Dear family and friends,

So far everything is just the same thing every day.  Constant longing for peanut butter, telling my companion when there will be onions in the food an hour before dinner, and waiting for Sunday mornings when we get cereal. I have enjoyed Colombian sodas, but not Colombian eggs. I still don´t have the courage to try a granadia, which I think is a kind of passion fruit. It looks like alien brains or caviar and probably has the same texture. Learning Spanish is easy but applying it is infinitely more difficult. Then add gospel ¨complexity¨ to it and it´s a recipe for six weeks of learning. Conference in the CCM (centro de capacitación de los misioneros) was almost as good as it is up at the cabin, except without everything good about the cabin haha. Traffic is an adventure every time we venture forth from the CCM. Stop signs mean ¨slow down if you feel like it¨ and I have only seen two stoplights.  It´s essentially a giant game of chicken, all day everyday. So yeah, there is a reason I´ll be walking everywhere. Of course, Medellin could be slightly different. I won´t know for another four weeks. I can´t write letters until I am in the field, so you might get one about a year into my mission.

The two districts you saw in the pictures are my ¨generation¨ of missionaries. There were a few districts of Latinos that left today, and we are getting 30 more, 8 of which will be in my new room. I went from the smallest room in the MTC to the biggest. Talk about an upgrade! I enjoyed conference but forgot to bring my notes here. Priesthood session was great and I enjoyed Elder Eyering´s talk in the Sunday session I think? There was a district of nortes that left this morning  and I think there are two others still here in their last two weeks. I think we are getting ten or so new nortes. Hope Ethan gets better and I hope the Barton´s are doing alright.

Umm... I went through imigration today, had a temple session in total Spanish (pretty confusing) played some basketball, studied Spanish, went proselyting two Fridays ago, don´t remember if I told you that. It was pretty cool. Just about everyone is Catholic, we got out two BofMs and met a guy in the airforce that spoke English. I weigh something like 106 kilos, so if my calculations are correct I´ve lost 6 or so pounds.

Katelyn asked me my scripture to “Ponderize” and how my week was.
Don´t give a latino a twinkie. And if you hear ¨¿que significa...¨ expect to hear some foul language afterwords. Latinos don´t quite understand ¨malo frase¨ very well, so yeah. My ponderize scripture is 2 Nephi 8:7  ¨Hearken unto me, ye that know righteousness, people on whose heart I have written my law; fear not the reproach of men, neither be afraid of their reproach¨

What about the twinkies?  I had a bunch of the chocolate twinkies and I got them out to celebrate the one week mark. I gave one to everyone in my room, including the two Latinos. For the next week all I hear before bed is ¨toowinkie, toowinkie!¨ in a purposefully high pitched and obnoxious voice. Good ol´Elder Chunga. He left for guaiaqil (or however you spell that) at 3:30 this morning. Soon I´ll have 8 more just like him in my room.