Muy Buenas Tardes Familia!
Elder Lewis here from Suba. This week has not been bad,
we’ve run onto hard luck. Some of our investigators, 7 have moved away. The
family of 5 moved into a different ward. But we will get going here.
This week has been interesting. I have got my journal here
in front of me because I really don’t remember what happened. So this is
interesting… Wednesay morning we were doing exercise downstairs, it was like
7:00. I go downstairs to get my laundry and I hear a big bang as I am going
down the stairs, coming from the garage. I run back up stairs because it
startled me and my comp and we both went downstairs. All the sudden there was a
car in our garage that had crashed through the door. Basically we live in a
townhouse, I guess you would say, it has 4 floors and the floors are small.
Then there is a little space for a medium sized car. We use it for laundry. The
townhouses are lined up so it’s like a parking garage, but every house has got
their garages. But ya, somebody just left the parking brake off on their car,
and it went down and right into our puerta.
We pushed it back out and that was that. It doesn’t shut very well and we
have had some problems with animals getting in here. Stray cats or rats haha.
But it’s not like it’s sealed anyway. Here in Bogota, houses aren’t sealed. You
don’t need it. It’s like… well I’ll just send a picture of the door. That was
an interesting experience.
We met a lady named Aura, she lives down by a police station
down in a barrio (neighborhood) called
Arazuno, and she has an interesting story: We met her from a reference from
other missionaries, and she has an LDS friend that passed away a little while
ago. She was thinking about what he had told her and she said she would look
into it. So now we are teaching her. She has kind of a crazy story, Her parents
have 13 kids, she is one of the younger ones. Then she moved away, and found a
husband that was really abusive. He always said that he was gonna kill her. She
always thought it was the alcohol talking. One day they were fighting, and he
started to hit her. He hit her in the right side of the head, not in her face
but where her hair would cover the bruises. She ran outside, and she lived on
the 4th floor of apartments. In Colombia, how they build apartments
is 2 towers of 5 floors each, with 2 apartments on each floor and stairs up the
middle . But she was on the 4th floor, she goes outside, he tries to
push her, she jumps over the railing and is hanging on outside. One of her
neighbors and detains the husband and saves her. But in that moment she felt
like something was supporting her. That that was the reason that she didn’t
die. Crazy no? She came to the temple. Familia Lopez-Medina is actually
progressing now. We are going to set a marriage date with them tomorrow.
Hermano Jesus is set on going to a little town, a little pueblo, and getting married wearing blue jeans. That’s his dream.
That’s what he wants. To get married in a little town with blue jeans. But ya
we gave them the Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chastity this week, and the Lord
really put everything in the way so that we could accomplish that. We were
always trying to find a way to get it to them, the message… what am I saying…?
We were trying to find a way that it … well they just weren’t ready for that.
But they were ready this week. We felt good about it. The Lord really put
everything in a way so that we could teach it.
Our star investigator right now is Elvira. She is still
going strong to be baptized on the 29th. We are looking forward to
that. We are looking forward to a good baptismal service. We are trying to get
another couple of baptisms in as well, for the 5th and the 12th
of August.
I hit the 3rd month in this area, in a couple of
days I will be hitting 10 months in the mission. It has gone by so fast. This
last cambio has gone by so fast. I don’t know where it went. It seems like
yesterday I was picking up Elder Villarroel at the mission home. Well, what
other things happened this week… I’ll look at my journal…
I think that’s about it for this week. It’s kinda funny
because the Elders here in this area are like the 3 Amigos. Me, Elder
Villarroel, and Elder Blair. We are just super good friends. It just turned out
that this cambio, we are the 3 District Leaders in the zone. Don’t know how
that happened… But it’s kinda funny how that turned out. This week we had a lot
of new investigators, we are looking to progress with them.
Well, family, I think that’s about it. I just wanted to take
a minute, for the 4th of July we took a member and went and had
hamburgers. We went in the night and had hamburgers and it was at this place
that actually has really good hamburgers, but they actually make them with not
only beef but with chicken. So ya, it was like hamburgers and chicken. It was
actually really really good. It tastes like pulled pork.
I just wanted to say something about our country, my
homeland. Being here in Colombia, I really appreciate the things that we have
in the United States. The sacrifices and the hard work that have been put in
place to make our country free. The Colombians are just figuring out how to do
that. They are just figuring out how to progress, but you can bet that their
model is the United States. Even though there are problems, like there are in
any other country, I firmly believe that we should not despair about them. We should
not give up. The thing is that is that sometimes in the United States we
complain about our government being corrupt, and maybe it is, but there is a
lot of corruption here. A lot a lot. But you can buy anything you want, you can
pay off the government. But in the United States there are checks and balances.
Really, honestly, what I want to say is that I know as it says in the Doctrine
and Covenants that the Constitution of the United States is a document inspired
by God. I know that God put those things in order so that the founding fathers
could create a place where He could restore His Gospel. I am so grateful for
that.
Well family, I hope you enjoyed this. I will see you next
week. Chao Chao!
-Elder Lewis
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