Week 8 ~ Miracles

So, last week was pretty tough, but this week The Lord has shown us
His power and His tender mercy. Our golden family has been accepting
the gospel with so much faith and conviction. We introduced them to
President Willard yesterday and he said he felt the spirit so strongly
with them and he wants to attend their baptism. I have such a great
mission president, he is very kind and loving. This family has been a
miracle because earlier this week, Daniela said she wasn't sure she
wanted to marry Pablo and that he only wanted to get married, get
baptized, and then leave the church. However, The Lord has been
softening his heart and the Herreras have been taking colossal strides
in the gospel. Also, almost everyone we invited to church, came! We've
been working a lot with less-active members and there's been a lot of
progress.

Another miracle is that our other investigator family, who are
basically dry-mormons want to get married immediately. Which is huge
because Carolina and Mario Lopez, (I know) wanted to get married after
she recovered from her operation, which would be sometime around
March. What a miracle.

I love this gospel so much, I want everyone to have it! I feel the
spirit so strongly in my heart it's almost tangible! I know everyone
deep in their hearts know The Lord because we all chose to follow him!
We don't understand how much he wants to save us and heal us.

The Lord has been helping me everyday. I know he's improving me
everyday. He's helping me with my Spanish and helping me become a
better person.

Thanks for filling me in mom! Thank you so much for the package! I
LOVED EVERYTHING! (I hung up Santa)You're brilliant!  Thank you so much
mom, seriously, I wish I could do something to express how grateful I
am for you. My love for you and the family has grown exponentially
while I've been here! I always thank Heavenly Father for blessing me
with such a great family and mom!

The food is good make Pique Machu for the family and salteñas! They're
my favorite!

I think Skype will work out, but I don't have the details yet.

I'm glad to hear all is well and that you're having a great Christmas season!

I love you more than you love me!

Testimony of our Savior

I Love My Savior with all my heart and soul. I feel Him walking beside me as I work. I have so many weaknesses, but He has always been there to fill in the gaps. I can't even describe how blessed and privileged I feel to do His work. I'm amazed at His love for all of us, and how His arms are always open. I don't think we even understand how merciful He truly is. He is always with us, even when we feel alone. He wants to heal us. He always wants to forgive us. He cries when we cry, He rejoices when we do what is right. He is our Lord, our King, Our Brother. He begs us to do what is right and come to Him. He wants us to let go of our pasts and be born again. He pleads to The Father for us. When He suffered for us, He felt all of our sins and our pains one, by one, for each of us. If there was only one person on Earth, He would've gone through all of that pain just for that one person. His love is infinite and I will give everything I have to Him.

Week 7 ~ Learning and Challenges

So this week has been a little more challenging for me. We've been trying to find more investigators, but we haven't been very successful. We did find this one golden family who came to church with us yesterday. They're from Brazil and speak Portuguese sometimes. I feel bad because I love them, but I can't really understand them when they talk to me haha. The father, Pablo said the morning of the day we first visited them, ( We visited them at night) He had a vision of me, before he even met us. They're awesome, they've already got such strong testimonies of Joseph Smith being a prophet and of The Book of Mormon.I tried to teach them the apostasy by turning the lights off, but of course with my luck, I couldn't find the right switch, and I kept turning off different stuff! hahaha They need to wait to be married because they have a problem with their papers, but they're anxious to be baptized!

It's really hot here and there's a lot of dark stuff here, I'm gonna be honest, I have seen a lot of messed up stuff. I love the members though, it's amazing to see the people be so happy with so little. It's such a testimony that The Gospel of Jesus Christ is what brings us true and Everlasting Happiness. I can't wait to see Christ fill the people of Bolivia with His Light!

I feel a little down, because I'm really struggling with the language, and I feel like I'm 0 help to my companion. I know the language will come with time and I need to be patient, but it's difficult. Also, I hate to admit it, but I did get pretty homesick at one point. The house next to ours started playing the song at the end of Planes Trains and Automobiles on Thanksgiving! Gah! What are the odds? hahaha

I have to say though, whenever I get knocked down, Heavenly Father is quick to pick me back up. He has shown me so many tender mercies, more than I can ever describe. I love this work so much, when else do you get to feel yourself walking side by side with Christ? I know I'm going to miss Christmas back at home, but what could be a more memorable Christmas than one spent in the service of others?

