Colombia Cali!

Wow family this place is so awesome! it seems like so much has happened! I loved your emails and I am doing great! This place is so awesome. Well so I´m serving in villa del lago and needless to say it´s pretty ghetto. But it´s my home! A little about my house is every morning i get to shower, the shower is freezing cold and i `pretty much just shiver for 3 minutes, and then get out. hah. it´s pretty fun. but i think im already getting used to it. I´ll try to put some pictures up of our house so you can imagine where im living. it´s actually not to bad. Whole different world! Firstly, everything is Really loud. There´s literally always something loud happening right next to you so you just have to get used to it. Like i said, theres like a millions ¨motos¨ driving around and it´s all just an adventure. Our ward has probably like 50 people i think and everyone says it´s ¨huge¨. Mm it´s really hot here. Not like in utah in the 100´s (im actually not sure what tempurature because it´s celceus) but its like 5 degrees hotter then you´d probably say ¨warm¨is but it´s pretty humid too. I actually like it. Well one thing i didn´t know before i got here is this country is one of the lower baptising countries of south america because everyone is So Catholic. But we´re working on changing that. I´ve already had some pretty sweet encounters. For my very first door approach it was weird, we were walking and i suddenly just looked right at this house and thought ¨we should check this out¨so I asked my companion if we could go there and so we did, and knocked, and nobody was there. So i was thinking,,, dang.. okay false alarm. And we waited and waited and knocked again and finally someone opened it and Elder Condori (my companion) was talking with her and it sounded like she wasn´t interested and then she just said okay, and let us in! it was sweet! I got let in on my first door! Haha we shared with here and she said she´d read so we´ll see what happens. All of the doors weren´t like but but there have been a few. Yesterday was alright but after church prettymuch all of our plans canceled on us and i didn´t think we were going to be able to do anything because everywhere we went people said they were busy. So we decided to go contacting and were walking down this dark road and out of the corner of my eye i saw this house on the second floor and saw someone in there. So i asked if we could go there and of course Elder Condori said yes, so we went up there, (it was kinda sketch) and when i looked in there were only two little girls watching tv (btw, there are SO many little kids everywhere here running around) and i was thinking that this probably wasn´t going to work out. Elder condori had done most of our contacts that day so he said i had to do the next one, and since i was the one who said we should go to this house i figured i should still do it. So i asked if they´re parents were there and she got up and got her mom. When her mom came to the door I explained who we were and what was going on and she was Super nice and was really interested. She let us in and we told her a bunch about the book of mormon and she pretty much wanted to know everything. I was so happy to see someone who was honestly Sincere about hearing what we had to say and wanted to know. When we left I felt so good.

So its been good because things like that have happened a few times but some funny stuff has happened to . When we go to talk to people we start with an opening prayer and close with a prayer and i noticed when i´m giving the prayer a lot of people mutter stuff under their breath and copy what you say, and say weird stuff when you´re praying. Haha. But i can´t understand because... it´s in another language. haha. Well about the spanish. I´ve really been SO blessed because i´ve been able to learn a lot and speak quite a bit. but I will say most of the day im wracking my brain trying to understand. Lucky for me my comp is really great at explaining things simply in spanish. He´s a great guy! And i think he doesn´t remember grant... haha. but maybe his parents do. He´s from cochabomba. We get along great so far and I love it here!

The food normally is really great! It all has that ¨ a little different from united states food¨sort of taste. and some food a lot more then others. but its great! I think almost all of the juices i´ve had so far i´d never heard of in my life before. haha.

Well some crazy stuff happens here. It was funny, we´ve had to ride in taxis a few times and im so used to putting on my seatbelt that i always grab it but theres no place to click it in, i think ill stop doing that soon. But this one time we were in the taxi and they were swerving all over and we went over this huge bump on this bridge and i flew up and smacked my head on the ceiling! Haha it was pretty sweet.

Okay so supposedly sending mail is prettymuch like death because it takes so long and hardly ever actually arrives. So we´re allowed to email everyone. Our Pday is on monday but i´m not sure what time we´re going to write. today was a little hecktick.

We´ll i´ve only been in my area since wednesday but i´m getting familiar with the stuff here a little more and it´s going great. I just feel really greatful that i have this time to give to the Lord and that I am finally here! I know that I´ve been kept safe and have already started feeling the influence of the spirit more as i do what the Lord asks me and am so grateful for all of your prayers. Thank you so much for everything you´ve all taught me. I love to hear from you. I´ll do my best!

Im sending this but ill try to send a few pictures in a minute. Love you all have a great week!