Well, this week has been…weird, really, honestly. I came from Cucuta on Monday, I left in the night and I left at 7 o’clock at night and got to Bogotá around 12 o’clock the next day. Ya… so it was about 15 ½ hours by bus. It was a lot of fun…but it wasn’t too bad. But I got to Bogotá and there was my new companion, Elder Arredia, and went straight to the area. It sure has been a hard adjustment to be honest. The last day in Cucuta I… wow that was rough… It was the only area that as I left, I just felt like it was ripping my heart out of my chest. I love that area so much. I love Cucuta and all the people that I have met there. It was the area that I had the least success in, as far as number go, but did leave the area better than I found it and I sure did meet a lot of people that changed my perspective on a lot of things. So I think that Cucuta was one of my favorite areas.
Anyway, Bogotá has been a hard transition changing back, I am in an area called Engativá, and Engativá is not too far away, like 50 blocks, alright it’s pretty far away from Suba. I thought it was closer than it really was but it’s not. I got a little bit of culture shock when I got here to Bogotá, because in Cucuta, like, you see everyone out in the streets, especially at night, and not everybody has a smart phone so they get out and play futbol, or soccer I should say, or something else. I got here and Engativá is an area that is pretty well off, compared to Cucuta at least. It really shocked me to get here and see that everybody has, like, furniture. Everybody has things. The majority of people have a computer in their house, which really… in Spanish its mediocosa. It kinda shocked me. But it’s really cool for the work, because you can go and you can show everybody the videos of the church where in Cucuta we had to bring everybody to Frank’s house to get on his television. Haha. But I got here, and first thing off I met our great family, their names are Juan Gabriel and Viviana. Juan Gabriel and Viviana have been investigating the church for about 5 months now and they have got a rock solid testimony. They have just gotta get married. We are trying to help them to get married, so we are going to be helping them, along with the ward, to make keychains made out of plastic that when you put them in the oven you draw on them, like an outline of the Angel Moroni or Winnie the Pooh or something and you put it in the oven and it actually like turns white in the plastic and turns hard. So we are going to try to help them to sell these javeros, keychains. Juan Gabriel drives Uber every once in awhile, but the thing is here in Bogotá, like if you have a car or a taxi (in his case his parents are loaning him a car) you can only drive it on certain days. There’s a law where you can only drive certain days because of congestion. It gets pretty bad here in Bogotá where there are like 10 million people in the city. Imagine that. They both, they have a little business doing that. They make clothing too. But we are going to try to help them sell those keychains so that they can get married. Here it’s about 650,000 pesos to get married. For them, because they both have children outside of their current relationship, that makes it more expensive actually. 650,000 pesos is like 200 dollars. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but here it is a lot of money. They have just got to get married.
We have another investigator named Harry that just got married, and needs to be baptized. His wife is a member and so we are looking at some cool people here honestly. I have met a lot of good people. It has been hard to transition back to Bogotá because it’s pretty cold here. First of all, physically it’s hard. Also the food is different here. It’s like.. I don’t know. It’d be like the transition coming from the dead of summer in July straight to November or October. Here in Bogotá it’s like October but everything is green. It’s really nice…. How do you say it… weather? It’s hard to get used to. I miss the heat and the humidity. Sometimes. I just don’t miss being sticky. Haha. So there you are.
What more can I tell you? Looking at my journal here, and I was really touched, Jessica, by what you did in that Relief Society Activity, it really touched me. I sat in that internet café and I was crying and everybody was looking at me weird, but it really touched me that you would do that and really, honestly, before the mission if I said I didn’t want a package, or at Christmas I didn’t want a present, really honestly, it was more of indifference. It wasn’t really because I was being selfless. But really, the biggest gift that I could have asked for is for help for the Venezuelans. That’s also something that I miss coming to Bogotá. There are still a lot of Venezuelans here in Bogotá just that the culture is not here as much. In Cucuta you experience Venezuelan food, you pick up on the slang and dialect, and everything like that. I actually started to talk a little bit with a Venezuelan accent, where you omit the S’s in just about everything. Haha. I was just really touched that you cared enough to do that. I really learned a lot from the Venezuelans because, I mean you get to their houses and, for example in La Conquista, the area that I would tell you guys about, and they don’t have furniture, a lot of them, you just sit on the ground or they give you a couple of bricks to sit on and you teach them and you really learn the real power behind the message that you have. Maybe it’s not going to help them as much with their physical status, but it will give them HOPE. It will give them the lifestyle that eventually will help them. But more than anything, you give them hope. It’s like what Moroni said when he wrote in Ether: he said that those that have faith can… how do you say it… they can hope for a better world. And really that is the message that we have, and it’s incredible and it’s something that I learned in Cucuta. The real value of our message. It really just set up the way for me to come here and see people with different needs. Maybe they’re not lacking in necessities of life, maybe they have food to eat, in that respect their needs are different from those in Cucuta. But they still have needs. For example, maybe their son is out in the street in drugs. The things that I learned in Cucuta help me to be able to help them.