All is well, All is well.

Week 6 ~ The New World

So I arrived in Bolivia a few days ago. My first area is in the 6th or 7th ring, I think. Definitely the slums of the city. It feels like it`s 1000 degrees everyday. My apartment is basically halfway outside and on top of that, I couldn`t have a more uncomfortable bed. and.....I LOVE IT!

I love my area it`s called Nuevo Mundo (Couldn't have picked a better name for my first area) (you`re gonna have to excuse me if I misspell anything because the keyboards here are bad.

There`s a lot of poverty here and it's sad to see, the people are so kind and  they have such a strong love of God. My first few days here, my companion (Elder Corizzo he's from Argentina) and I had tons of success. Tons of baptisms lined up. However, we realized we were in the wrong area!  We've started working in our area and we haven't had as much success, but things are still going well.

Like I said before, it's really hot and apparently there isn't a ton of jungle in my mission, which I'm kind of bummed about, but oh well it's not important. It's all about the people.

We shared a pensionista (Lady who cooks lunch) with two other elders that live with us and the food was great. However, we started going to our own pensionista and the food isn't very good. The worst part is that her kitchen is surrounded by flies. we're talking hundreds and hundreds. Even though her house is relatively cleaner than other houses we've been too haha I try to eat really fast to get out haha

Everything here is way different than what I'm used to. It's such an adventure.

I love finding people and teaching, but I'm really struggling with the language. I feel kind of useless sometimes. I can understand pretty well, but I can`t speak very well at all. I need to be patient and keep trying my best. I know The Lord will take care of me. He always has.

I love feeling The Lord walk with me. You can feel the Spirit guide you. I wouldn't trade this for anything in the world. I love my mission.

La Catedral de Sal ~ Colombia MTC ~ 11/5/13

So on Saturday I got to go proselyting again and it was incredible. My companion and I went to a park called "Simon Bolivar Parque" I think. And it was beautiful. In the park, we talked to this one woman taking care of her baby cousin and we talked for a while. She seemed very interested and wanted to attend church on Sunday so we left her an address. She was the only one we talked to in the park, but we had a lot more success in the neighborhood right next to it. We found this guy reading on his porch and he invited us inside his house and we taught a short lesson to him and two of his friends. We left them a BOM and we got his contact info. It was awesome! Next we found a lady and this teenage boy who were working and taking a lunch break on the side walk. The lady seemed really interested in our message and we left her a BOM too. Finally, we got to my favorite investigator so far... It was this teenage boy leaving his house. He seemed like a really good kid. he said he´s prayed before, but he thinks it´s all in his mind. I felt so bad for this kid. Me and my companion bore our souls to this kid. And I know he really wants it! (keep that kid in your prayers) We left him a magazine and a pamphlet, so I really hope things work out for him.

The best part of my mission is getting to feel so much closer to Christ. I couldn´t ask for a better blessing than that. I´ve definitely realized how privileged I am to wake up each morning and snap on this nametag. There´s nothing more that anyone could want. I´ve been watching the new Bible Videos about The Savior and They´re awesome. I definitely recommend checking them out.

So don´t worry, I´ve been taking tons of pictures of Colombia and The MTC whenever, they give me my camera, (Which is rare) I just don´t know the WiFi Password haha.

So today, was our big adventure day. We started off at the temple. (Which was awesome as always) and they just got the new video so it was PACKED.

I was really bummed we didn´t go to the llama place :( but they took us to this mountain. This mountain had an underground Catholic Cathedral carved out. It was INCREDIBLE. There were all these ancient artifacts and Huge caverns, and caves, and trenches. The Cave system was insane There were so many tunnels and ancient carvings. I felt like Indiana Jones haha Its called the Catedral De Sal because it was in a huge salt mine. I definitely recommend looking it up. It was cool.

