Medellin

Medellin

Monday, November 9, 2015

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


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