Elder Derek Downing: Giron Week 12

So last P-day I didn't get to read much or write anything. My companion wasn't ready to leave until 5 and the internet cafe across the street didn't have 2 computers side by side that were open, nor did the next 5 places we checked. After 40 minutes we found another that we could use and after updating numbers and writing the president I had 7 minutes (we have to leave at 6). I was kinda mad (not at anyone but just at the situation) but kinda mad is a lot for me. The last time I was kind of mad was February. Speaking of emotionally difficult, kiosks this week were especially hard. We had a total of 5 hours standing by a sign trying to talk to people, and I only had 1 reference. My companion had 3 (he had more because his eyelashes are way nicer). Well actually I had 3 references too, but 2 of them were bogus. The cool thing about doing kiosks though is you get to meet a wide variety of people. Some people are kind of crazy and will just go off on rants about stuff. It's really funny. We've seen some pretty crazy stuff doing kiosks. Speaking of rants, we contacted a reference, and within 2 minutes (literally) she decided to tell us her whole life story and talked for an hour and a half uninterrupted. I spaced out for a solid 40 minutes thinking about Star Wars. Darth Vader should have been like “Luke, your mom was my girlfriend” instead of “I am your father” because that is a way bigger diss. We had another interesting lesson with a family that we started teaching recently. We were having a super bomb lesson, the spirit was at level 10, and the dad came home drunk, left again, came back with bags of chips for us, then tried to participate in the lesson and shook our hands 50 times. He is a super awesome guy (drunk and sober) but what was funny was that before he never wanted to pray and had a hard time praying but when he was drunk he offered to pray and gave a super enthusiastic prayer, said amen, and hugged me. So now when an investigators doesn't want to pray.... we teach them the importance of communicating with our father in heaven. Oh you thought I was going to say something else? Speaking of alcohol, July still works in a bar and is no longer progressing. Lame. Viky and Jairo (both super awesome) are doing really well and are talking about maybe getting married which would allow Viky to be baptized (since she can't find her own place). Another cool thing, the Gelves family is trying to get married. The dad is married to someone else, and so we offered to call and ask her thoughts on divorcement. The daughter answered and the conversation was a little awkward “oh your mom's not home?... We're calling oh behalf of your dad... he's living with another woman and wants to divorce your mom so he can marry her... can you tell her we called?” Seriously no one is married. The last two weeks have been hard because a lot of people have stopped progressing. We work super hard to get people to come to church, but Viky is the only one in the last two or three weeks. We're trying to figure out a way to take away their agency so we can make them go to church. Ha jk. It's rough when you put so much work into helping someone and their family, and you want them to have the same blessings that you and your family have but their progress fades away. Even though we haven't had a lot of success lately, I'm trying to stay focused on the potential that these people have. In one of our lessons the relief society president (super awesome) talked about her conversion and how much the gospel has changed and blessed her life. It got me so stoked I want to baptize the whole world. It's pretty hard to baptize the whole world though. It's stressful to be a missionary, there's a lot of pressure. You have to teach well and make the right commitments. You shouldn't teach the wrong thing, or teach it in the wrong way, or forget to make the right commitments, but you also shouldn't make the wrong ones. And it's all in Spanish. And you have to act the right way, and think and talk the right way. I've heard that you're ready to be a missionary when you're going home. It's hard to do all that stuff but the better you do it, the more you help the people. I'm trying to strip myself of all my normal human aspects and be more like a robot. Baptizatron 3000. Preachomatic 500. Just kidding I'm not trying to be a robot. I'm just trying to act like one. Okay now it's time for funny unimportant things about Colombia. To trim their trees and bushes they use machetes and just chop away. The dogs here are super racist. They never even look at my companion and always freak out at me. It's to the point where my companion will bark and growl so they'll get all worked up, but they don't get mad at him, they get mad at me. A term of endearment here is fatty. It's most common for the guys to call their girlfriends fatty but the women do it too. The worst part is that they only use it for chubby people. Like that's messed up right? I guess not here, they use it all the time. A few days ago I wasn't that stoked because it was a hard week but then I remembered that life is awesome and I was stoked again. Keep the commandments and always remember to be happy, and life is awesome. Read the scriptures every day (minimum 3 hours). Share the gospel with your friends and not friends. Love you guys. Send pictures with your emails. Also, send emails.

Love Elderek Downing