Alec's Mission to Colombia: No Dr. Pepper :(

Hola,

So I have had a lot of people ask me what type of exercise I am doing here since my brother bulked up doing P90X most of his mission. For us we don’t really exercise since I walk all day long. I never stop walking. I’ve lost like 10-15 pounds. The members say that you can see it in my face. So right now my suit doesn’t fit any more, the jacket is big on me now not through the shoulders but just through the midsection. It’s awesome and I feel great. It’s not like I’m starving my self either. The members give us mountains of food for lunch here, its cray. Some times I have to have Elder Gomez help me eat all of it so the members don’t feel bad.

Right now we are teaching two new people right now. Their names are Sandra and Jesus. This week they committed to be baptized on the 13th of July. The only problem is when we asked if they were married they said no but said that for the Lord they would be before their baptism date. We were blown away. Marriage here in Colombia is a big deal, a lot of people just live together because its too expensive to get married. Also the bishop cant just do it for us, it has to be done by a judge and get papers and all that with huge fees and taxes. That is why most people never do it. So when they said that they would get married just like that, we were like 创WHAT, no way创 people just don’t do that here. I know the Lord prepared them to hear the gospel. Its just nice to see that the Lord cares for all of his children not just the members of the church. Now we will be adding 2 more people to our ward! Our ward is fairly small right now, I’d say maybe 50 people tops. Its kind of nice since I can get to know everyone in the ward. It helps when we need references from them since we can bother them about it until they help us out.

I also had to walk through basically the Ghetto of Cerete this week. Its about 5-10 min car ride out of the city. We had two progressing investigators that lived there. The first time we went we had a member who owned a taxi/Jeep who drove us there and stay for the lesson and then drive us back. For our second lesson however, the member was busy so we took a taxi and got dropped off basically in the middle of nowhere and had to walk the whole way. It was during the day so it wasn’t super scary, but still. Being a white boy in Colombia has its perks but it also has its downsides.

Well something fun that was supposed to happen this week but didn’t was that we almost got some Dr. pepper. One of the members of the ward in Cerete said that in a super market in Montaria had Dr. pepper so when I heard that and we were going to Montaria for a missionary conference for two or three days I was stoked. But when my comp and I went to the store today, it wasn’t there. I asked one of the workers there and he had not even heard of it. The Member was miss informed. I was really bummed for like 10-20 min.

Love you guys so much I enjoy every week reading your letters!

Love Alec

Hanging After the Mission Conference