Well, it was a lame/crazy week.

Tuesday

Well, we made plans and then nothing happened all day. Our first appointment wasn´t there and on our way to the second appointment, the zone leaders changed the time of our apartment inspection, so the rest of our plans were shot. So yeah, kinda lame.

Wednesday

We finally contacted an ancient investigater named Jhon Eder. He´s pretty cool, and we´ll probably teach him a bit more in the coming weeks. We had an appointment with Kevin, and he´s doing alright. It´s hard for him to make it to church because his parents are divorced and he is only in the neighborhood every other week. Our plans were frustrated once again as the zone leaders told us to go to the city center and buy cleaning chemicals and a new shower. So I carried a shower up a hill, that was cool. Well, it sounds cool, but the whole shower mechanism is in the showerhead, so I carried that. Then elder Ampuño locked the keys in the apartment, so we had to find a ladder and spiderman to get them back. Then on our way to what was left of our plans, his glasses broke, so we went to the Zamora´s house to fix them. They have a bunch of little tools for that kind of thing. I think we ended up watching star wars, but I can´t remember.

Thursday

We had interviews with the President today. He basically told me that I will be training my trainer in the fine arts of punctuality and planning. My "forte" most definitely. Again all our plans fell through. Big surprise. But hey, the President is really cool.

Friday

We had a lesson with Tatiana today, and as we were starting, my companion told everyone I would be teaching. Well, it was news to me, so we had a lesson on the Word of Wisdom instead of the Law of Chastity. Mostly because I was just trying to teach lesson four. She thankfully doesn´t have any problems with it. We had a lesson with Adrian too, and he is progressing somewhat. He has been reading a bunch and says the book of mormon is changing his life. We are going to help him this week with his addictions. Everything else was shot that day.

Saturday

Well, my companion locked the keys in the apartment again, and the Vargas Family wasn´t home, so we contacted the whole day with Juan Pablo Zamora. He is the spiderman that gets our keys for us when my companion locks them in. But hey, cool experience. Earlier that morning I thought I should leave the window open, so it was a lot easier to get in once we found a ladder. After we got our key, we went and made 4 copies. Mostly because I told my companion I would take his key priveliges if we didn´t haha. But for 4 hours of contacting, we were "extremely successful" Three people decided they would listen to us for longer than a few seconds, and two of those three agreed to let us come back. So, you know, not a super discouraging day haha

Sunday

Church first. I kind of let my mind wander, so I got nothing out of the meetings. But Tatiana came today, and as far as I can tell, we didn´t even invite her. Later we had a family home evening with the Galvis family. I´m pretty sure he is the mission leader for the branch. Felt the spirit pretty strong when I was sharing stuff in spanish, and then we talked with Tatiana afterwards about baptism. More spirit, and hopefully she will be baptized this coming week.

Yeah, that was this week. Pretty lame, but next week will be better. My companion and I are already getting better. We had a late weekly planning last night and it was probably the best planning session we have had so far. So with luck, we´ll have more success this next week. I guess luck and work.

Festivities for Christmas here are tremendous. I feel like it will be a month long celebration. I probably could see the big dipper, but my area of Manizales is pretty much the inner city, so I generally  don´t see any stars. If you think 60 degrees is cold, then, yeah, that´s the coldest it gets. It´s cold when it rains and hot when there is sun, so that´s the seasons here. People always ask me if it is cold where I´m from. I just have to say, well, it depends. Transfers will be on the 14th, and my companion says you generally stay in your first area for six months, so yeah, we shall see. The whole town gets decorated, and it´s almost all nativity stuff. They´re really into the Virgin Mary down here, so yup. They started decorating last week and I see more and more lights every day.

So adios and all that

Elder King

View of Manizales

Well, I don´t remember everything that happened this week, but here goes

Tuesday

Most of our stuff fell through, I went on splits with Jacobo. We talked with some less active members in the center of town. My comp went and talked to Tatiana with some other members. I bought some apple juice and I´m slowly finding all I need to make tacos

Wednesday

Another day of messed up plans. I don´t even remember who we visited

Thursday

I had an interchange with Elder Pacaya. He´s pretty trunky, so he isn´t much help. We contacted most of the day and gave a blessing to Gladys. She is a less active lady/recent convert. She called us out of the blue and asked us to come over. She´s practically an empty nester and is home alone most of the day. She recently had surgery and is in a lot of pain. I was glad to visit her. Elder Pacaya then used up all the minutes on our phone by calling every person in our area book. He found a few people willing to talk to the missionaries again, some who haven´t for two years now. We haven´t contacted any of them yet, but I have hope

Friday

We had fried ice cream with the zamora family and visited Cristian, a new investigater. He seems genuinely interested, but we were kind of just getting to know him this time.

