Week Seven

Happy Halloween!

Yo yo yo ok here is the report:

I am now in Colombia.

Bogota was awesome. Super green. Lots of bricks. Surrounded by mountains.

Mission President Laney seems super cool. His wife was on ski patrol at Sundance. They will be here my whole mission.

Love the APs. One is Elder Borges from Brazil who also lived in Spain for 4 years. The other is Elder Hunsaker whos family is super tied to Germany. We went to the Bogota CCM and it is tiny. Im so glad I got sent to Mexico.

-Met some French girls at immigration

My first Area is Barbosa
-Accessed via a 3 hour bus from Bogota to Tunja, then a 2 hour ride in a tiny bus from Tunja to Barbosa
-Barbosa is one of the coolest places I've ever been to
-about Argentan size, a little smaller
-so many motorcycles it's insane. Kids riding em and 5 people piling onto one. Trailers on the back sometimes. Amsterdam has bikes, Barbosa has motorcycles
-Everyone knows each other
-music is playing everywhere, usually Regaton. Hotline Bling a lot too. (miss Drake)
-really hot, rains at night
-I'm digging the food a lot too. Lots of avocados, garbanzo beans, pasta, rice, chicken. We make breakfast and Dinner and a member makes us Lunch
-so much fútbol everywhere MESSI
-A lot of poverty. Most of the houses we teach are dirt floor. The people still give us hot cocoa or bread. Its crazy.
-Lots of cowboy hats.
-Girls are prettier than Sofia Vergara #lockyourheart
-members are super cool. Jorge Ariza is one. He comes to lessons with us a lot. He has a flame motorcycle and skeleton gloves. One is named Ley. He loves Paramore and Linkin Park and Assassins Creed. there is also a Colombian Frere Bojou
-Colombian kids really like the stuffing pencil in ear trick
-kids are outside playing and walking around late at night.
-lots of hills like SF
-surrounded by mountains and jungle
-Haiti+Italy+Mexico is kind of what it is
-It´s like everyone here is a stereotype. Cowboys and dancers, Wisemen, Hairdressers.

Parted ways with Elder Dallas Karren. He´s headed to Bogota.
My trainer is Elder Porras of Mexico City. I am his last comp. He returns home December 4th.

He's pretty legendary. Mexican Taylor Lautner. He would go to raves in the forest back in Mexico.
He loves dancing too. We exercise every morning, and one morning he taught me bachata dance.
He's crazy at soccer. We play soccer Saturday mornings. He has a girlfriend waiting back home. He wants to learn French for her so I am teaching him. His personality reminds me of Victor Clouet D Orval. He made me contact first morning in the field which was crazy.


We started free English, French, and Portuguese lessons on Thursdays to get to know more people.
Starting a branch fútbol team. I am stoked.

I invited a family to be baptized for the first time and they said yes.

-most of the day is drifting around. Sitting down and talking with people on the street. Really long rich days. Exhausted by bedtime. Vivid dreams.

Tons to say
Colombia is super cool.

Miss everyone

Elder Gringo Bandito

Week Six

Week Five

Week report:

First things first- blog header looks sweet. Wish I was an Adobe  illustrator wizard like Oscar.

This week was sweet.

Thanks for sending donuts oh my heavens. My district was stoked. You guys are awesome.

A lot of ccm friends left to the field. Feels empty.

My district is all anxious to get to the field.

We got our travel plans! Pretty much all my district is going to Colombia. We leave to Bogota 3 am this Monday. Packing and weighing has commenced.

The Young Womans general pres of the church -President Oscarson-  spoke to us last night.. Her husband shared a story of a family getting baptized in a river in Sweden in the coldest winter since 1805. Reminded me of Oscar´s.

I've been playing different investigators in lessons now. It´s really fun. I pretended I was obsessed with ghosts.

My district thought it was funny that in my family pictures, mom has different hair in every one. Awesome mama.

Get Oscar and Betty and June in soccer. No matter how much they hate it they will eventually love it.

Really don´t know what to expect from the field but excited to go. I feel good about my Spanish, but have a feeling once I get there, any confidence I thought I had will slip away.

One crazy thing this week was that me and Elder Tracy started a (cult?) called "obscuro". You were initiated by reading 3 Nephi 3:7. Then to see if someone was a member, you would go up, adjust their tie and say "your tie is a little off." and if they said "my bad, it was" you knew you could trust them. It had a max of 12 members but got shutdown by our teacher Wolftown. Apparently some exclusive groups developed on his mission so he warned us. It was funny.