So Bogotá is for sure a concrete jungle. It’s cold here, it hangs out around 70 or 75 degrees. It’s pretty nice actually. It’s always overcast, all the parks are very green. This part of Bogotá is different than Suba, Suba is… I don’t know how to describe it… it was dangerous. Haha. But this part, it’s still Bogotá but it’s a lot less dangerous. The streets are cleaner, and it’s safer. So that’s good. You still have to watch your back, but it’s normal. What’s hard to get used to about Bogotá is that life is really fast paced. Everybody is going to things that they need to do. In fact, we got on a bus, Alimentador, it’s a free bus that takes everybody to the terminals of transmilenial, the bus that they have in Bogotá. But we got in one the other day to go to District meeting and I was just bored because nobody was talking to each other. Like no one was talking in the bus. So I started talking with this older gentleman in a wheelchair, and I just said “hi! How’s your day been?” and we started talking and everybody just looked at us and we kept talking, and people started to ask where we were from, and I said “I’m from the United States, he’s from Ecuador” and I dunno, It just seems like everybody here…. I don’t think that they don’t know how to be happy, they just get caught up in worldly things sometimes. It’s very rare to be walking in the street and see someone smiling. It’s hard. The truth is, coming from hot land to Bogotá, especially. But there are good people wherever you go, and the gospel is always the same. We had a good number of investigators come to church yesterday, we found a ton of people and that was good because when I got here, I was like “alright, well Elder, what do we do? Whats the plan?” “well.. not a lot.” So this week was very tedious. There just wasn’t anything to do. So we found a lot of people to teach, and I am hoping to be able to retain them while finding more people this week. But like I said, there are also a few investigators that are further along in the conversion process. So that will be good to help them put that in concrete by helping them to be baptized, even though I haven gotten to know them up until now. I feel privileged to help them to feel… concresar concrete that commitment that they have with God.
Well actually I will read you a little part of my journal: 8th of June 2018. “Today was a lot better. We had 2 lessons in the street and 2 more that were planned. The Lord is leading us. We met a woman while we were buying avocados In the street and today taught her a short lesson on the Book of Mormon. We met her on Wednesday, left a pamphlet, and came back today, which is Friday, and she had read it all. She could progress a lot. We also met a people that were in a park in front of our house. They had listened to the missionaries some 20 years ago and thanks to their service, these people are now listening to us. God has an amazing foresight and plan. We also met Henry, who not even my companion had met, will be baptized on the 23rd. today was a better day. I still feel stressed, but with the Lord’s help, and a positive attitude, maybe this area will come out ok.” So that’s about how I feel. So if you all will, this week, pray for Viviana and Juan Gabriel, and also for Henry, that would be a real blessing. I just feel the need to take a lot of care of them.
Well this recording is long enough I think. Wow. Almost 20 minutes! So I think I am going to leave it there. I know I haven’t shared much at all haha, but here in Bogotá, living the life, and this will be my last area. I am going to try to leave it with a lot of people to teach and a lot of miracles. The Lord has already shown me a lot of miracles, I have really been coming to know my Savior and as I have taught other people I have realized that sometimes in the mission you feel like you have progressed a lot, other times you feel like you haven’t changed. I think it’s a mix of the two things. I do think I have been able to change and I am relying on the Lord to be able to retain that change and continue to change. This week we will be going to Bucaramanga, on Thursday in the morning, we will be going to see an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, Elder Stevenson. I am so excited to go do that. It’s the first time I’ve met an Apostle, and I am looking to receive a witness from the Lord about the Apostles. I know that He will give it to me. I am looking to prepare myself this week as President Laney has instructed us, to repent and to prepare. So I will be looking to do that this week.
Well family, I sure love you a lot, and a shout out, tomorrow is Michael’s birthday, and Friday, I think it was, was Grandpa’s birthday. I forgot on Monday between all the change and transfers and everything forgot to wish him a happy birthday. So if you guys would wish Grandpa a Happy Birthday from me. And Michael, Happy Birthday tomorrow. I sure love you. I look forward to talking to you all here in a couple of hours. I love you all and let me know if there is something that I can do for you guys, alright? Let me know if there is something that you guys want me to bring back from Colombia. Alright? Well, love you so much, talk to you later. Chao!
-Elder Lewis
Mission Tour with Elder Zivic, Elder Lewis is the last on the back row, far right.
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