Saturday

We visited Kevin, a recent convert/less active. He is an eleven year old kid living in the scary part of town. We went to a talent show in alta suiza and us elders formed a makeshift table for a skit. Great workout. Tatiana came with us. The power was out so the president of the branch (actually they are branches here, sorry about that miscommunication) had to keep fixing a generater they had.

Sunday

None of the people we were working with showed up to church, but we had a pleasant surprise of Hermano Vargas and his kids showing up. They attended all the meetings and we visited them later that day. We had to explain to him a bit about family history and temple work as the lesson in gospel doctrine was the last lesson Exaltation. The teacher focused it on temple work because this last week the members travelled to Bogota to go to the temple. Everybody was pretty grateful today during church. We visited Gladys to see how she was doing. We contacted for a bit and found three different homes that would like to hear about the gospel. One of them invited us in and we taught a brief lesson to them and to their visitors. The lady offered us some coffee so we had to quickly give a brief overview of the word of Wisdom. They seemed pretty interested and I hope that we will have some success with them. Everyone thinks it´s cool that I have blond hair and some refer to blondes cordially as mono´s or capuchi. Which means monkey, and I don´t quite get that, because I didn´t think many monkeys were blonde, but apparently here they are

Amy-"I can see the resemblance"

So yeah, yesterday was eventful, but other than that, We´ve got some improving to do! I´m hoping to buy a cool looking guitar I found. Travel size, green with a leaf pattern, and it´s about $35 US Dollars. Gonna do some touring today if I can move my companion

Bogota from the air

First glimpse of Medellin. It´s basically like what you would get if you mixed Utah and Florida

My companion and apartment

Love you all family!

Elder King 

Amy needs to figure out how to place the pictures better.  Anyone have some blogging tips?

Monday Again

Elder King was emailing near this place

Here are some google images of Manizales 

Soooo, I don´t actually remember what happened last Tuesday, this week has been a bit crazy.

My bet is we visited some families, but I´m not so sure.

Wednesday was probably one of the lamest of my mission. All our appointments fell through, so we ate lunch at our house and my companion took a nap in prep for his impending trip to the mission home for training. I went on splits with the Alta Suiza missionaries

Thursday I had the first day of splits with Elders Wadley and Pacaya. Wadley is from Utah and we became pretty good friends. His comp. is really trunky and doesn´t really teach for the needs of the people. We visited some families way out in the boonies. Nothing too major, I fell asleep during lunch. How terrible of me! The food continues to be ridiculous, but surprisingly I look forward to the rice just because at least it has no taste instead of a terrible one. Anyway, I´ve been sleeping on the floor on a paper thin mat for a bit at this point, and Alta Suiza has the worst hills.

Friday We went to visit an investigator with a baptismal date and he was smoking while waiting for a haircut, so he´s got a bit more time before he can be baptized. There was a parrot that was making monkey sounds, that was pretty cool. We visited the Morales family, and I love those people to pieces. I didn´t catch many of their names, but the Grandpa can´t leave his bed and is always really sad because all he does is sit in bed and think about all his dead relatives and his wife. We´ve been doing our best to comfort him. Jorge is the little guy, about ten years old, and we´re best buds now.

Saturday for about half the day I was with the Altasuizans and then my comp got back from training. I guess the president is a good teacher, because he´s inspired to the work. Finally. This week we actually have a plan and we may actually start getting stuff done. I´m glad, because now the mission might actually be as difficult as they say it is. Haha anyway, the Lord has been blessing me in my Spanish, and in many many other ways.

Sunday  Church was good, We didn´t really have much else, but the members of the ward like me. One kid asked to have a picture with me because I´m three times his size, and that was cute. When the people don´t speak like lightning or use words I´ve never heard, I understand them quite well now. I´ve been missing my weekly nap in sacrament haha but no matter.

I got your package. I had forgotten that food could make a person happy, but now I know what true joy is. If you are wondering what an arepa tastes like, imagine the salted corn thingies as pancakes, without the salt or the canola oil. Haha but I´m definitely going to have to smell the jiff packages when I open em. Thanks so much! It honestly feels like Christmas. I don´t know how long it takes to get to the mission home, but we get our packages whenever there is a transfer or the zone leaders go to the mission home.

Thanks for everything fam,

Elder King

p.s. don´t send pictures of the truck. C.J. is a priest now, and I don´t want to know. :P

La Primer Semana (The First Week)

Sooooo, I finally have stuff to write about.

