All is Well

Here's Will's newest letter. Some of his wording really sounds unusual but I guess it is because he is doing part of his thinking in Spanish.

February 16, 2009
Que tal familia.
All is well here in Colombia. I can’t believe how fast the weeks pass and that another has already come and gone.

I want to write a little part of my letter in Spanish so that you can practice your espanol translating it :) Toda ha sido muy bien esta semana, seguimos trabajando con nuestros investigadores. Cada dia siento mejor en mi abilidad de comunicar y expresarme a los investigadores, miembros y otros elderes. Esta semana tuvimos conferencia de le estaca y también entrevistas con presidente Camargo (mas información abajo). Tenemos una investigadora que se llama Angélica que ha querido bautizarse hace mucho tiempo pero la mama es muy católica y no todavía le permite bautizarse. Angelica también tiene una amigo se llama Camillo que tiene mucho interés en el mensaje entonces estamos trabajando mucho con ellos juntos.

Translation by Bruce – “All is very well this week. We are continuing to work with our investigators. This week we had Stake Conference and also interviews with President Camargo (more information later). We had one investigator that is named Angelica that would love to be baptized but her mama is very catolica and won’t give permission to baptize. Angelica also has a friend named Camillo that has much interest in the message. We work a lot with them together.”

Okay - back to English. We have a special case we are working with. She is a 25 year old girl who has had a really rough background. She has a little daughter of 8 years old who just got baptized and her mom also is a member. To be concise, she used to have a lot of problems with drugs and on one occasion, while she was on a lot of drugs, she had an altercation and killed someone. They say it was self defense but she had to serve prison time. She has also had some sickness and they say she has only about 8 years to live. She had been working with the missionaries in North Bucaramanga and just moved here.

She has had an amazing change through the gospel. She has done about everything she can to repent. She is working and supporting her daughter and receiving treatment in the hospital. She attends church every week. She always has something prepared for us to eat when we get there to teach her. It makes me feel bad because they are incredibly poor, but she has so much kindness. Seeing how she is, it’s hard to imagine her as the person she was. She really. really wants to get baptized as soon as she can and has done about everything she can. This week after Stake Conference, we had arranged an interview with her and the Mission President. She has already written a letter to the First Presidency and according to Pres. Camargo, she should be able to get baptized within this next month. This is an example of the amazing changes that can happen with the gospel. We are doing everything we can to help her get baptized and start a new life.

In other news this week we had interviews with the Mission President. He and his wife spoke in Stake Conference so they were here in Bucarmanga all week. She stopped by every house to see if we are keeping them clean and see if we needed anything. President and Sister Camargo really are basically awesome. They are always friendly and telling jokes and you can see how much they care about the missionaries.

But anyway, she stopped by and pointed out a few things that we could throw away and wrote down the stuff we needed for the house (like a new ironing board that doesn’t fall in half when you’re ironing). But she said the house was very clean. Ha when she was looking at our room she reached up to check something on a shelf and accidentally knocked my camera off and it broke. But she took it to a place and dropped it off to get fixed and she said she would return it to me fixed at Zone Conference this week.

The next day we had interviews with Pres. Camargo. It was different than the last interviews in that we went in as a companionship. All he did was ask how we were, discussed the situation with Diana our investigator. He said he was really amazed with my Spanish for only three months in the field, and that it was a real example of the gift of tongues.

In other happy news, after the interviews, they announced a new rule. We can play basketball and soccer on p days! Ok the soccer news isn’t that exciting but it has been over 3 months without touching a basketball. So today we went and bought a cheap ball and a pump and went to the nearest little park and got some good bball in. Elder Fernandez (zone leader from Chile who lives with us) and I went and played for about 2 and a half hours. Ha my comp and the other ZL Elder Madariaga have no idea how to play so they went to the mall place. It was pretty fun, although I was quite rusty and it was hard to shoot because the wind was blowing. But we played 1 on 1 and I got a little sunburn.

Well this letter is all over the place but I’m about out of time. All I can say is thanks for everything. Everyday I realize more how much I love my family and friends and how blessed we are and how happy I am to be serving in such an awesome place.

Much love and ciao,
Elder Barnard

Hey, forgot to answer any of your questions.
You asked about the freezing cold showers. I am used to the cold showers and after exercise in the morning it actually feels refreshing to have a nice cold shower as strange as that sounds.
I love the missionary quotes from those books, I don’t know what it’s like to send books in the mail but I would love to have some of those books to read.
I haven’t given any more talks but I usually bear my testimony on fast Sundays and try to talk about something that could be uplifting and helpful to the members.
I love getting the pictures every week via e-mail and they are very quick to download. I will try to send some as well, this week if I get a chance.
And I would love to get dearelder letters with spiritual stuff like that. I LOVE to get anything uplifting to read so all would be very welcome!
You asked if there is anything else that the family can do for me. All the family can do to help me is stay healthy and be happy :) all is great here.