MARACUYA YAYA YAYA

Maracuya Fruit

A couple of pointers regarding mail and packages.  In Colombia there is no national mail system.  Most of our correspondence is through email. Keep in mind if you are mailing packages from the USA the flat rate package boxes are the most economical way. Please keep it under 4 lbs. Packages weighing less than 4 lbs are delivered directly to our office. If the package weighs more than 4 lbs it is held up in customs at the airport and there is an extra fee that must be paid to get the package out of customs.  One of the questions I get in letters is about sending me a gift card or money.  So, here is what the mission president advised:  If your missionary needs money from home there are several options.  1.  A debit card from home. The family may place money into that account when needed for the missionary for his personal use. People can give funds directly to the parents to put in his account.   2. Send a cashier's check or traveler's check via Federal Express to the mission office in the missionary's name.  3.  Western Union. 

City of Suba behind me.

Isabel is getting baptized on Saturday hopefully but we need to work on her reading her scriptures more and praying so she can really gain a testimony of the church.   As for the family we haven´t had great success in having lessons with them.  They are always home but are super busy so we can never have a full lesson with them.  We´ll see what we can do with them.  As for the mail it can take anywhere from 1 month to never for me to receive packages or mail here.  If the package is more than 5 pounds it can take forever to get through customs.  They have McDonald's and Subway but only in Bogota, outside of Bogota...nothing.  We had a super great lesson with a new investigator called William the other day.  He has a problem with drugs we think.  We gave him a lesson on the  Word of Wisdom (click on that word if you want to know what that means) which went over great.  We are hoping that if we can help him to overcome his problem that we can get him to recognize the blessings of the gospel and have him increase his faith enough to be baptized.  

New foods that I get to try.  

Also I get to teach an English class, not sure if I told you that or not, but its a great way to have people come to the church and learn about our beliefs.  We´ve met at least 4-5 people to have lessons with from the classes and most of the time they are more solid than the people that we meet when contacting in the street.  I had an intercambio (missionary exchange) with Elder Zamorano and he´s really cool.  He's a Chilean who is about as tall as Michael Jordan, not that tall, but tall ( a little taller than Elder Pututau from my district in the MTC).   We got to go through his area and meet his investigators and I got to learn how to teach in a different way than from my companion and what I noticed the most was the animation.  Both him and my companion are super animated when teaching which is the best thing for the investigators.  That was pretty much my week here.  

Oh, by the way, I got robbed my first week here but didn't want my mom to freak out.  She still freaked!   As for food I got to have a real hamburger for lunch today which was great.  I haven´t had a hamburger in probably 3-4 months.  My shoes are holding up okay and if I need to fix them there is a guy right next to our apartment complex that fixes them.  As for weight, I lost about 15 pounds or so so far, but I gained some back the past few days.  As for this week we need to start having the chapel open for people to come have tours, in the past 2 weeks we´ve had at least 10 people walk in to see what the chapel and the building is like and to learn more about us.  Otherwise the weeks are going by it´s almost been 6 months since I left.