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 

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.