Elder Jake Welch: 12-2-14 to 12-8-14‏

Some more Q&A

Q: How/where do you do laundry?

A: a lady in our ward, the same one I send my emails does our laundry for a month for 20,000 (about 10 bucks)

Q: How's the language? Are you speaking and understanding pretty well?

A: mejor y mejor cada día! a veces es difícil pero yo puedo hablar mejor que yo pienso. pero que yo escucho es en tres meses yo hablare con fluencia! (Translation from Google: "better and better every day! sometimes it's difficult but I can speak better I think. but I hear it in three months I speak fluently!")

Q: Have you been sick from the food or water at all?

A: Nope! only sickness is I'm sick and tired of plantains chicken and rice haha

Q: Did you go on some of those ridiculously narrow, scary mountain roads on your bus trips?

A: yeah we go through that crazy canyon and the drivers are scary fast so i just have to pray angels with keep us on the road haha.

Q: Do you take a bus or walk out to the countryside?

A: though my area is in the country side we don't go really because we have so many appointments in the suburbs area. but we walk everywhere unless we´re in a hurry, then we take taxi.

so yeah! if you have more preguntas (questions), shoot them my way!

love ya mom!

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So this has been a pretty big week! Lopez Tuesday woke up with a stomach infection so I spent most of the day studying my scripture in our apartment. Around 3 Elder Mejia and Elder Herrera came and said to get dressed because a member was gonna stay with Lopez while I went out in a trio with them! We did a lot of contacting and I met their mission stray dog named Yankee (Pronounced Jankee in Colombian Spanish) and he tagged along as we contacted! Then we went to the house of a less active and I felt really impressed to share my testimony on the Atonement. It was super spiritual and I felt the spirit help me speak Spanish. And guess what? They were at church Sunday! Wednesday Lopez was still feeling sick but since he leaves on the 16th he cant make himself stay inside another day so we went out anyway. He made me lead a lesson with a less active on faith and since he told me right before I was too worried about what to say so it was pretty rough. But what ever I don't worry about that kind of stuff haha. The rest of the day we helped Karen (the member sister of one of their investigators) run some errands to buy stuff for the big game of Nacional v River Plate! It was pretty fun and we watched a bit that night with our ward mission leader. It ended in a tie but no one cared haha. Thursday Lopez felt good enough to teach again and we handed out 16 "He is the Gift" cards! That night the branch president came with us to our appointments with Gyovani and his family, Antonio and Tatiana. The plan was to talk again about baptism with all of them and we´re hoping for 5 baptisms THIS SATURDAY! Haha when Antonio greeted us he said NEW YORK! My amigo NEW YORK! haha must be the new English he learned or something. Friday we did some service painting a home with Mejia and Herrera. It was way fun and it´s always cool to do something a bit different. Later I saw 2 guys fist fighting on the sidewalk so that was fun. Besides that, all our appointments but 2 with less actives fell through. Thats Fridays in Colombia for ya, everyone is out partying on the weekends. That night we went home early because Lopez´s stomach started hurting again. Pobrecito (poor) haha. Saturday was a zone meeting AKA talking to Elder Paskett in English which is always super nice haha. That day we had a plan to do service at Las Lajas (a Roman Catholic sanctuary he's been looking forward to visiting) but it fell through so we watched The District and got some sweet new teaching ideas. We talked more about Baptism with Gyovani and his family of 4 and we had an awesome lesson planned with Tatiana but Karen and Diego left last second for Cali so we had nowhere to teacher her ugh. (we cant at her house because her dad hates the church). Yesterday was awesome because it was Fast suNDAY! I bore my testimony and one thing I'm trying to do better is not thinking about how or what I'm gonna say before but just trusting the spirit and it totally worked! And another thing is all 4 members of Gyovanis fam attended church and so did Antonio! But Tatiana didn't so she cant be baptized this weekend. Which sucks. But We´re HOPING FOR 5 BAPTISMS! Which is awesome because that´s only in my 1st transfer! The rest of the day we helped the zone leader with finances because Lopez used to work in the office, and he knows whats up and then we taught the daughter of our branch president. It was really spiritual. When we were about to offer the closing prayer, Lopez asked if we could on our knees and she said she was thinking the same thing. She offered the prayer and it was so touching. We were all in tears. I see great things in her future. Last night was also the Christmas Devotional and here they show it the chapel. The truth is I didn't understand much in Spanish so Paskett and I just shared our mission experiences. It was pretty awesome. Also yesterday was a Colombian Holiday called day of candles. There were fires in the streets and candles everywhere with the Virgin Mary, and TONS of fireworks. It's kinda sketchy being the the 4th floor when people are lighting off aerials in the street. Today was PDAY obviously haha and we went with the branch to an activity at a place about half an hour way called Montes Aldinos. It was actually all swimming so we just played soccer and rested. It was fun though to just enjoy the day and the members! So there was my week! Next time I write, hopefully we´ll have 5 baptisms!

Love you all!