A New Epoch

Dear family and friends,

Here´s the update

Tuesday

I spent the day with the zone leader as we are both waiting for our companions. They are both coming from the coast so they will get here on wednesday. We ran a bunch of errands and I spent some time with the missionaries of Alhambra. We only had one lesson in four hours but it was a good lesson.

Wednesday

My companion didn´t arrive until about 5 in the afternoon, so I just ran more errands and looked for a new house again. Then we had more errands with the zone leaders that night.

Thursday

First day with the Elder Pino. He is from chile and only has four months left of his mission. He´s pretty cool and has been studying english a lot. His first companion was British. He was a zone leader in the coast right before he came to Manizales and before that he was the financial secretary for nine months. He´s very obedient and I can be normal around him. We tried to get an appointment with Tatiana and ended up setting it for Saturday. We visited Katherine and a few other things I don´t quite remember

Friday

Again, lots of our appointments fell through and we had to run some errands as well, so not much to report. We spent a good deal of time practicing for the multi zone Christmas Conference in Pereira.

Saturday

Was crazy. We spent the first half of the day in La Linda and then we went to our appointment with Tatiana, which are quite literally on opposite ends of our area. She didn´t answer her phone and didn´t show up, but that´s a pretty normal thing, so we ended searching for a costume for the Christmas activity for an hour. At six until the day was over we had the Night in Bethlehem at the chapel and it was pretty cool. They had me be a roman centurion because I´m gigantic (comparatively) but the costume was tiny that we found. If I can find a picture I´ll send it.

Sunday

It was the primary program in church and they probably sang better than the congregation usually does. We spent some time with the Castro family and tracted the rest of the time. Nothing to report there either.

Monday

Multi zone conference in Pereira and the reason I´m writing to you all on a tuesday. I love spending time with the President and he is really funny and just awesome overall. I talked to some of the other new guys from my group and one of them has been in the hospital three times. Yikes! Thankfully I haven´t been sick at all really. Our zone won all the competitions  and I got packages today and I hear tomorrow we get pouch mail but it could just be a rumor. Our new zone leader is cool, but I´m going to miss the one that left.

So yeah! This next week will be even crazier and I really don´t have much information on the whole skype thing. I´ll try to figure it out as best I can, and I´m still planning for Christmas day.

Anyway, talk to you later this week

Élder King

P.S. Si tienen algunas preguntas, dudas, chistes, chismes, o chiclets, let me know

(if you have any questions, concerns , jokes , gossip , or chewing gum)

Cambios (Changes)

Good news for the future, but the week was mas o menos

Tuesday

We contacted some people in a street store after taking the whole morning to ditch our old armoir. We visited Cristian the barber´s house and met with his family. They´re pretty cool, hopefully we can get them the gospel

Wednesday

After spending the night at the house of the Elders of Alhambra, we went to grab a new armoir that didn't even fit up the stairs. My companion didn´t get dressed for the mission until after lunch. We used up most of our money on transportation for ourselves and for the dresser thing. I don´t know why we are moving it now, because we don´t even have our new apartment yet, but whatever. We had a lesson with Katerine.

Thursday

We had a lesson with Adrian today and he really wants to change his life. The problem is, he is too lazy to do anything so he doesn´t progress. He doesn´t want to get up for church and he doesn´t seem to understand that the gospel will help him with his drug problems. Oh, a cool miracle too. So, I had lost my wallet about a week ago and turned the apartment upside down looking for it. Not enough to be sure it wasn´t there, but quite thoroughly. I looked in the pockets of all my pants at least three times. Well, when I put my pants on in the morning, there was my wallet, in the pocket that I had searched multiple times. And both me and my comp were about out of money too.

Friday

We had a lesson with a less active family, The Rosas, and their blind friend. It was pretty cool and afterwords the blind guy (I don´t remember his name) played the guitar and sang for us. He´s crazy good and plays classical spanish music. We had a lesson with Carol. She´s new but she´s going out of town until next year. I almost got her a Book of Mormon as some travel reading material, but neither me nor my companion had one. Some scout I am! I left my book for giving on my desk, so shame shame.

