Throwing Rocks

Hey Everyone,

So first off, thanks to my Mom for the money to buy delicious food and stuff for my 20th birthday this Thursday, you know me to well. We will eat good for my big day. My presents are not here yet from the mail but maybe by Thursday. I’ll let ya know next week.

Second off I don't have time to put pictures up so I'm really sorry. I'll do better.

Wednesday we got to teach an old man that lived in Chicago for 20 years and wanted to talk to Americans. It was a nice lesson and we are going to visit him again this week. Hopefully it goes well. Its nice to get new people to teach.

American football on p-day last week was awesome. Actually it was only awesome until one of the elders slipped on the wet grass (it was raining) and pulled the ligaments in his shoulder : ( so other then that it was awesome. We had to stop and help him. I felt bad but was kind of bummed our game was over too. He is doing fine.

One sad thing this week was I got hit in the side of the head with a rock. A group of pot heads wanted us to come talk to them, we did not do that, so they got mad and called us names in spanish. We just keep walking away, then one of them thought it would be great to throw a rock. It hit me in the ear and I lost hearing in it for about 10-15 minutes. It hurt a lot. My companion, Elder Price, was really mad and wanted to punch the guy in the face for me (this was not the first time they said rude things to us). I told him it was not the best thing to do since we are missionaries and we just needed to let it go and not walk by them anymore. He agreed but was still mad so we just kept walking away. Pretty rude of them. 

One fun thing happened this week. The zone leaders came back from Meddelin with all the stuff I asked for from the office. I now have like all the movies from the church in our apartment, our family home evenings are going to be awesome with the members. I also got the gospel art book after asking for it for 6 months, so that is nice. I also got letters. Yeah letters. Its so nice to hear from home and get packages. A lot of my friends have totally slacked off and have not been writing. It was really nice to hear from a few but the others need to step it up I think.

Also, I just passed my 10 month mark on the mission. Crazy I have been out that long. Its going pretty fast most of the time except when you get hit with rocks.

Stay Classy,

Alec

P.S. Below is a quiz for everyone. I really liked it. See how well you all do answering and writing the scripture reference where you found the answer.

IF YOU TAKE IT LET ME KNOW HOW YOU DID:

1. Which Nephite leader had two sons named Lehi and Nephi?

2. What does Rameumpton mean?

3. What is Deseret?

4. In the Book of Mormon what are the names of every person who had either the large or small plates of Nephi at one time or another?

How many are there? (remember a scripture for each one.) 

5. Read 3 Nephi 7: 23-26 & 11:21. Why did the lord give Nephi to baptize if he was baptizing people before?

6. Where does it say Reckoning in the Book of Mormon.

7. Corianton, son of Alma is famous for committing sins when he was a missionary. It does not talk much about him in the history afterwards, but it does say what happened to him spiritually in the end. Did he repent or no?

8. What does ´´the more sure word of prophecy´´ mean?

9. We know baptism is a symbol of death and resurrection, but where is it written?

10. A lot of people have doubts because Joseph was called to be a prophet when he was very young, but what are two examples of when god called other prophet at a similar age?

11. Normally the people use weapons of war, but were dose it say the had weapons of peace?

12. How old was Alma the older when he led his people from the Waters of Mormon to the land of Zarahemla?

13. From Alma 11: 5-19. If you have 2 senums, 2 ezroms, 1 onti, 1 shiblon, 1 shiblum, and 2 leahs how many Antions of gold would you have?

14 Where does it say the name of the brother of Jared in the Book of Mormon?

Family Home Evenings

Hola Everyone,

Its nice to hear that everything back home has stayed the same and is as organized as always. I’ll be excited to enjoy you new laundry cabinets when I get home cause you know life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop to look around once in awhile you might miss something.

Ha ha, it was so funny to hear that Braden is driving a malibo while his car was getting repaired after that guy hit him. I bet he just hates it. I know how much he hates American cars. This must be worse then him getting hit. Also just seeing your photo of the accident makes me realize how much I miss snow. Rain just sucks, you just get soaked and sad. But hey there is the saying that for every drop of rain that hits you on your mission your wife gets more attractive. I am getting rained on all the time,  so at least that is one benefit.

