General Authority Visit

So, we only had one lesson with investigaters this week, but we did a lot of stuff with members and for the new house. Also, Thursday and Friday were spent traveling. So, with Elder Godoy, we had a super awesome devotional. He helped us figure out what we are missing in our work and helped us with our teaching skills. After socializing a bit with the other missionaries during lunch, we all got on a bus to head back to our own zones, but the leaders got to stay and had another meeting with him. Apparently he spoke quite frankly. 1 Cor 13:11 was a highlighted scripture and I´m very glad. He basically spoke with authority about all the things that have annoyed me about the mission and missionaries. I can only hope that his message was taken to heart. He was a great teacher and shared wonderful stories. He was funny, but also direct. I know the mission is changing for the better and I can only hope that this visit will be a catalyst to propel our progress. On a sad note, the store by our house stopped selling the super good orange juice I found, so it´s back to the weird boiled milk. Haha anyways, transfers are next week, so we´ll see how things go!

We have been doing our laundry by having a washing machine delivered to the apartment for a few hours.  No dryer, so often the clothes don't get very dry.

Lon, "Have  decided what you going to have for your birthday dinner?"
Elder King, "We are going to go make some tacos with some members"

Love you all,

Élder King

Week Four

Dear everybody,

So, this week was something pitiful as far as work, but I hold on to the hope that we will progress.

Tuesday

We had a family night with the Castro family and they invited some friends. They are new investigaters but unfortunately, they live in a different area. We will keep working with them until we can pass them along to the other ward and the other missionaries.

Wednesday

We contacted in La Linda and went looking for some old contacts. We talked to this crazy-ish guy named Climaco Duque, which is a weird name even for Colombia. He says he has no idea how or why he has the name, but he doesn´t really seem to care. He can´t read or right, so we are hoping to teach him more when his wife (or possibly just mistress) is there.

Thursday

President Calderón came to the zone, so we spent five hours being trained and taught. It was really cool and very edifying. Next week, Elder Godoy is coming and we will all be going to Medellin for two or three days, so there we will miss out on a few days of proselyting but hopefully be edified completely and totally into everyone being better missionaries. But we´ll see.

Friday

We had a lesson with Beatriz, a less active, and her son Sebastian. They have been less actives since the sunday after they were baptized, so we are hoping to bring them back. We also gave them a blessing and she is super nice. Slightly crazy, but way nice. We had a ward family night and watched 17 Miracles. It always gets you thinking about the hardships they went through as pioneers. We had lunch with a really great family, but the father is less active after being a member 38 years and spending time as district president

Saturday

The ZL's washer broke, so we have been searching for a different way to wash our clothes. We found a service that delivers the machine to your house for a few hours, and a few laundromats too. We ended up doing some wash in the sink in order to have clean clothes for Sunday. We had our English classes, but not many people showed up because it was raining really hard. It got so bad that it ripped of one of the churches skylights while we were there, so we spent the next few hours trying to keep the water from the wood flooring. It has been raining a lot and it is a lot more llike the Manizales I used to know.

Sunday

Church was really good, which is a shame because no one we were working with came. The talks were good and a once less active member gave a great talk.

But yeah, two weeks left until transfers, less time until I´m nineteen years old. Weird to think about. I´m hoping to get stuff done this week, even with the last three days being taken.

Love you all,

Elder King
I saw a sign that said interstate 15 in a weird collector´s shop and it made me think of home.

See Elder Kings letter that didn't get sent from last week due to a server issue.

Another Day, Another 3500 Pesos (Another Dollar)

Dear everyone,

So, Tuesday

Our plans were completely shot again, our laundry was super wet. Kind of a bad day all around. We did however find Tatiana again, and we had some face to face contact with Zulma, so I guess that was good. Turns out someone had stolen Tatiana´s phone during the Ferias

Wednesday

We walked down to La Francia, but our appointment wasn´t there, so we contacted-ish while we searched for Elder Tobon´s house. They are the Family History missionaries of the district. We forgot their address at our apartment, so we just searched where we thought it kind of was. We were wrong, but we talked to a few people, gave them a good impression.

Thursday

We visited Marina again. She basically says she doesn´t want to change her religion because we don´t pray to the virgin Mary. Sigh... I hate apostasy. Correlation with the mission leader fell through, so we went back to La Francia to have a FHE at the Tobon´s. The only problem is, our investigater couldn´t go. We at a ton of fruit salad and shared a brief message with them. Then exchanges started

Friday

We had a really good day, me and Elder Barrios. He is from Guatemala. We found a few new people in La Linda, including two ancient ladies that were really funny. We then went to La Francia (which is super far, opposite ends of the area basically) and had a lesson with Julio. He committed to read and come to church and pray and all that. He has a baptismal date, but I don´t know how firm it is as of this point. He only really has one lesson. We had a lesson with Tatiana and she still wants to be baptized, but she is working and studying, so she doesn´t feel like she can go to church. She is really torn between the two.