There were tons of dogs who were super friendly and were begging. i felt bad. We left the city and drove through farm country and the farmers didn´t even keep their cows fenced in. They would walk around wherever haha.

I want to get more pictures of the city. It is so cool! There are so many cars here though, that you can only drive your car every other day, depending on whether your license plate has an odd or even number haha

I love my district. We´ve grown so close and have become a family. I´m bummed because our district is splitting up tomorrow  and we´re getting Latin Companions. That should be interesting.... haha

Anyway, I´m having an awesome time, I love being a missionary. I´m so lucky to have such an awesome family who keeps supporting me. It really keeps me going! 

Thank you all so much! All is well! All is well!

Colombia MTC ~ 11/1/13

Well... things have been very different here in Colombia. The MTC Is SO much stricter here than it is in Provo. A lot of the people who work here are very condescending and rude and they treat us Americans like idiots haha. One of my teachers called me and my companion ugly haha. They treat us like prisoners sometimes and they smile while doing it. but I didn´t come on a mission to complain...I came here to WORK!

Truthfully, things aren´t all bad...The food here is really good (Courtney would be jealous) but super unhealthy and....let´s just say it doesn´t digest very well haha

I am learning a lot though. I´m not going to lie, I was feeling very down for a little bit, but reading everyone´s letters they sent me in provo really lifted my spirits. I need to focus on the work. It´s not about me, it´s not. It´s about The Lord and His children.

I´m working hard and I think I´m making some really big improvements. We went proselyting on Saturday and it was AWESOME. It felt so great to leave the gates they keep us locked in haha. Bogota is beautiful! it´s really colorful and the traffic is crazy. It´s so cool here. Me and my new companion, Elder Gallagher went and talked to people, it was really hard to get people to talk to us at first, but we decided to pray and after that we had some success. A lot of people believed in the trinity so, they didn´t want to hear anything haha However, we got 2 very promising contacts and we handed out a lot of pamphlets. We even gave  out a Book of Mormon to a guy who seemed really interested! It´s amazing that The Lord can use a gringo like me to communicate with His children and spread the truth. Some people were really hard to understand, especially with the traffic, but we were still able to get our message across. So overall, not too bad.

There ar e really cute cats and dogs all over. Brooke would love it! haha

I got to the Bogota temple and it was beautiful. It was such an awesome experience! I gotta admit though, when it came time to enter the Celestial room, I really had to mumble my way through it haha!

My district got split and all the new people are really cool. They all have such inspiring stories of overcoming challenges in their lives through Jesus Christ. It[s incredible.

Hey mom, thank you so much for the pictures and for all you[ve done. it[s really made everything a lot easier for me.

The Lord has been guiding me and teaching me. I love being a missionary! There is nowhere else I[d rather be.

Sorry I only get my camera once a week and there´s no wifi. so no pictures for now. 

Look up granadia it´s a really weird fruit down here. Some people love it, I´m not a major fan haha.

P.S. on Tuesday I get to tour the city and ride a llama, I´ll be sure to take TONS of pictures! Love you!

Also, I get a Latino companion on Wednesday, so that should be interesting.....

It´s just been such an adventure! I can´t wait to serve! I´m so excited for Tuesday because we get to tour the city! Things are going very well, The Lord has been molding me every step of the way! I Love This Gospel!

aaaah, I miss halloween :( Thanks so much for the candy, I love it!

Safely Arrived in Colombia

Hi Mom! I arrived safely in Colombia! Things are a lot different here. The pictures i saw of the armed guards weren´t true. My P Day is either on Tuesdays or Wednesdays I think. I can´t write for very long, sorry. I get to go proselyting every Saturday which is cool. The MTC is really really small. They won´t let me use my camera except for a couple of hours on P day so I don´t know how pictures will work out :( I´ve noticed the people at this MTC are a lot more impatient and not as warm and friendly haha But I think I can survive a month. I just can´t wait to serve! Also, I guess the total baggage I can bring to Bolivia is 68Lbs Combined or else I´ll be fined like 1,000 $ But the church will reimburse me, apparently. I don´t want the church to have to pay that, so I don´t know what I,m going to do. but All is well, all is well.