RIP Robert D Hales, Tom Petty, Las Vegas.
On Monday night Elder Tracy arrived. I slept over with him and Elder Heredia in La Cumbre. That night at 11, I had to go back to the terminal to pick up new elders. I had 2 all-nighters this week in the bus terminal waiting for new elders to arrive. It's never sure when the buses will arrive. And you can't sleep because you can't miss the bus. Elder Tracy and I went 50 hours without sleep while waiting. It was also good though. I had time to talk with a struggling elder. He really likes to draw though so I gave him a challenge this week to draw a white dragon.
Tuesday, Elder Tracy and I fell asleep in every lesson. Tracy and I were on splits and we knocked a door. A man let us inside. We shared a short message. Then we invited him to say a prayer. He said he wasn't able. We told him we knew he could and then we both bowed our heads and closed our eyes and fell asleep haha. I woke up like 2 minutes later and he was just staring at us. I made Tracy say a prayer.
Wednesday, 2 elders arrived that will be opening the recently closed Bucarica area. Elder Skinner (from Missouri, who started his mission in Barbosa), and Elder Quiñonez (a rapper from Guatemala). The first district meeting we just read Matthew 14. We also have to study language in every district meeting so we had a rap battle. Then we all stayed in Bucarica to help get things going in the area again. We all just spent the day contacting. This week alone they found 11 new investigators.
My comp arrived this Thursday at 6:00am. My new companion is Elder Jaque. He's from Chile and speaks perfect English. Pretty much another gringo comp. He learned English from movies and music. He's seen every movie. It's awesome, he's super cool.
It felt so good to be back in my area. We spent Thursday and Friday visiting everyone. Our area is huge so I'm trying to show Elder Jaque everything I know, but I still haven't touched a ton because I've only been there like 4 weeks total haha. It's been a fun week though.
One dude we visit is named Saul. He lives in Bucaramanga but all his family is in Bogota. Super cool guy. He came to conference with us. He wants to join the church but doesn't really understand anything so we are trying to amp up our teaching skills with him. But he came to general conference with us and seemed really into it.
We also visit the Amaya family. All are super nice and super Catholic. One of the sisters is named Sharol. She was like: "My one doubt is Maria. Why don't you guys believe in her? I got fired up and shared 1 Nephi 11 where Nephi sees the virgin exceeding of all beauty. Sharol felt way better about the church after that.
We also found this dude who's name is Cristian Ronaldo haha.
Conference was really cool. All the gringos in the zone watched it in the bishop's office. We fist pumped every time the missionaries got a shout out.
Favorite talks were probably Christofferson, and Stanley G. Ellis. I think holiness can be easily tied to transhumanism. Loved a line in Ellis talk: "The members of the trinity are no strangers to hard things."Overall heard a theme of migration which was cool. hashtagwecandohardthings
Sure missing you guys. Sounds like America is crazy this week.
With love,
Elder Blair
