The CCM & More

With the other missionaries at the MTC in Bogota

Wow, this has been an awesome experience, honestly. So I’m gonna start out with everything like details and then end with the spiritual stuff. It is so weird writing in English. It sucks because I still don’t feel like I can write in Spanish and now I’m having a hard time with English. This sentence has taken me like 5 mins. because I keep spanglishing it. Haha. Well my companion is awesome. We are such good friends. His name is Elder Leiva. We are like the clowns of the CCM. We are always laughing and joking around and we never don’t have a smile on our faces. I have seriously never laughed so much in my life or had so much fun in my life.

There’s another elder named Elder Cruz in our room and the 3 of us are such fools. Haha. So they always pick on me and call me flirt because I’m nice to all the sisters. They will yell out “repent, repent!” any time I talk to a girl. Haha. Everyone here knows me as the pretty faced flirt. And then it’s a bunch of small Latinos, so they think my muscles are huge and they always grab my arms and are amazed by how big they are. The funny thing is that they’re not even big. Haha. They have me working them out at night so they can have big arms so the sisters will look at them too. Haha. They are toooo funny. They also joke about my face. They say “everyone get around Elder Gomez, so the sisters look at us”. They’re such fools and it’s really embarrassing.

My district is awesome. It consists of Elder Leiva, Elder Tuch, Elder Vasquez, Hermana Alves, and Hermana Galbuchi. We are a super spiritual group. We’re also the most fun because Elder Leiva and I are always cracking jokes and making them all laugh. The teachers must hate us because we are so loud. But love us at the same time because we always have our work done and always do everything perfect. Haha. We just laugh too much.

The Hermanas, yeah there’s some cute ones. The elders and I joke around about it. We are like “oh my gosh, her face is just so spiritual” or “her eyes…” and stuff like that. We will call them “Diosas” (Goddesses) because that’s what they will be in heaven. Haha.

The food is really good but they don’t feed me enough. I’m seriously starving like every day. You can’t have seconds and I eat a lot. That really really stinks but it is good. My Spanish is not going so well. They aren’t teaching me any Spanish. They’ve put me in classes with the Latinos who all already know Spanish. So it’s really hard because I have to learn how to be a missionary when I’m still struggling with Spanish. My companion is really helpful and the teachers are awesome. They are like awesome missionaries and teachers.

My companion and I are perfectionists. We have to be the best at everything and I know it’s super bad.  We were really hard on ourselves with our investigator, thinking we were doing badly, when really we were like the best ones. Haha. But preparing for that was awesome and very spiritual. We would not know what to do, so we would stop and pray and the ideas would come. It was so crazy.

Also we went tracking on the streets of Bogota which was awesome. We got 11 references in like 2 hours and they loved us. They would ask us “why are you guys so happy?” and we would be like “the gospel makes us happy”. We would teach them then get there numbers and addresses. Haha. One special contact was this lady named Juana. We were close to the temple and we talked to her. She wanted to know more about the temple so we took her to the temple and had a lesson in the waiting area of the temple. It was so awesome. She was all teary eyed and at the end she prayed and the spirit was so strong. She asked us if we could pray for her mom who had cancer and it was just awesome to see her faith so much that she wanted us to pray for her. It was super awesome. The only bad thing is we don’t know what’s going to happen to her since other missionaries are gonna teach her.

Something else that was really cool. Last night I was sleeping and I got woken up by an elder. He was like “Elder Gomez, will you please give me a blessing?” I was like “what? Seriously, out of all 30 to 40 elders that are here, you want me to do it?” I got super nervous because I was still sleeping. Haha. So i got up and he told me all day he was throwing up. He was really sick and could not stop throwing up. So I gave him a blessing and the words just came out of my mouth. Words I did not even know in Spanish. The craziest part was that right afterward he stopped having pains and throwing up. He’s been good ever since. It was so awesome. I’m glad he trusted me and wanted me to do it. I’m super glad that he’s better now.

Ok, best part was the temple Wednesday. We went to the temple and it’s so beautiful. Not only that, but I saw grandma and grandpa clear as day. They’re together and happy. I balled my eyes out the whole time and it was the best feeling to know they’re together. They are so proud of us. I know we can be with them and happy with them if we keep doing what we are supposed to. I cry as I write this to you guys now. I know it sounds crazy, but I know what I felt and it was the most amazing thing that has happened to me so far. That temple is a very special place and I hope one day we can all go together as a family. I have to go. I have so much more to say, but I arrive in Cali Tuesday. I can’t wait to write to you guys again. I love you guys. And mom, do me a favor and send this to everyone. Next time I’ll tell you more about the temple because a lot more happened. Love you.