During our Spanish Teacher´s mission (Mexico)- he and his comp taught a druglord in this huge mansion. The guy eventually told them they had to stop coming because if there was ever a raid on his home during a lesson, the missionaries would get killed in the gunfire.

A good Colombian friend I made here- Elder Urratitu - left to the field. We traded ties. Super cool guy.

High spirits, peace and love

Elder Tigre Santo

Pictures:

Pretty Morning

​Crazy critter Me and Karren found

This badboy I got at the Temple store

Elder Lopez from Mexico, Elder Tracy, and El Colombiano who left to the field.

​

This armored pupper showed up here a couple days ago.

Week Four

I don´t hear anything about trump here but that news made me throw up a little bit in my mouth.




Awesome facebook post. I´m sure it got a good response. I need to figure out the absintee ballot.




I can receive pictures. That one is awesome.




Can´t go to websites.




You can send me messages throughout the week through missionarypackage.mx - i believe thats the site. try it out.




I´ve heard the Oak 1 Ward high priests meetings are intense.




Very used to the ccm schedule now. Looking forward to the field.




I´ve been able to see Hermana Lattin alot! She seems to already have the swing of things. I told her to go to you guys for food and anything else.




I also need to tell you guys about Maestro Martinez:




One of the teachers- maybe 22 years old used to own a tiger. It was 90000 mexican pesos- about 5000 bucks + it ate 5 chickens a day so it was pricey, but now thats my main post mission goal.




The ccm president is also super cool. hes been kidnapped twice. We´ve heard two devotioanls from him and both were sweet.




Elder Karren seems to be doing much better. He´s getting a hold of spanish now. He always is saying that he can´t wait to go to the field.




We did this thing where we taught lessons to mexican members here, and me and Elder Karren asked one guy what all his sins were. That was rough haha.




During gym time, my district started playing lightning with soccer. Really fun.




Duing one of the gym times, me and Elder Tracy helped these mexican workers dig a hole. They taught us more slang.




Did I tell you that somebody had your same mission dream here? where they go home and don´t speak the language.




We say "PLATA O PLOMO" alot here. It means silver or lead--bribe or bullet. Its what the cartel supposedly says.




Our first zone leaders left to the field. Theyre going to washington.




My district also likes doing waterbottle trickshots trying to flip it can have it land standing up.




Like reading parables.

Wrote a spanish poem;

Por la yerma
Por los cacharros
Los sabuesos en el calor
un país de mineros
Desfiladeros de minerales
Escombros Volcánico
Y siempre gargantas de ron

Cool that seminary is going strong. What´s your favorite scripture?

I think about Maude in Paris alot. Trying to live through her haha.

Mexcio is so cool. Love talking with mexican dudes here. Mexico city is also crazy driving through. 







Miss you guys




Elder Blair

Week Three

GENERAL REPORT


Week 3 was sweet. It´s weird because going to the temple feels like going to Disneyland, and watching conference is like going to the movies, because it´s finally a break from doing the same thing every day. During Conf, when the dude shouted opposed, everybody in the auditorium laughed-which I thought that was kind of messed up. You have to be brave to do something like that. My favorite talk was Juan Uceda and his story of the Inca bridge in Peru 1977.

Spanish is going good. It get´s a little smoother with every visit with the fake investigator.

So far, me and Elder Karren have gotten 3 fake investigators to commit to baptism so I´d say things are going well.
I started playing soccer pretty much any freetime I get. Really fun playing with the guys in my district. Elder Mooney is the only one who´s actually good. It´s a good workout and then we go get ice cream after.

Love keeping a journal. I´ve been drawing a little postcard with each entry.

Learning a lot about guns from Elder Karren. I asked whats the sissiest gun someone could own is, and he said a 22.

He has to go to the infirmary a few times a week, which is actually sweet because they have puzzles I can do, so I just do puzzles. There was an Italy puzzle that was there for like 3 weeks that finally got finished.

Saw Hermana Lattin last night! Brightened my day. I´ll send a picture. Only got to talk for a bit but excited to talk with her for a few weeks.

Please send me good scriptures or views on Mormonism because I get tired of hearing the same testimony 400x a day.

Sammi Lattin - A good friend from Colorado who is serving in Oakland, but learning Spanish in Mexico