Saturday

We went to La Linda in the morning and taught a family that we met earlier. They are all pretty cool, but so far only two of them are very receptive, and mostly just the mom. One of the sons of the house is receptive, but he is also bisexual, so that complicates things a bit. But they all have potential. They gave us lunch too. first time eating fish here, and everything smells like tuna. They´re probably the richest family we´ve come across. They have a car and two motorscooters and a pretty nice house. Mauricio, the son, is a world traveler and speaks Mandarin and French. We also had a lesson with Tatiana and she still thinks she needs to be perfect to be baptized, but she has goals of things she wants to change so hopefully she will be in these next 6 weeks

Sunday

Church was church. In priesthood they talked about becoming a stake and what the members need to do. Apparently the men of the area have a hard time paying tithing and that´s what´s keeping them from becoming a stake. I heard they will be breaking ground for a temple in Baranquilla in February and that´s exciting for everyone around here. We visited a less active member/retired Mormon and his wife and talked with them for something like five hours, so our plans were shot.

And today, we found out about transfers! "drumroll" I´m staying here and my companion is going to the coast! whooooooo and all that. My new companion is Elder Pina. I haven´t seen him yet and probably won´t until Wednesday or Thursday. Apparently he is short, some say he is strict, he has been a zone leader and in the office so I´m sure he has discipline sufficient to actually help me out. I´m pretty stoked. It really doesn´t feel like Christmas around here despite all the lights. As far as skyping, according to the email I just got we can do it any day from the 15th to the first of January. For now, let´s plan for Christmas day, but I´ll have to talk to my new companion about it when he gets here. I´ll let you know by the 21st hopefully.

Love ya´ll peoples, have fun in the cold

Élder King

Tuesday

Our plans were completely shot, so we just contacted the whole day with no success. We went to the park of the founders and met a guy there who is basically a golden investigator, were it not for the fact that he basically works 24/7. We gave him a Book of Mormon, so with any luck he´ll find some time to make it.

Wednesday

The usual problems with our plans. We had a lesson with Tatiana though, and it was pretty awesome. She accepted tithing and fast offerings characteristically well. She basically accepts everything really quick because she just feels it´s true. She has the spirit pretty strong with her. We met the same dude from the park AGAIN. He read the fast and tithing pamphlet while we stood talking to him and he kept saying how wonderful and beautiful our message is. He asked us what time church was, and we told him. He was pretty disappointed that he couldn´t come to any of the meetings and asked us if there was any other time we had church. Yet my companion didn´t seem to want to give him the time of day. sigh... I hope we can meet him again and try and set an appointment. 

Thursday

We had a lesson with Adrian, but everything else was lame. We never plan for travel time so we´re late to lots of stuff. Not that it matters for my companion since most of our plans fall through. Started an interchange with the zone leaders and we stayed up late talking. He´s a twenty-six year old Argentinian and he´s pretty sweet.

Friday

We had high hopes for today, but none of the four potential investigators could make it to their appointments and we had to move the plans around a bit so we could teach Tatiana the Law of Chastity. It was a great lesson, accepted without a doubt and now we just have to get her some confidence so she can be baptized. She knows all she needs to, but she lives far from the church and she has a neighbor who got baptized and went inactive really quick, so she is afraid of that. We had a lesson with Katherine and her family. She´s less active, don´t know if I´ve told you about her. She has a little chunky baby that´s pretty much adorable, so yeah. Also, on a sad note, we found out that Gladys Ramirez died this last Wednesday. That was pretty hard for me.

Saturday

Today we spent the whole day in La Linda contacting. It´s part of our area that´s way far out, so they don´t see the missionaries much. We got a ton of contacts, so hopefully some new investigators there. About halfway through the day we went to contact a house and the lady who lived there was asleep on her couch. She woke up and immediately went and started throwing up. She was in a ton of pain, so we stuck around and tried to help as best we could. My companion was kind of freaking out. Her daughters called their older sister and she showed up and helped out too. We went and got her some medicine for gastritis, so hopefully it helps. Good news, we got another family to contact, bad news, it shook my companion and he didn´t want to do anything for the rest of the day. It wasn´t even that bad, but I guess he´s never been in a situation where he had to do stuff like that. 

La Linda

A little friend in La Linda

Sunday

Church was church, testimony meeting has its fair share of long winded people, but hey, can´t complain. The Vargas family showed up again and that was nice. We talked with them after church and they´re kind of weird, but in a good way. They celebrate Christmas but don´t like the idea that there is just one day to give gifts to people and be together in a family. And he´s kind of right, but he kind of ignored the whole "birth of Christ" part of Christmas, so he´s missing the point just a bit. We talked with a new investigator Carol and shared our Christmas message. Then we didn´t really do anything until the devotional. 

So this week was a bit of a flop, but I guess as long as I learned from it it wasn´t completely wasted.

Love ya´ll

Élder King

Breakfast-not at Tiffany's