the ocean has no end. She believes that you can swim through the ocean through the center of the earth and come up and surface on the other side of the world. We had to burst her bubble. 

Photo 2. A normal jungle selfie.

Hope everyone has an awesome week! 

Me, Elder Gallardo, and the recent convert Liliana.

A normal jungle selfie.

Pereira, Life White Week 30

Ya, I´m actually renouncing my US citizenship after you guys got dumpstered 2-0 by our clearly superior Colombian Soccer team...

In other news, I´m now in Pereira which is a word that can´t be said if you don't know anything about Spanish. I'm doing awesome here! My companion is Elder Gallardo from  Chile and he pronounces his name like Gashardo which is neat-o. He's teaching me lots about Spanish and how to use dank memes. We are really similar tho! We're both 19, have 7 months in the mission, got dumpstered by girls at the beginning of our missions, etc. 

I live with another gringo, Elder Hanson and a Mexican, Elder Gaona. We all get along great which is something I've never experienced in my mission. Elder Gaona is from the south part of Mexico and says he doesn't like Guatemalans because they all come into Mexico illegally, lol sorry Tyson.

The area I'm in in Pereira has TONS of work which is way different than my last area. The ward is lots of old people which will be good for me since I never talk to old people cus I never understand them, but now I have to! 

Pereira is in what's called the ¨Eje Cafetero¨ where all of the coffee in Colombia is grown. Everyone here loves coffee.

We have a recent convert here who is like 80 and calls me and my comp, Chileno and Gringo, since she can´t remember our names. Shes a good 4 foot 6 and talks like she has a beak. She is a great gal.

This week we talked to a man in the street who called himself ¨Luis Khalifa¨. He was a cool guy. He talked to us for 30 minutes about how much he loves Pereira because the cops don't do anything to people who smoke weed. We set up an appointment to teach him this week! When we parted ways he drank water out of the sewer.

Hope you guys have a good week! Love you all 

Robledo, Medellin, Life in a Beautiful Place Week 29

Wassup peeps, this week was a slow but good one. We got the news last night, on my birthday, that the area I am in right now will be being closed which means that my companion and I are both leaving and no new missionaries will be coming in to replace us. As much as I love being in Medellin, these last 6 weeks have been very hard. We have not had success in anything here. The area has never been a very good one even for the most adept missionaries so it's finally being shut down. 

My new area will be in Pereira, a city about 4 hours away. Idk who my new companion will be but I think his name sounded Latino, let's hope. 

I learned a lot here in Robledo. I learned how to deal with failure. I had a lot of success working with the youth of the ward and animating them, but in terms of investigators, nothing. I'm glad for the opportunity that God gave me to come to this area. I know that God gives us the things that we need to improve. 

I played soccer today with the 10 other homies in my zone and it was the first game of soccer I've played on the mission! Now that I think about it the last time I played a soccer game was when I was like 10 and I had a Mexican coach who always told us,"I wanna weeeeen!" During the soccer game I realized that my spanish vocabulary isn't too good in terms of soccer. I felt completely lost and was basically just a 1 man team. I felt like I was Piglet playing for Team Liquid at the beginning of Spring 2015. Including the part where I'm a world champion. There's a nerd reference that like 2 of you will understand lel. 

I know this Church is true. I don't bear my testimony a lot in my letters, but I feel like it's something I need to do from time to time. I know that the church has been restored in these days through a prophet. I know the Book of Mormon is  I can't deny the feeling that I've had on my mission regarding these two things. I know that the family is ordained of God and that we can receive salvation through accepting the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Like I said, this area has been hard on me. At times I've been frustrated, done, and tempted, but I can never deny that this church is true. It's pretty great. 

Love you all, thanks for all the bday letters :)

Pictures will never load on this computer rip, sorry to everyone who misses my cute face

Robledo, Medellin, Life in a Beautiful Place Week 28

Wassup homies, hope you had a good week! Congrats to all the homies who are done with school for a while, those kind of breaks don't happen as missionaries, we just work.

My Bday is this Sunday the 29th (just in case you want to write me a nice email). 

Something dangerous, and surprisingly legal, or maybe not, is that none of the Taxis here have seat belts. They all drive at least 3x the speed limit and swerve in and out of traffic. Good for being punctual. Bad for the chance of being killed by a flaming car accident #rippaulwalker

We don't have a lot of work here, but we work a lot with the families and youth to help them out which is tons of fun!  

We had an Area 70, the Mission President, and Stake President surprise us in our Ward Council meeting (Which is famous for doing nothing) so it was funny to watch all the adults be try hards to impress all the people. It was good though because we learned a lot from them on how to be efficient as a ward! 

Its been a HOT week here in Medellin with no rain :( Not as hot as the coast in my old area or some of the girls here, but you understand. 

We gave a youth in our ward a blessing and he not only felt better, but was able to come to church on Sunday! It was awesome because his dad is a preacher for another church and doesn't let his wife or son go to church ever, but they both came and it was awesome to see them there :)

Love all you homies lots and hope you have a good week <3