The Powers Back On

Hola Amigos,

So I have really been loving my district lately. The people I work with are just awesome. I have 10 missionaries in my district, six elders and four sisters. What is funny is that my district has all the leaders of the zone, the Zone leaders and the leader of the sisters, and I so almost half of the missionaries are leaders. As for the size of my area I have included images. Everything in the image is my area. I don’t cover Cerete where I was before since it is a different district. Transfers are next week on the 2nd of December. I don’t know if I’m going to stay here or not. Not that I hate the coast but I just wanted to end in Medellin. If I end in the coast I’m going to die when I get home. A change from 100 degrees to 30 I think would send a huge shock to my system. I do want to be here for at least one more transfer if I can to see the Zuñiga family be baptized. They are just such a cool family and I just hope I get to see them become official.

So we had major celebrating here on Tuesday. We were finally able to fix the problem in our house that made half of it have no electricity. The family that comes to inspect the house helped us out with that. We now have full power and don’t have to sleep on the floor. WOOOOOOO! They also unclogged our sink so we can use that now as well, its awesome. We now have no more problems in the house.

So Thanksgiving is this week and I’m pretty excited. My parents sent some funds to me and I plan to celebrate Thanksgiving by just eating a huge amount or at least trying to. I’m thinking I will buy Elder Conti and big, huge pizzas and then slip into food comas. I thought that would a good idea. Maybe some soda and desserts too. It should be super fun. I will be sure to take lots of photos.

I’m sorry my car has been causing so many problems lately for you guys and Lydia. Subaru’s normally work nicely, but I guess that its just got so many miles that everything is failing at the same time. Be nice to her, I miss my car.

So lately I have really been enjoying listening to Michael Wilcox. He has a way to explain things like no other. I have used his talks to teach investigators. I have also used his talks as basis for my district meetings. I can only teach a small portion of what he shares but I love his stuff. I am able to take what he teaches and change it slightly for the needs of the district. I am super happy that I have those talks.

Well, I’m sorry once again that I have no photos again this week. I left my bag with my sport clothes and my camera in the church this week. The zone leaders were nice and picked it up for me but I had to wait until Saturday to pick it up so no photos :,( I really am trying to do better.

Thats all for this week my brave little toasters. Until next week.

Toodles,

Alec

My Area

Super Gringo Power

Hello My Amigos,

This week has been pretty productive. We are still teaching the Zuñiga family but we were able to find some new people this too. Tuesday, the AP’s came to the coast and they and one of my ZL’s spent the day with me. (Elder Conti was with the other ZL).It was pretty awesome. My comp went off to teach with the other ZL and I got to be with Elder Atwood from my original group. We were able to contact a bunch of people since we were three white kids together so we had super Gringo Power. We found a family that was excited to hear us. We went into an area  that we don’t normally work that was pretty far away. It turned out to be great since no one from any other church goes out there. It was awesome and they enjoyed the visit and learned from what we taught.

Thursday was not as good. We lost power in half of our house so we had to pull the mattress out from our bedroom into the main room so we could use our fans for the heat. We have slept on the floor for the past 4 nights now. We are hoping that the power comes back in the other half of the house soon. We are having to use candles in the bathroom at night so we can have some light. It still is not back on and is pretty much a problem we don’t know how to get fixed.

I still have not done organized any big trade off for my district but I did accompany some sisters on Friday with my Comp. I can’t do trade offs with the sisters but I can accompany them with my comp for 4 hours. They also made the best of our company and had us talk to a recent convert about going on a mission. I talked about all the blessings that he could bring to lives of others and shared the story of one of my ancestors, Thomas Roberts Higham, and how because of him our family five generations back came to know the gospel. I think he might go.

We are also having a big activity today for p-day since it is a holiday and nothing is open. We are coming to some sort of water sports that the sister are putting together. I will be sure to take photos to send to you guys next week. It should be fun. We have not done anything like that in awhile with all the reports I usually have to do so I’m pretty excited.

Well, I love you guys so much, here is wishing you all a great week.

Toodles,

Alec

P.S. With Thanksgiving coming up I just realized that I will not be able to get Dad the surprise I was hoping for since I got transferred. I was going to take my comp to the Hard Rock Cafe in Medellin to celebrate and get Dad a pin but that is now a no go. Sad day (  ._.)

Birthday Party after our District Meeting for Sister Canas

Action Shot of the Super Mega Dog I Had

We Have Had Tons Of Rain

I got my trunk letter (aka mission release questions) so I put 

on some civilian clothes and took a picture. I changed right after, it felt weird.

No release date yet though.

