Week One Hundred and Two

[ No report today, but we got to message with Ralph for a few minutes. This is the last time before he gets home. ]



WASSUPPPP

we are about to party soooo hard my dudes

FOREAL

i’m with my bffs from the mexico mtc this week haha

in Bogota

dudes people have given me 3 BIRTHDAY PARTIES i love colombia sooo much

dudes that family you saw in the video from my last area — i definitely teared up when i had to say goodbye

the worst

yesterday i visited my favorite ward in suba

ill tell you guys everything in 2 days haha

the MTC missionaries are from missouri and utah

we all go to atlanta and then part ways

i just have my carry on and one big suitcase + backpack

holy smokes!!!!!!!!!!

dudes i have to go now to the last fhe with the mission pres

FREAAAAAKKKKKKKKKKK

SO STOKED DUDES

Week One Hundred and One

[ No email this week. ]

Week One Hundred

We had a good week.


Hot day in PiedeCuesta.  81 degrees, partly cloudy.

I can feel everything coming to an end. I dont want to leave Colombia; I'm so adjusted to everything now. The weird music is the best music now. The soup that made me sick cures my sickness now. I even get pissed when people spell it "Columbia" instead of "ColOmbia".

A few cool memories of the week:

Going on a hike with the ward. We hiked up to these waterfalls on Tuesday and brought Brian (the dude who looks like Jesus) and this 9 year old kid named Juan Diego, who always wants to hangout with us.

We also had a ward Karaoke night. Something I've never seen in the States haha.

I had my last interview with my mission president (I think there is one more right before we go home) but he just told me, "Well Elder, just looking at your face I know I need to say this. You need to get married AS FAST AS YOU CAN." And then he just stared at me and I would look away and look back and he was still looking. uuhhhh.

I am just trying to take everything in. There is not one street in my area that you could find in the States. All the kids playing on the street at 10pm. Crazy wild dogs running everywhere. Dudes walking around selling avocados in wheelbarrows. People yelling at the top of their lungs to sell yuca bread and fish. Things I've heard and seen every day that I won't see again in a long time.

That doesn't even compare to the people I've met here who have been my family for the past 2 years. Some of the best friends I've ever made.

It's gonna be weird leaving the safe bubble of the mission. No world news, no social media, you live in a sector with limits and that's what you know about.

My last companion, Elder Lucaila, has been awesome. He always warns me when there is dog crap in my path.

I am looking forward to the free days we get in Bogota to visit some of my fav families from the mission. Fam Castellanos.

Miss you guys so much!+


Elder Blair

Week Ninety Nine

Haha look what i found in the middle of Bucaramanga. 

All of Colombia is trying to make me trunky : ( 

With Elder Mooney — friend from Mexico MTC. We are in the same zone!

Hey family, week 99!

I have a memory of meeting an investigator named Doris my first day in the field, and I use that memory as reference for how long I have been here. Seems like it happened 10 years ago. It's weird thinking I have seen Elder Porras more recently than you guys.

PiedeCuesta is going awesome. We have pretty much put together a hiking club of members/investigators. A few times a week we all get up at about 4:30 AM to start the day.

PiedeCuesta is a center for the Guerrilla. They aren't centered within the city limits, but they are in the outskirts and surrounding farmland. Colombian Guerrilla is still going strong. It started with good ideas (cheaper education, easier access to food/water), but got totally corrupted with narcos.

This week we visited a sector of our area called NuevaColombia. INTENSE.

This is an up-to-date pic I got off Google.

There are a few members who live out here that we went to visit. NuevaColombia is an area with extreme poverty and pretty much 90% illegal settlements. In Spanish it's called invasión. It is so dusty. You walk 3 meters and have dust in your eyes.

We visited the shack of a member named Carolina who is our Gospel Principles teacher. We were the first missionaries to get to her house. She lives way up at the top of the mountain. She lives alone with her chickens, a duck, and a blind dog. She makes a bike trip to Piedecuesta every day (12 km to get there, really gnarly terrain) and lives off what she makes from selling the eggs her gallinas give her.

All the houses there are shacks with corrugated metal roofing. We would just walk down the street and kids would come out shocked. They just gasped "gringooooo" when we walked by haha.

One cool thing was going to an open house in Cañaveral (one of my old wards). Two of my converts are there and one of them is the ward mission leader who led the whole operation. Julian Roman. So awesome remembering our lessons with him and answering his questions, and now seeing him leading all the missionaries. He and his sister Angelica are some of my very favorite people in Colombia.

I have gotten along with people in every area, but in every single area I've had, there is the one family who I love more than everyone else.

One thing I've been doing these last few weeks is networking like a boss. Anytime I meet someone cool I give them my Facebook or Instagram de una vez.

Also heard one of the best songs ever:

GRAN TRIBULACION BY MARINO

Look it up.

Hiking Club with Stake Patriarch and Hermano Vargas.

On one hike this week, we ran into the Mayor of Piedecuesta

who bikes up the mountain a few times a week.