A Marvelous Work and Wonder

Thursday, February 12, 2015

LAST AREA...LAST BLOG...

Red Squirrel

My closet

I'm now in Bucaramanga. The drive to get here was about 10 hours from Bogota on a bus and it was nice, we were on a Double Decker bus, but they had the air conditioner running the whole time so it was a little cold sometimes. The new area is fine, it`s hotter than Bogota, but that`s about the only thing that I don`t particularly like about the area. It has a generous dispersion of apartments and houses but they all are surrounded by gates or fences making it hard to meet people. Just working out those kinks from not being in the field for so long. Other than that it`s fine. My companion and I get along fine. His name is Elder Briceño and he's from Chile. He has about 16-17 months in the mission. My Spanish is doing fine. I find myself mixing my Spanish with English now that I`m required to speak only Spanish in the area again. That will hopefully pass in the next week or so. I was trying to hide the fact that I`m leaving in a few weeks but somehow the members found out that I only have 3 weeks left in Terrazzos and I don`t know how.

The biggest challenge this week has been to find investigators and especially to be able to find those that are willing to listen to the gospel.

My biggest concern right now is that I`ll get lazy for going home soon and not finish the mission strong so that I can come home with little or no regrets.

My biggest success this past week....I have been doing my daily exercises, and I`m not chowing down on everything in sight anymore. But in the work, we had a few good contacts this week and we`ll be visiting them today or later this week.

My favorite person this week would be Hno. Hector Alias. Because he always invites us over to his house for Family Home Evenings and there`s always a non member to contact or something to do so that we can fulfill our calling.

What are you looking forward to this coming week? We have our zone conference tomorrow and I believe that we have some good lessons planned.

Do you have a goal set for this coming week? I plan on memorizing a scripture a day since I`ve been forgetting to do it in the office. But that`s just because I like doing it and it`s easy to do so.

Happy Birthday to my mom!

P.S. Sister Martinez I will try to bring bocadillo and arequipe back.

Guama

Bowling with Hermanas

Bowling shoes

Sunday, February 1, 2015

TRANSFERRING TO....

Made fettuccine for the house.

I am being transferred to..... I have no idea yet but I will let you know on Monday. Transfers are on Monday, but I¨ll be leaving Tuesday or Wednesday with Elder Flores, to where, no idea. It´s nice to be leaving. It will be a change of pace since I've been in the office for seven months. But I want to finish strong and be able to say that I was obedient and served the Lord and the people of Colombia.

Alzamora did write me and it was nice to hear from him. Thanks ex-comp!

Not a lot to write because I need to pack and get ready to go somewhere. I will write more on Monday.

Fettuccine

The lock on the center is to be able to open that latch and then take the padlocks off the inside of the door so that you can actually open the door. It´s really secure, but kind of overkill

Friday, January 16, 2015

MIGHT BE LEAVING BOGOTA SOON?

The week is going good, My replacements are arriving on Saturday so that´ll be great and I´ll be training them the following week. I believe that I´ll be leaving from the office the 26-27 of January depending on what president wants me to do before I leave. So that´ll be nice, get out in the field and do normal missionary work.

The other missionaries aren´t calling me a short timer, just an old timer. I´m now officialLy the "oldest" missionary in the field with those of my group and the oldest gringo in the group. So that´s kind of sad.

I went to the Larson´s in the afternoon to eat lunch, which was chili dogs, so no complaining there. President Andelin invited us to go to breakfast at his house and we ate bacon with pancakes, so also no complaining. Hmmmm. Bacon.

Friday, January 2, 2015

HAPPY NEW YEAR

ELDER ROBERTSON

PANORAMA OF CONFERENCE

ELDER LITLER

MY COMP AFTER PLANKING

The week has to have been one of the most stressful that I´ve had here in the offices. We had all the conferences this week as well as transfers, new arrivals and having to finish all the payments for the mission accounts to close them all by next week. So with all of it I haven’t left the office all week for any reason other than to eat and sleep. We also got to take two sisters to the airport so that they could end their missions. But they were both really good sisters. One is sister Muñoz and the other was sister Mancillas.

