The Teaching Is Working

Hola,

I’ll start off with the highlight of my week. We now have another Sister committed to be baptized. Its funny Elder Gomez said that here in Colombia a lot of elders follow the “Plan Titanic”. Which is women and children first for the ``life boats of salvation``. The reason is most of the time the men work and live in other cities because they can get more money working in the big cities, then they send the money back home for the family. If we can get their family interested in the church usually their husbands will follow. Its awesome to have my first baptisms set up.

We have done a lot of teaching lately too. I really like teaching the plan of salvation to people because I can draw it out on paper. One time while we were teaching a sister, after we were done she asked if she could have the drawing. It almost seemed like the way she asked she thought I was going to say no when my plan all along was to give it to her. She was super excited that she had a “a guide for her life drawn by an American”. A lot of the time I think people listen to us just because I am an American and they think I am full of wisdom and knowledge bestowed upon me from the United States.

My only funny tracting story so far is that a lot of the time the people don’t have toilet paper because its ``expensive``  so I have to keep a notebook of lined paper in my back pack so when they don’t have any I can at least use some thing. Cool story huh.

So last week I got super sick and had a fever and couldn’t keep food down in the morning. I had to stay in bed all day. It sucked. I really wanted to go out and teach. Staying in bed was boring, I couldn’t listen to the church talks on my iPod since I kept drifting in and out of sleep, no fun. But it was only for one day, the next day I felt great. I think it was something I ate the day before at a members home. 

My Spanish is coming along great. I can now hold a conversation, but a lot of the time they talk about things I know nothing about because the culture is different so I understand them but I have nothing to say.

So my brother came home last Wednesday from his mission to Johannesburg South Africa. It didn't affect me very much. I’m kind of sad he wont be serving a mission at the same time as me but I know that he is done and thats awesome. (I actually thought he was coming home one week earlier so every one here in Cerete that I talked to thought he was already home before he finished.) It was rough not seeing him before I left but at least I got Lydia to wait on her availability date so I can see her. I could not stand not seeing her for 3.5 years. Braden had been hard enough but Lydia I couldn’t handle. 

Love you all lots,

Alec

My First Mission Haircut

What Our Chapel Looks Like

Some of the Members I talked to recommended I buy locks for my luggage, because some 

of my companions in the future might want to ``borrow`` some of my things.