ELDER BANDY IS FAT!

The weather is the same, we had a breeze a couple days this week so that was a great blessing for us and even though I would like to have some type of tan when I leave here, I think I´ll stick to avoiding the sun for the next 2 years.  I really don´t care much for sunburn.  I find that the heat is pretty unbearable but I'm getting more used to it, so that's a blessing for me.  The streets here don´t have names so I can't tell you where I am exactly.

Me and my new friend Lulu.  The Loro spanish for parrot.

Letters from the kids of some of the investigators.

A letter from one of the investigators telling me she wants to be my friend and if I´m nice to her she´ll let me be her friend.  A letter from another daughter of an investigator that says I´m super special and that she knows I´m sent from God and she want´s to be a missionary

A really cool motorcycle in the area. A lot of people ride motorcycles here.

The area is great we have been working hard in 2 parts of the area this week since these parts tend to have more people that are willing to listen to us and are more open for us.  Our ladies are all doing great.  We have a baptism for this Saturday for Rosa Sanchez, who has been investigating for about a month now but is ready to be baptized.  We also talked with a couple other families that we have and 3 of them which still need to be married are all getting married on the 6th of December so the 7th we´re going to be having a great big baptismal service for the 3 of them, which is going to be about 8 or 9 people and that is going to be great. This week we had about 40 lessons which usually in a week we have about 30 so it was an improvement.  I still felt that we had time that could have been used doing something, so we´re working this week and planning the time better so we´re not walking as much from one side to the other but are trying to teach one house and go from one to the next closest.  We are improving the area and if we can get the members we have more active in the work they´ll be able to have a chapel in the next few months but we just need to have them help us recoger (activate)some more members.  We found a family that has a son who is having problems with drugs, but the positive is that he wants to change, so we have hope there for him.  He didn´t come on Sunday but we´re going to work on getting him to the church.  But his family is super great.  His mom, Olga is super supportive of us coming to teach him and her as well and her questions are always to help her or Audi, her son, understand better what we´re teaching.  They both have the desire to change and we´re going to be there to help them do it.  

One day Olga told Audi that "el es bien gordo."  or "Elder Bandy" is fat, but in this context it means that I have some meat on my bones and I´m not deathly skinny like some of the people here.  They´re not dying but they just don´t have any fat on them.  I was a little offended until my companion started agreeing with her, so I was a little peeved with him until he explained it and it meant that I looked healthy and then he explained to them how it's an insult in America and we all had a good laugh! I had to laugh at myself.  Different culture, different view of life.  The weird thing is that I've lost 20 lbs since being here.  If they would have seen me then... 

We had a surprise this week at church when a family that we´ve only visited once this week showed up at church.  Their daughter has been assisting for 2-3 weeks now but we´ve only been teaching her since her parents are always working so it was  a pleasant surprise for us that they came.

This is how you buy milk in Colombia!

The food here is practically the same as in Suba but its only different in that we are closer to the coast and so they have more fruits here from the coast than in Suba so that's different.  As for the fact that I am getting skinnier is the main fact that we´re walking in 90 plus degree weather all day for a good 8 hours or so, so I´m bound to lose something.  But I get plenty to eat when we have lunch it's just that we don´t really have time to eat anything after lunch so that's pretty much my meal for the day, but after the past 4 months here I´m used to only lunch.    But as for the food,  I haven´t really found anything that I haven´t liked yet.  The food is different but overall I like the food here as much as at home.  But mom will be happy since I´m going to come home and eat whatever she makes since the food here is so different and since the members make it I can´t be picky.   But I really like fish down here, don´t know why but it tastes better here than at home.  

The fish here is great!

Fruit called Totoma or something like that.  You can't eat it.  It's used to make bowls and stuff like that.

The church buildings here are different.  Still elegant as ever, but they don´t need heating or cooling in many places so there´s only fans in most of the buildings.  But my branch right now is in a house. There aren´t enough members or I should say active members to support a church building so we´re working on getting more members so they can have an actual building to meet in.  

Dog of the Orduña Family, Lupé

Dog of our Ward Mission leader, Lucy

We´ve been looking for a new house so I´ll send pictures when we figure out where we´re going to be living which will be this week or the next.  I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving.  Please email me and tell me what you are thankful for.  Please share my blog on your Facebook!