Elder Derek Downing: CCM Week 4

Ok so not much has happened in the last few days but Ill throw in some fun details. The world cup started and the people here are craazy for soccer. We were having personal study when a goal was scored and we heard screaming all around us that was really loud but sounded far away. The whole city was yelling goal it was awesome. By hearing the streets we knew that colombia scored twice (two huge happy screams) and the other team scored once (less loud sad scream). It was hilarious. On sunday I had my favorite meal here so far. Fruit loops with cold milk!!! I hadn't had cold milk in a month it's normally room temperature. Also on sunday I gave a talk in sacrament. Over five minutes and in spanish so I'm basically fluent. Before all of the latinos left we traded ties and I got two sweet new ones after making 4 trades. The stakes were high but I do well under pressure. Yesterday was my last day in white person classes and tomorrow I get a latino companion which will be sweet! I'm 90% sure we're going to be best friends. Spanish is still hard but I'm starting to get a lot more comfortable with more of the tenses so I can actually say things sometimes. The way I see it is why get discouraged when you can have fun so I just try to have fun whenever spanish is destroying me. Over the last two weeks I've loved reading the scriptures way more than in the past. I don't know if I like them so much more because by comparison they are awesome because learning grammer is so boring but I like to think I'm more spiritual. Today we went on a tour for P day and we took a cable car up on of the mountains outside bogota and it was awesome. There was a crazy view and a cool church at the top. I'll send pictures instead of explaining more but it was super cool and after we went to a gold museum which was kind of cool. Ancient americans are really bad at recreating people all of their gold figurines look ridiculous. Today was also cool because we wore jeans. Ok so I almost forgot to tell you about my super cool talent. before classes if the teachers are late we practice throwing pins (like push pins for sticking things in corkboard) into cork board and I can get them to stick about 1/3 of the time.

I love and miss you guys and I'm praying fo you guys. Tell Devin to stop being a butt and write me I'm the only brother he's ever gonna have.

Love Elder Downing