Buenas Tardes Familia!
It’s been a good week here in Sogamoso, I think, not a lot
to report. One of the guys in our zone, Elder Altamirado, got his gallbladder
taken out. He was in Yopal, which is a town about 5 hours away from Sogamoso.
It’s out kind of isolated, and it’s in our zone. But ya, I guess he got super
sick a week or two ago, and he had to get shipped over to Bogotá to receive
treatment. Good thing is, our Mission President is actually an ER Doctor. So we
talked to him about it while it was happening, and he said “There’s no way I’m
letting him get that surgery in Yopal.” Haha So they shipped him over to Bogotá
and he got the surgery that he needed this week, and the whole zone fasted for
him, but it turned out well. They are now back in Yopal and he just has to take
it easy for awhile. That was exciting. What else, what else, what else…..
This week on Tuesday, I got SO SICK. I felt like I wanted to
die. I guess some member gave us hamburgers that were made of something called molito pollo, and it’s ground chicken, but
they grind in everything. The intestines, the stomach, the everything. It was
really good, I just didn’t know. Then afterwards, the next day, ugh…. I was in
the bathroom for all of the night and the next day I was just gone. However, we
went to our appointments that we had, and in between appointments I went home
and DIED. Haha. But ya, that was pretty fun… I am feeling a lot better now, it
was just kind of a 1- 1 ½ day thing. I’m grateful; it was like food poisoning I
guess. I don’t know what I’m going to do next time she offers me hamburgers…. Cuz
that was… whoa… but let’s see what else has happened….
This week we had a cool service project, we went and cleaned
out an old abandoned house. We cleaned out the front yard. I have learned from
service projects here that the machete
is the tool most unused in the United States. That thing is amazing! The one I
was using in this project was kinda dull, but you can clear a lot of stuff,
with that one that was dull I could clear out a good thick bush in like 5
minutes.
But this week me and my companion have been focused on
forgetting about ourselves. It occurred to us when we were walking one time
that sometimes we as missionaries get caught up in our own things, and it’s
hard when things don’t go right and you have somebody that doesn’t understand
the doctrine and therefore doesn’t want to take the steps that they need to
take to be baptized for the remission of their sins. That’s hard. But we found
that if we forget about ourselves, that that doesn’t even matter because we are
going to go find the people that have been prepared. Because there are people
that have been prepared and you can tell the difference between the people that
are prepared and the people… I don’t want to say that are not prepared, but
they don’t want to listen. That don’t want…. They’re good with what they’ve
got. I have really learned this week, we have had to leave some people, because
they don’t want it. They want to be happy but they are not willing to do what
is necessary to be happy. We have taught just about everything we know how to
do. But we are going to go into this week, we have put a new emphasis on
service as a way to find investigators, and it has really panned out for us so
far. We’ve had one service project on Saturday and we have another one planned
coming up here. I just want to share an experience with you guys:
So we went and cleaned out this place, they are going to
tear down the house, so we went inside of the house and cleaned out all the
stuff, because it’s abandoned and people have gone in there are done drugs and
stuff. So we cleaned out all of that and then we took out some bushes and
things, and cleaned the pasture out, then afterwards we went back to the house
of the people that we were doing it for, and I started to talk with them. I
started to talk with them and I asked them if by chance, they believe in Jesus
Christ. I thought for a second and said: “What blessings have you had from
believing in Jesus Christ?” And they said: “well, he sent you guys didn’t he?”
That’s a big blessing for us. That just made me realize the power that is in
serving other people. Doing simple things makes great things come to pass.
Well, that’s not our area; it’s out in a little town called Nazareth, but the Sister Missionaries will be going out there to teach them soon. And this
Saturday we have a baptism. Jefredy is going to be baptized. He is a reference
from a recent convert. He has been a little bit slow to understand but we went
and talked to him about the real reason that we get baptized and we found that
he didn’t understand even after all of our lessons. We asked him “why do you
think we get baptized?” and he said “to show God that we want to follow him.”
Or something like that. We said “yes that’s true, but more than that, it’s to
receive a remission of our sins so that we can go back to live with our God.” And
we explained that to him, and after that he says: “well, I have to get
baptized!” so he has already been to church so we are going to baptize him this
week. It’s going to be a heavy week; we have intercambios tomorrow and Friday, we
are going to Yopal on Thursday. This is my first time going to Yopal. I am
pretty excited.
Well, I think that’s it for this week. I love you all and I will
talk to you later. Chao Chao!
-Elder Lewis
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