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.

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