My Wedding Invite & Halloween Cards Finally Came

Not Much Happening

Hey Everyone,

My district is doing well this week and all is back to normal. No one had been sick or had problems. No one had to go to the doctor and yes, the president knows what has been going on. I chatted with him a little to let him know what was happening. He was really cool about it all. It was nice to not have any emergencies this week or have to take care of sickos not that I minded helping. Even my toes are doing good again. I missed my last doctor appointment because of my emergency transfer but I’m making sure that the nail is coming in nicely. They are not going to be a problem any more. I’m going to make sure that I don’t ever cut them wrong again.

Well, for p-days in my  area it has been over a month now and we still do not have a lot of time to do anything on our p-days. We basically wash our clothes and write. We don’t have that much time or money to be doing anything else. We have to take a bus every day to go to lunch since there are almost no members in our area so we never had any walking around money. I talked with the Zone leaders and the office and they are going to give us a little bit more money every 15 days so we don’t end up with nothing in the middle of the week. So that is going to be nice. Maybe we will finally get to do something fun after all our hard work.

Well, something funny that happened this week was Elder Conti and I were doing mad libs and it was great. We had done them before but this time they turned out super funny. I took a photo of the funniest one. It was the cherry on top of the night.

Sadly flickr is wack today so I can’t upload the pictures from the past few weeks. I even remembered my camera this time so I could and bupkis, nothing. I’m really sorry.

I’m sorry this weeks letter is short, not much happened.

Toddles,

Alec

Stones & Drugs

Hey Everyone,

So this week I had another medical intervention for a missionary. This time it was not my comp but another Elder in my district. It was Elder Gonzalez. He was dying of pain and when I talked to him I was pretty sure he was passing a kidney stone. Out here in the middle of no where they only take cash at hospitals like I’ve said before so I emailed my Dad for a short term loan and he was able to transfer me some funds within 10 minutes so I could take the Elder to the hospital. Sure enough, he was trying to pass a 4mm kidney stone. He was complaining the whole time and whining that he wanted to call his family and tell him that he wanted to go home. Not sure how going home would help, the stone would be gone long before then. I wanted to tell him to buck up and be a man, but that would have been rude. Instead I helped him understand that the pain would not last forever. I told him I saw my Dad do lots of them and as soon as it passes the pain would go away. He didn’t really listen to me but we did get some drugs in him and he felt better. We were at the hospital until about 5pm and then they sent us home. Problem was that around 10-11pm he started complaining about the pain again cause the drugs had worn off. I called the president and I chatted with him about what was happening. He told us to take him once again to the hospital. This time he got a big list of drugs to take for a while until it passed one of which was some syringes to give him a shot in the butt. Well, he asked for everything that could help him out so I guess he got what he asked for. He did pass the stone the next day we think but until then he thought he was dying. I’m glad I could help and glad it was not me.

The funny thing this week was after Elder Gonzalez got out of the hospital again we kept him at our house to make sure he passed it and was ok. He is very funny and kind of scared of everything. He acts like a super cool manly man but little things freak the crap out of him. He could never walk by the cemetery that was near our house, he always asked to walk another way. He also didn’t shower with the curtain closed, we found water all over the floor after he got out. We asked him why and he said that he doesn’t want the scene from Alfred Hitchcock´s psycho to happen to him. It was a super funny contradiction. 

We have been searching for new people to teach lately. I have gotten to meet our neighbors however they don’t seem very interested. Don’t get me wrong, they are great people, they just have seen the missionaries for a long time in the area and don’t really show interest. It is really sad but we have to find the chosen people.

D&C 121

34 Behold, there are many called, but few are chosen. And why are they not chosen?

 35 Because their hearts are set so much upon the things of this world, and aspire to the honors of men, that they do not learn this one lesson

Oh and I got two packages this week, the September and October packages are in. Sadly I forgot my camera so I can’t up load photos : ( sorry about that.

I was glad to hear that Dad is making good use of Braden’s old room and has converted it into storage for clean scooters. Scooter storage is an awesome idea. I’m sure mom was just rolling her eyes the whole time thinking “Boys and their Toys”. I also found the pictures of Dad’s costume super creepy. The only way it could have been better is if you had used my morph suit, you know the full body black spandex body suit that I bought. It was a great costume though. Also I feel like the pumpkins this year you guys did are really laking, but then again I was the only one to do something super detailed. I looked in to buying a pumpkin to carve here but the price was crazy. I also thought watermelon, that too was pricey so I was left with nada.

Oh and I need some help please and don’t worry, it’s not money. I need the name and phone number of the stake president, and the phone number of Bishop Mike Ju. I’m filling out the page that they need to buy my airline ticket to come home so I need this info before they can buy it. Please and thank you.

Well, thats all for this week folks. Tune in text week for more up to date news stories about the average life of a Colombian missionary

Toddles, 

Alec