Saturday

We are trying to keep track of all our new and potentially new investigaters and it´s a bit overwhelming, and frustrating because none of them seem to want to make the necessary commitments. We went to a training for the branch council and taught our English Classes. Fernando must have forgotten about our appointment with him.

Sunday

Church was good, nobody who said they would showed up. So, kind of bothersome. We had lunch with the Castros and we basically had some family time with them. Then Zulma blew us off. Strike three for her, we´ll keep trying, but she has made it obvious she doesn´t want to talk to the missionaries.

So yeah, that was the week. I still don´t have any mail from anyone, but that is either because the office missionaries have forgotten a ton or stuff has been getting stolen, but Letters generally don´t get stolen. I honestly think it is the former. Had a great valentines day here with Guerber. We didn´t even remember it until marking the date off the calendar last night haha.

Love you all,

Elder King

Storming

Tuesday

We visited Katherine and we have a FHE planned with her and her family. We are struggling to find people to teach.

Wednesday

We had a lesson with Julio, a new guy I found last transfer. He is super rich, and super interested. Sounds like a good recipe to me! Zulma, a less active that we have been trying to contact for almost a month now wasn´t at her house when she said she would be, so the rest of our day was shot. We got a reference from the Family History missionaries that was a bust. We met some people from Colorado and had a short conversation with them. They are here teaching English classes and proofreading translated documents. I hope we run into them again, it would be cool to teach in English. 

Thursday

Elder Guerber left some potatoes boiling the whole night, so all the laundry that was hanging up smells like potato smoke. I found out my he is also really afraid to tract, so we will be working on that these next weeks. We are doing what we can to fix the area up.

Friday

There was a branch FHE today, so we went and invited a bunch of less actives that didn´t end up coming, so almost a wasted day.

Saturday

We had a lesson with Carolina, a new investigater that I have been trying to contact for almost two months. I don´t know if she will progress, but she has a friend who is a member, so we will see. We taught some english classes. We need to advertise better. We also had a lesson with Fernando, a reference from a member.

Sunday

None of the investigaters came to church, but that could be because we forgot to remind them... But next week we expect something like five investigaters. We had a disembarco (don´t know in English, disembarkment or something) and we walked super far with a member just to not find the three people we were looking for.

So yeah, we are still trying to do better. I guess in every companionship you go through the phases of performance. We´re still in "storming." We get along, but we need to work harder and more efficiently. For those that don´t know, the phases go like this: Storming, Norming, and Performing. There may be one extra step I missed, but I´m pretty sure that´s it. I guess I still think like a scout.

Love you all,

Élder King

Colombia meets Utah for breakfast

My mission manual after going through the wash...

My new pencil case shaped like a giant chocolate bar

The Cleansing of Chipre

The week started out with cambios and since my comp is again coming from the coast, both Tuesday and Wednesday were spent with the zone leaders. We really didn´t do much at all.

Thursday

It was the first real day with Elder Guerber. It´s hard planning when none of your investigaters will answer you. We´ve spent a good deal of time trying to figure out what to do. Even when you can get ahold of people, they tell you they can´t this week. We had branch counsel and we have a bunch of activities planned. We are going to be teaching English classes every Saturday now. We found out in the our branch, there are more than 600 members, but only just over 100 attend regularly. We have a lot of work to do with less actives it seems.

Friday

We tried to help one of the sisters in our ward get her English computer to speak spanish, our appointment with Israel fell through because we couldn´t find his house for a good twenty minutes and he decided that it was too late then. So we set an appointment for the next day. We had a family home evening with the branch at the chapel, then we had to go and get food so my comp doesn´t starve.

Saturday

We had a lesson with John Edison Giraldo and we got him the BoM he´s been asking us for. He says he wants to come to church and read too, so hopefully the spirit will continue to work and he´ll be converted. Israel wasn´t in his house at the specific time he set and he didn´t answer his phone, so we didn´t have the lesson with him. We did have a really good lesson with the Vargas Family. A friend of theirs from Medellin was there and he is a very active member. He helped us convey our message better and we had a family prayer with them, and Hno Nelson was tearing up, which I thought I´d never see.

Sunday

Unfortunately, nobody could make it. Church was good, the district president spoke and was chewing out the branch for not paying tithing. We went to a former less active´s house and had a short lesson with him. He is a super cool guy. His name is Fernando and he has two huge dogs. We then had FHE with the whole Castro family and we shared a message about conversion. We are working on bettering the relationship with members and I´d say we are slowly accomplishing that. There have been some lame missionaries here that have slightly ruined the trust between members and missionaries. But that is all changing.

About Elder Guerber, he is from Gilbert Arizona, he is two meters tall, and 275 pounds. It´s been nice to have some American humor again and we quote disney movies together every once in a while. He is a great missionary and hopefully together we can see some progress in the area!

Love you all,

Élder King

granadilla fruit

Elder Welling from Bountiful.  He served in my zone.

Elder Pino

Elder Guerber, my new companion from Gilbert Arizona