So this week was pretty rad. We had Family Home Evening in the house of a member and she invited a bunch of people. It was awesome. We received so many references from her. We now have two new families to teach because of that one night. I used the plan of salvation drawings Braden sent me (I changed them to Spanish so I could use them here) and had a great lesson. One of the dads was asking a bunch of questions, which helped lead the lesson along. For example, we had just finished talking about life on earth and then he asks ´´So what happens when we die, and how is it fair that the people who didn’t know about the church never get to have that knowledge.´´ It was almost as if he knew what he was doing, as if we planted him to ask questions. It was amazing. We will see how these families do in the long run but I think they are ready to hear the gospel.

As for service, we have not had many chances lately. I have been cooking my comp food at night, so I guess that could count. I decided that I was no longer happy with eating bread after we get back to the house so I started cooking things. We still have the members feeding us huge meals for lunch. They are awesome!

We had exchanges this week so an another missionary came to my area to work with me. He has only about 8 months left but got nervous when we were teaching and instead of saying that Jesus died for us he said that Jesus killed for us. He quickly corrected himself but it was still super funny. The investigator laughed so it was all good.

Oh yeah, and the old man, Jesus, that we baptized recently came to church this week in a suit! It was so amazing. He said that he went out and bought it because he wanted to wear his best to church. It was so touching. By the end of the day he said that he was super hot and that he is only going to wear it on fast Sunday from now on but it was still awesome.

Also, thanks Dad for writing me about you primary lesson Sunday and sharing the new stuff it made you think about. Its cool to think about if the third of the hosts of Heaven that followed Satan still have their agency since thats what he wanted to take in the first place. I don’t think he can take it away because agency is a right we have that has existed for eternity. We had agency when we were intelligences, so not even God could take it away from us. I learned that in my personal studies in the morning. I love having so much time to figure things out. I also would bet that a lot of them regret their choice. Living everyday knowing what you did and threw everything out the window would be terrible. Is that not the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth it talks about for people that go to the lowest kingdom, how much more so if you knew that you would never be able to have any glory even of the lowest king. It’s just so sad.

Well I hope that you all are doing well in you snowy lives.

Thats all I got for today, love you lots.

Alec

I Have a gift for someone. To bad they will have to wait until next year 

to get it since its kinda sketchy to buy plates here.

I rode my first cable car in Colombia, so I had to take a photo.

Happy New Year 2014

Hey Everyone,

So this week we kind of celebrated New Years. It was a lot like Christmas in that we had to be inside by 6 pm before everyone started partying. We went to Manizales again and spent the night with our Zone Leaders. We had a projector and watched a few church movies, we also got a great show of the drunk guys blowing things up in front of our house. They were using gasoline and explosives from like 11 to 2 in the morning. It was really funny to watch them be stupid from our window. One guy almost set his arm on fire. It was great. I can’t believe how dumb people can be when they drink.

As far as teaching goes, we had to drop almost all of our investigators this week since none of our people were progressing at all.  It was sad but if they are not ready maybe they will be for some other missionaries and we planted the seed. We have been concentrating on a lot of part member families lately and it seems to be going well. We now have quite a few families to teach from now on. Hopefully the can feel the spirit.

Ok, I need to go. Sorry it is so super short. We are going to play american football with the other zone so I need to go.

Love,

Alec

I made an egg white omelette with chicken and melted cheeses for our breakfast.

I caved. I just had to buy it after seeing it in stores for almost 10 months I just had to buy it. It was pricey but worth it.

Here are the New Years neighbors, YES that is a couch in fire

Our New Years Movies, and all mission approved fear not:

Emma Smith

Forever Strong

1/4 of Saints and Soldiers

Singles Ward

Singles Ward 2

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Everyone!

So my Christmas this past week was awesome! Here in Colombia they really only celebrate on Christmas Eve. The whole day is full of church and family stuff and then as it gets to be night Christmas kind of ends and partying begins. Also they do not really believe in Santa here. They say that the Baby Jesus brings gifts to people or that he blesses us so we can have money for gifts. I think that sounds pretty awesome. Since Christmas turns into party stuff, we had to be inside by 6 pm. Because of that we ended up spending the night at our Zone Leaders flat. It was nice to spend Christmas with them and eat together. The next morning was Christmas Day and we headed back to our own area by bus. Since it is not really celebrated everything was open like business as usual. When we got back to the house I got to open my Christmas gift, my package finally got here!. Elder Price couldn’t wait to open his and did it earlier in the week and then felt bad he had nothing on Christmas. He was pretty bummed. All my gifts were so cool and so was the wrapping paper. I loved them all. Elder Price asked why you guys sent me so many little toys. I told him “Its because my parents love me more then yours”, although it was a bit sad that I did not receive any Dr Pepper : ( but other then that it was great. After presents I went and skyped home which was pretty awesome. I had been really looking forward to it. Just so you know, I didn’t cry afterwards. I don’t know what it is but I am like never home sick. There are times that I want things from back home but I never want to go home, we will see how that goes next year when I am almost done with my mission. 

