Cucuta Week 24

Ok so first of all, to those that have been writing me, I´m so sorry that I haven´t been able to write you back yet! But don't worry I am repenting. My area is Caobos 3 in Cucuta which means nothing to you guys but it's a super cool area! It´s way close to Venezuela (I saw Venezuela on Saturday in our zone leaders area [it wasn´t exchanges it was a stake activity] so that was cool [we were on a really high hill]). I´ve been told that Venezuela has the prettiest girls and that Colombia is second, so hypothetically, the girls here should be really pretty, but I haven´t looked at any yet. I´ll have to tell you next week. My area is really cool though, it's a about the same temperature as my last area, so kind of hot sometimes but not too bad. The streets are full of big trees and most of the houses are one story so the streets look kinda cool. We live in the area of another companionship (closer to downtown) and we have 4 missionaries in the apartment so it's way more fun. I taught Elder Ramos from Ecuador how to do the dougie and he is teaching me salsa. The 4th Elder (Valladares) is from Honduras but lived in the US for 10 years so I speak English every once in a while! My Spanish has improved a lot. I´ve realized that I haven't complained about my Spanish in a long time so it must be pretty decent! For real though, I’ve gotten a lot of compliments so I’ve been pretty stoked. There are still a lot of things I don´t understand though haha. On Sunday, I gave a talk and I didn´t even have to think about speaking it all just flowed out naturally. I didn't have time to prepare much, and so I had to finish in ward council before church haha. My habit of procrastinating in high school paid off. I spoke on faith and home (and visiting) teaching. It made sense, trust me. The ward is lacking in fellowshipping and visits and so I talked about that, and we have plans to work with the ward council. The people here are really receptive though. We started teaching a family this week (Leidy Calderon and her kids) and they have a baptism date for the 6th of December! She already received the answers to her prayers! The Lord has prepared that family and others for us, and I think we are going to have a lot of success here. I'll let you know about the details next week because I´m out of time! Love you guys!

Love Elder Downing