We had our Christmas conference today, it was pretty good, unlike last year I was actually involved in the logistics of the conference so that made it a lot more interesting as I didn´t just enjoy myself, I had to actually do things to make sure it all went somewhat smoothly. But as for Elder Rogers he lives in Utah, so not that far away (only a short 20 hour drive in car, practically nothing), but he´s a cool guy, got along great with him in the offices when he was assistant. It was great that he was able to send the stuff home! The Larson´s are a family from Arizona who are here because Brother Larson works for the embassy. They gave me the pop tarts, I kind of miss eating them but with the one box I think I´m good until I go home.

At our last service project, we were cleaning it of all the sticks, rocks and other things as well as the horse manure that accumulated in the area. But he was happy for the help, don´t really remember if we got a whole lot done, but it was a good service. Don´t know if he is still investigating but it´s fine just helping out. I didn´t take any horse pictures because I didn´t think about it at the time, but the horses here in Colombia are small things, not very big in the chest.

President told me that I´ll be leaving for the field in January so I´ll have a few weeks in the field before I come back so we´ll see how it goes.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

CHRISTMAS PACKAGE FROM MEMA AND PAPA

CHRISTMAS FROM PARENTS

CHRISTMAS PACKAGE FROM HOME

DINNER

DINNER AT CONFERENCE

GREAT GIFT!!!!

OVERCOOKED MOZZERELLA STICKS

NICE LOOKING SALAD

Sunday, December 14, 2014

MY CHRISTMAS GIFT TO YOU!

My Christmas gift to you! (Click)
My Christmas gift in Spanish (Click)

Well, I´ve been in the office now for 5 3/4 months. On the 25 I hit the 6 month mark. But I had my interview with President on Monday, so he let me know that I´ll be here until the 23-24 of January so that I can train the new office couple when they get here. So I´ll have another transfer here in the offices before going out for a transfer to finish. But as for where I´ll be going, I would like to go to Cucuta or Bucaramanga. Two parts of the mission that I haven´t really gotten to know yet. But anywhere that President sends me will be great. I just want to have a great companion that is going to help me work for the whole last transfer.

The week was really hectic for me and my companion, we had to get all the stuff ready for the transfers, for the missionaries that went home, and we still are getting the last things done for the Christmas conferences along with the new missionaries that are arriving on Tuesday. So it´s been a super hectic week. But I think that by the end of this week I´ll have the majority done and I can relax a little bit, but we´ll see what happens with the finances since I have to revise and close all the accounts of the mission for the year. That´s going to be fun.

SERVICE PROJECT

We had a service project this week helping to clean a field and there were a lot of horses, it was cool. Please send me Christmas pictures of your family at justin.bandy@myldsmail.net. Merry Christmas.

Saturday, December 6, 2014

PARROT NAMED ELDER BANDY, OVALTINE, HIPPOS, TAJ MAHAL

ELDER FLORES AND I FOUND OVALTINE!

PARROT THAT A CONVERT NAMED AFTER ME.

We had a Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday and it was really good because we had turkey, stuffing, corn bread, mashed potatoes, salad and some other good stuff, I made a pumpkin pie and it came out good. I had to make the crust out of Oreos and it was all eaten so it
wasn´t that much of a letdown.

As for tracting we don´t tract in our area, it doesn´t work, and it´s dangerous to do it. So we just go off of references or people that start up conversations with us in the street or the bus or the train or the taxi….. But lessons, we had 1 this week and it was good. But all the others fell through, so that was sad. I had to travel a lot this week, so that wasn´t a good thing. But today we got to enjoy ourselves a little bit, by going to an amusement park (not with rollercoasters), it was more of an exhibition park, it was really big, but I have a lot of photos from it.

As for the fast Sundays, you only have 3 left, I come home on the 6^th of March due to the transfer scheduling and because president needs to get rid of all the missionaries from my group to make room for the next one. I have my return date already set, going to be coming home with about 30 other missionaries (my group is the biggest that the mission has seen) so that´ll be great. But the time is going by fast. We live within walking distance to the office, it´s about 5-10 minutes walking depending on how fast we want to get there. But here in the office I have to use my english more than normal so it probably won´t be that big of a problem when I have to talk to you all.

FYI: But also it´s Col(o)mbia and Monterrey. People here get angry if you spell the name of the country wrong, actually I found a mug that said "It´s Colombia not Columbia." It was kind of funny. It would be like when people say Illinois with the "S" on the end.