Hallo Familia!
That’s right. I’m actually speaking Dutch! I actually met a
guy from Holland today, I will tell you more about that later on but, I hope it
has been a good week for you guys. First week of August and it’s been a pretty
good week for us too. Families are progressing, finally. A couple of our families started progressing
this week that were dormant for a while. I did have the opportunity, the
amazing opportunity, to baptize one of the best investigators that I have ever
had. Her name is Elvira Blanco. On Saturday at 5 or 6 o’clock, she made
covenants with her Savior through baptism. I was the one with the honor of
doing that. The baptismal service was actually at the Stake Center, there were
4 other baptisms that happened, it was going to be a “Noche Blanca”, there was
going to be 8-10, but a few of them fell through. Thank goodness that ours did
not. And she was confirmed on Sunday, by Hermano Corán, someone who has helped
us with her a lot. So, she actually gave her testimony afterwards and she has
read the Book of Mormon twice. She is going for the 3rd time. She
made this analogy, she said “if there are any investigators here, I invite you
to ask of God and not like the people of Ammonihah did, but with a real heart,
with a real intención.” And I don’t
know, and she just threw out a bunch of Book of Mormon references, she really
made herself so proud. She told me as we were leaving the baptismal font “ Look,
Elder Lewis, now, I am making a promise to you and to God that I am going to
endure to the end.” And I totally believe it. She’s amazing.
The rest of the week was pretty good, we had a couple of
really good days with some good lessons. Familia Lopez-Medina, after teaching
them for 4 months, are finally going to be able to start attending church. She
has been praying, the mom has been praying, for a long time that the Lord would
help her arrange her work so that she could attend on Sunday. Her shift just
got changed from the morning to the afternoon and now she can attend. That was
really awesome. I was super excited. There’s another family, she’s less active,
and he’s investigating, and he got on his knees after one of our lessons and
told the Lord that he really wants to change. About how he wants to quit the
liquor and the bad things in his life. That was the highlight of the week.
Hearts are changing here in Bogotá Colombia. I am so happy to be a part of it.
I’m trying to get situated here at the computer. I’m gonna
pause this recording, actually no I’m not because the last time I did that it
didn’t end well. So I am going to try to type and talk at the same time because
I am really low on time. That brings me to another thing: for p-day we went to
Monzarate, that I am told is very famous. I don’t know, I had heard of it before
my mission, and it was really cool to go. Basically it’s a Catholic Church on
top of a mountain that overlooks all of Bogotá. I will send pictures in a
little bit, but it was really cool, all of it. We went up, and it took us a
little while to get up there because the Sister Missionaries that we were with
were a bit slow, but… we got up there in about an hour, it’s a good hike. There
were a bunch of stairs. There some really interesting things that we found out;
supposedly people believe that if you need a miracle, you can walk up the whole
trail barefoot and it’s a trail of, I would say cobblestones but not really,
it’s a trail of stone. On the Semana
Santa, or Holy Week, in April, there are a bunch of people who do it
crawling. I had a hard time, well we had kind of a hard time doing it on our
feet!
Well, you get up there, and if you also need a miracle, you
can walk back down backwards. Just a second….
(Note from Jessica: there’s a big pause here because Elder Lewis is
speaking to his companion in some very fast Spanish. No Comprendé, but I am
sure it’s important. J)
I am trying not to interrupt this.. what do you call it…
recording so that we don’t get cut off again. So anyway, we went to Monzarate, people think that if you go down backwards you get a lot of blessings, we saw a
lot of people walking backwards. It was kinda weird. We got up there and we
took a tour of the church, and I am so glad that our church focuses on the fact
that the Savior lives, and that we don’t worship idols. That’s always good. Here
in Colombia, there are stores of “Religious Essentials” so you go and you buy
your necklaces and beads, necklaces and bracelets that have beads and they do
what’s called a Rosár and they touch
a bead and they say a prayer, and
then they touch a bunch of different beads and say different prayers. I don’t know,
it’s their religion, but I am glad that we worship the living God. We went up there and we went back down, and we
got here at about 5:30ish so I am not going to have much time to chat with you
guys, sorry about that. But I guess that’s how it works sometimes. That being
said, I think there’s a transfer coming this week, so I don’t know that you should
expect to hear from me until Tuesday, or maybe not for another week. Well, I
love you all so much, and I think that’s all that I have for you. love you so
much and thank you for all your emails. Have a good week, and Chao Chao!
-Elder Lewis
Elder Powlus and Elder Lewis
La Iglesia Católica de MonZarate
Bogota is pretty big....
The Following is a note from Hermana Laney, Elder Lewis' Mission President's wife:
Hello Sister Lewis, I thought I’d send you this photo of your cute son! As I go around to the zones,
some of the missionaries ask to have their “profile Photo” changed, so I take their picture
and updated it on the mission roster. Elder Lewis is a wonderful missionary, always willing
to help out and is such a good example for the other elders in his zone. xox hermana laney
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