After skyping we went back to the flat to take our nap we and been planning on for weeks. Elder Price and I had agreed that a good 30 minute nap was a gift we both deserved for Christmas. We set the alarm to go off in 30 min but not 5 min later the sisters called us and asked if we could give a blessing to Sister Pérez, because she was not feeling well. So much for our nap, we then gave her a blessing and headed to the church. We both fell asleep waiting for people but they never showed so we got a nap after all and it was glorious. Afterwards we went to the members house to have lunch with the fish that we caught. Sadly he just fried the fish so it wasn’t very good. He could have done so many things but didn’t. What a waste of fish. After that we all went caroling to the all the church leaders and a few of our investigators. It was really nice to share the Christmas spirit with the people of Chinchina and that sums up my Christmas.

We also had a Christmas activity on Friday with the Branch. We read the christmas story in Luke 2 it was amazing. Then we talked about his life and what he did for us. We ended with an amazing video called ´´The Bridge´´. I was glad I was on the stage holding the curtain back because I just started crying in the end. We then fed everyone a Christmas dinner of Arroz con pollo. A member also made cup cakes for every single person that came to the activity. It was pretty great.

Here is the link to the video we watched:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JSXqVb8Kc4

Sadly, I did not get any emails or cards from anyone for Christmas other than my family. The cards could still be in the mail so I get to wait for those which should be fun. I will most likely be getting cards for the next 4 months because the office never sends stuff on time.

As for the gifts my parents sent, they were all pretty awesome. I got a toy shark with a freakin laser beam on its head, a rubik´s cube, t shirt from the big bang theory, totally awesome mustache socks, small toys, and candy. My parents rock!!!

Love you guys lots and hope you are all doing well,

Alec

P.S. Sorry to my family who all got the flu for Christmas.

All my gifts in the box were wrapped and in Toy Story paper to boot.

Stuff in my stocking.

My new shirt!

Socks: great

Mustaches: awesome

Socks with Mustaches: Fan-freakin-tastic

The doctor can now travel through time and space to keep my drinks cold.

Its a shark with frickin´ laser beam on its head, so much better then ill-tempered sea bass.

I got to color my own stocking which was awesome.

I am now the proud owner of a lovely button collection that are icons for my mission.

Fishing with Members

Hola Everyone and Merry Christmas This Week,

I really don’t have much to say since I will be talking to you guys on Christmas, so ya.

Fun thing this week, we went fishing for pday with a member family. That was pretty fun and now we have a bunch of tilapia to eat so that is going to be awesome. We are going to bring it to the member that is a chef so it will be amazingly good.

Love you guys lots and thanks for the christmas money. I am going to get a leather messenger bag made like the one I have at home, but a different style. They do really cool leather stuff here.

Oh and Dad, thanks for keeping your blog going and emailing me what it says and the pictures. I enjoy every week when I can see the progress on your bike. It makes me happy to see what you are doing. The mock up looks awesome of the rev gage for the Cafe Racer.

No luck on my Christmas package. I think it is stuck in the office.

Anyway, I’m super excited to Skype on Christmas. Talk to ya soon.

Love,

Alec

We went ´´fishing´´ with a member family. We caught 10 fish.This is one of the two fish I caught.

I MADE EGGNOG!!! 

and it was awesome.

This is the case for Preach My Gospel I received from the President last week for Christmas.

Christmas Party & Service

Hey Everyone,

So I have some bad news, I am not going to be able to get my christmas package in time to open on Christmas. I will get at least before the end of December but not before christmas. That is sad!

On a better note, We got to go to our mission christmas party for the Cafeterra zone. We had a talent show then performed our hakas. We then all got leather cases for preach my gospel from the president and his wife for a christmas gift. Then they took us to a really nice restaurant and bought us all stake dinners it was so good, it was better the the stake that you guys brought back from Tiburon back home( which means shark in spanish, who knew). I thanked them so much for their gifts they are so nice. The steak platter was called ´´Punto de Anca´´. I ate my steak and then one of the sisters offered like 3/4 of hers steak to me. After that every one just started passing another Elder and me steak on forks and knifes. In all I ate about 2 1/2 steaks if not more. One of the best parts was they had paper to cover the tables so all the Elders started drawing on the table before we got our food. Also, that night we all got put up in a hotel since it was to far to get back to our own flat that night. It was a pretty cool party.

