Giron Week 11

I realized my letters are going to start to get really boring. “Yeah we preached the gospel this week…. Like every other week…” I have news though! *drum roll*… I got cold! It was awesome! So I’ve adjusted pretty decently to the heat and the other day it poured and I was cold! I wore a sweatshirt to celebrate (photo not included [just kidding it’s included]). Well that’s all that happened this week, see you later. This last week I realized the Book of Mormon is the solution to everything. July needs to find new work, she needs a miracle, miracles happen when we have faith, how do we help her gain more faith? Reading the Book of Mormon, BOOM! Jorge has an addiction, he needs to build his foundation on Jesus Christ (metaphor) to have the strength to overcome his addiction, how can he do this you ask? Oh let me tell you, it’s by reading the Book of Mormon. Seriously guys it’s a super good book why aren’t you reading it more? It’s like the word of God revealed through the prophets. There’s a huge change in investigators when they read. One of our investigators had a straight up vision (revelation through dreaming) about the Book of Mormon which was super rad. She’s progressed so much in the last few weeks she’s like a different person, at least to me. The awesome things like that outweigh the hard parts by a lot. And whenever it’s hard, I just tell myself that this is payment for an attractive wife. And who knows, maybe if I suffer enough I can rig like a Jessie Alllegretti or Hannah Willes or something. I told you guys how we sing hymns and change the lyrics to complain, but also we change the lyrics to popular songs to sing about the gospel, it’s way funnier. For example “we are the Elders” by Queen (we are the champions) “no time for the sisters, cuz we are the Elderssss…. Of Colombiaaaa” we sing a lot. Oh and I remembered something. Someone tell Lacey, since she probably doesn’t read this, that she needs to have a kid. Like I don’t want excuses. I’ve made up my mind. The other day I saw a 2 month old baby and it wasn’t fun at all. I don’t want to be the uncle of a baby that just lays down all day, so have a kid soon so it can get out of the drooling blob phase while I’m gone. Lindsey, you too. The other day we had an activity in the church that was pretty decent. “Trip to Hawaii” we simulated a plane (we gave all the directions like fasten your seatbelts and if you need to vomit, vomit on the person to your right… in Spanish and then in English like they do on planes and roller coasters and stuff so it was funny) then they had some fun activities but on the plane ride back, the plane crashed. Sacrament attendance is going to be way down because half the ward died. Then we taught about the plan of salvation and the importance of our actions on earth (in Hawaii). Buuuut it was a little unorganized because some ward leaders didn’t do what they were supposed to and we were rushing around trying to run everything. My companion still hasn’t come down from the stress. It actually turned out fine but we were so busy we didn’t get the info of the nonmembers there (our whole purpose at the activity). Soooo we didn’t have any new investigators like we could have but what can you do? We also went to a school. We said to an investigator “is there anything we can do to help you?” and for some reason he took the question seriously and was like “yeah help me with my activity at my school” so we watched about 80 4^th and 5^th graders sing some songs and we presented ourselves and talked about the differences between our countries “yeah it’s called carpet, it’s like hair that comes out of the floor” it was an interesting morning. We also had an interesting lesson with a Jehovah’s Witness. We got a reference and went to check it out, found out he was Jehovah’s Witness (not a problem, there are tons of super cool JW’s) but long story short we ended up leaving abruptly mid lesson. Another funny story, the kiosks that we use are pretty breakable, and one broke and we’re waiting for a replacement part. While we were setting up ours, I was singing “Don’t worry, about a thing, cause every little kiosk, is gonna break” like the Bob Marley song aaaand a part broke while I was singing that. But we had a replacement part in the church so it was fine. And the most important news of all is…. I’ve finished my first cambio! I think it’s called an exchange or something like that but to be honest I don’t know. But wooohooo! 42 days in the field, only 588 more! I bought a Dr Pepper to celebrate. I’ve learned a ton in these 6 weeks and even though I’m still terrible at speaking and teaching and everything else, it’s way easier than it was 6 weeks ago. Before it was like getting hit by a semi, now it’s only an F-150. Ok well to close, I’ll see if I have anything else interesting? One of my favorite things for lunch is rice with ketchup. We always have rice but sometimes if you’re lucky they put ketchup on it. There are tons of shirts with sayings in English. But no one knows what they say but me. A lot of them have terrible grammar or spelling or don’t even make sense and it’s really funny. Miss you guys. Keep America strong. Preach the gospel.

Love Elder Downing