Tuesday

Today was the transfer day, so I flew from Bogota to Medellin. Our flight was delayed because the pilot didn´t show up to work. Latinos are like that. The flight was pretty short, but I got a cool view of the great Andes. We got to Medellin and took a bus to the mission home. Everything is super cheap here, by the way. I had an interview with the President and later his wife, and they both asked if anybody in my home had spoken spanish. They were surprised when I said no. Go figure. I learn fast  but speaking is difficult. I can understand the jist of most conversations at this point. I was assigned my companion that night, along with an area. Elder Ampuño is my trainer, as well as the district leader. He is from Guayaquil Ecuador My area is Manizales, the coldest and most mountaineous in the mission. Just my luck right? but coldest in Medellin isn´t really that cold. We slept at the apartment for transferring missionaries, including those missionaries that were finishing their missions. Pretty cool, but I fell of the bed in the middle of the night onto my companion. Not surprising though, seeing as my bed was a mattress that I threw on top of  a bunch of foam pads. Not the sturdiest thing in the world. But hey,  he chose to sleep in the hall right next to me, so it isn´t completely my fault. Nobody is hurt, and he has had his revenge by now

Wednesday

Six hour bus ride through the Andes, and we arrived in manizales! My spanish degenerated in those six hours somehow, but it is being rebuilt, slowly but surely. We visited a less active family that night after waiting out some heavy rain and thunder. It rains a lot here, but it waits until we are out of the apartment. The family zamora is pretty cool,but it seems like they just want to be friends with the elders for now. We went and met the bishop, who is twenty six or something. he´s pretty awesome. Then we stayed the night at the zone leader´s apartment, celebrating 16 months in the mission for him.

Thursday

We had lunch with a member. Probably the biggest challenge on the mission. The food. To drink she gave us tomato juice, I don´t know what was in the soup, too much rice, potatoes too. Basically, they feed us like you would feed a polynesian. Eat until you are tired.We went to visit a reference and ended up talking to a recent convert that has gone less active because she thinks we use the BoM too much more than the bible. I think we will be working with her more. visited two families for noche de hogar, which I thought would be on mondays but whatever. The Castro family fed us dinner,and it was edible, though still too much. Chocolate is better than tomato juice, let me tell you. Then we went to the zamora family again. My comp likes chilling with them I think. I don´t think we did anything else that day

Friday

We had lessons with our only investigaters today. One is Adrian, and he is a drug addict that is struggling a lot. He has a great desire, and he feels the spirit when he is with us, but drugs are tough. The other is Tatiana, and she talks ten billion miles an hour. She is getting baptized next week  The missionary in this area before me was really trunky and just a bad missionary in general, so we are essentially reopening this area to the missionaries after six weeks of laziness. But hey! All the more fun for me. The members have been a big help with tatiana, as far as I understand. Apparently people around here are really gossipy, so that can´t help new members much

Saturday

We went and observed another companionship in our district work, so we just helped them with their people today. They have a big family that has committed to be baptized, and they´re pretty cool. They have a little kid jorge and he is really fun. unfortunately, he is in a different area, so I won´t get to see him much. One of the eldersin the other companionship is from Utah, so we talked in English and had a blast. His companion is really trunky, so they do a lot of work, but every other day.

Sunday

Church for a bit, then we had to go to another area to give a baptismal interview. We visited a less active family that has a bunch of young kids. The kids are being taught in a Catholic school, so we have to clarify some stuff that they have got confused, like the Godhead and other stuff. The oldest son is really good at chess. But I´m better Haha! Well, actually he beat me the first game and I won quickly in the second. but he is like ten, so I guess I just have to boast of the spirit, because I have never studied chess like he has. We had lunch with the Castros, and the ward is making a trip to the temple in this next week. We visited the zamoras again, and they were watching a movie, so we just kind of sat around for about an hour and they gave us some dinner. 

Anyway, that´s my week! Spanish, food, and my comp a bit, these are my only troubles in the mis.  Happy Birthday CJ! Don´t worry, the padres were in Hawaii for my sweet sixteen. At least you will still have dad to coddle you haha. If anything happens to the Truck, I don´t want to hear about it. But let me know everything else cool, choir songs and the like. Mom, I didn´t get any letters or packages, so if that helps you gauge time, there you go! We get to email for three or four hours, and we start after zone meetings end. Something like 11:45 or 12. So probably pretty early for you guys, but it goes for a while, so I have time to write big ol´things like this

We are in a ward, it´s a city in a valley, but we are up on the mountains. We walk most everywhere and take taxis when we go to other areas or when we need to get somewhere quickly. We saw a giant bee yesterday in our apartment trying to get out the window. I couldn´t figure out how to get the hot water going, so I´ve been taking cold showers. I only knew we had hot water because my companion took a twenty minute shower. We got food from a restaurant called the casa de arroz, meaning house of rice, so I was understandably excited.  Turned out, it´s essentially a bucket of rice. I´ll send you a picture. It has lasted us a few days now

So yeah, Love ya all

Elder King

Made It!

So, I´ve made it to Medellin safely! I´ll be staying here tonight and then finding out where I head off to tomorrow! I´ll most likely meet my new companion tonight, which is pretty exciting! I don´t know Spanish, but hey, trial by fire and all that!. I´m happy to be hearing from everybody and pretty quick here I´ll be preachin´ like a pro!

Luv ya all,

Elder King