This week we got to do several service projects, its about time. Saturday we started the morning painting the garage of a investigator of the sisters, she has plans to make it a restaurant for the hotel that she runs. After that we helped a family move. They live in the basement part of a house so they had a big flight of stairs that the had to climb. Elder Price took all the big stuff since it was a grandma her daughter and granddaughter all living in the small house so they needed some muscles. We also went back to the house that had a grenade go off inside to help her clean up a little more. We washed dishes, and mopped her whole house. She was so thankful that we were so willing to help her. It felt so good to finally have service to do.

For p-day this week we all went to a park to play soccer but we ended up playing American foot ball since Elder Price brought his ball. Official football is a lot better the soccer in every way, hands down.

Oh and I’m sad Lydia got to go to the Mormon Tabs Christmas concert and got to see the guy that played Gimli. Thats pretty awesome that Gimli came to the conference center. That must of been a long flight from middle earth.

Oh and my spanglish is fan-freaking-tastic lately. People are starting to think I am from latin countries, or a half latin gringo. People don't think I am from the U.S. since I am so tan and my spanish is good enough to use the Colombian accent so its pretty rad.

Last off big birthday wishes to my sister. She is 18 this week. Happy Birthday Beans!!!

Love you guys, 

Alec

This is our zone after doing the Hakka.

Going to the “popular” park for p-day. We played real football with the other Elders, not soccer.

My prize from the mission gift exchange, pretty sweet.

Meeting Elder Gomez’s trainer at the Christmas party.

Learning the Haka

Hola Everyone,

So first of Elder Price is my new companion and he is from Boise, Idaho. He says that he has two cows so I don’t know if he really lives in Boise itself. However he is super cool now that I have gotten to know him. He has been out for a little over a year. Fun fact his trainer was Elder Mansilla, how funny. I miss him. Four things I like about Elder Price are:

1. Because we are both white boys we get a lot of opportunities I haven’t had with other comps, i.e., people will want to talk with us just because we are white, which is good and bad.

2. He is really laid back on the stuff that isn’t very important. He doesn't have a bathroom schedule, or any thing like that. He understands that things about investigators and members are important, but other then that he is pretty chill.

3. He will eat what I don't like. For example I hate the fried plantains here, they are nasty, but he loves them (crazy) so the members never feel bad that all the food wasn't eaten.

4. He has a bunch of scriptures marked and knows where they are. Its really cool. The person can be talking about some thing and he will be all like ´´I think I have a scripture for that, hold on.´´ Its really nice to be able to explain things when you have the scriptures to back it up.

The rebabtizing went well with Jesus. He actually was really excited about the whole thing and getting back in the font. He wanted to take all the blame for the whole thing since he said his name wrong, we told him it was no ones fault it was just a mistake. I know he is going to be a really strong member even though he is 78 years old.

We finally got the opportunity to do service this week. The sad part is that it was to help the friend of a sister clean out her house after someone threw a grenade into the house this morning. Yes, a grenade, or some sort of similar explosive. She had no idea why it happened. She is a teacher for infants, she doesn't have ´´enemies´´. It was just so sad to see here face as we carried out all the broken furniture. I was just glad we could help the lady out. She lives alone with her two sons. The sons are 7 and 10 so they couldn't help out much. It was just so so sad sot hats why my email is a little bit late today.

On a brighter note we have a mission Christmas party on Wednesday and we have been practicing a Haka in our zone (if you don't know what a Haka is please google it, Mom maybe you can put up a link when you post my letter to the soccer Haka). Its big here because of all the soccer people that do it. Since we have 4 Americans in our zone the Haka we are doing has a lot of parts that we took from Thriller so that should be fun.

Everyone has been telling me who its been snowing a lot back home and complaining. You all may hate snow blowing, but I really miss the snow. I have no chance to be in the snow here and its sad. People always ask if there is snow in Utah. Sadly I reply yes, there is snow.

Also in the next package can you send me another consecrated oil key chain vial so I can give blessings. I lost it or one of my comps ´´borrowed´´ it.

Love you guys lots,

Alec

HERE IS A LINK TO A SOCCER HAKA AS REQUESTED BY ALEC:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhtE4t3Alug

Here is our zone Christmas card.

My Christmas tree in our flat. Notice the mustache topper.

The Notche de Hogar in the house of Jorge Gomez.

The had us play a game at the Gomez home.

You have to remove the coin from the flour using only your nose.