Awesome Week

August 31, 2009
All is grrreat here in Bogotá. I don’t have as much to time to write today but I will try to get down the important stuff from the week. We started off the first few days in Suba (the very north part of Bogotá) working with the missionaries there. It was awesome and we worked really hard so I think the Elders there are a little more excited about the work which is the goal and we had some great lessons so all went very well.
In other news, this transfer Elder Amador (mission secretary) (and my trainer) is going to be transferred and since his job is really complicated it was decided to bring his replacement in 3 weeks early. My comp and I live with the secretaries (Amador and Zari) and we have a pretty good time. But anyway President chose Elder Smith (my comp from the MTC) to replace him, so now it’s the 5 of us in the house for awhile. It should be pretty cool to live with Elder Smith again because we got to be good friends and we have a good time together (but being reverent when necessary).
Also this week in our area was awwwweeesome. We found a new family named the family Diaz who is really interested and have loved our message so far. It is a single mom (husband left them) who is the head chef at a restaurant, her 2 daughters, her son and his friend who they have basically adopted because of the lack of support from his family. Anyway they went to church and loved it and got along great with the members so we have high hopes for them. They really were a great example that the Lord guides us to his elect. We were walking down the mountain from another lesson and to the right there was an opening in the houses that led to another door kind of hidden. Elder Zari looked over as we passed and said “let’s knock on that door" completely randomly so I thought, " ok why not?" They received us very kindly and listened to us and when we went back the next time they all said they really felt something special when they read and prayed about the Book of Mormon. We have other great investigators so we are very excited about the possibilities of this month. They are others I could mention but in total we had 11 PEOPLE attend church with us Sunday and attendance really is a huge key in the progression of investigators so we are pumped.
In May just when I got here we had a baptism of an older Man named Edgar. He is basically a genius and has degrees in Law, teaching, tourism, publishing, history etc... he has like 20 diplomas. So today he invited us to go with him all over the historic part of downtown Bogotá and the national government area etc. It was awesome and absolutely amazing how much he knew about the history and just random info about Bogotá. We saw Simon Bolivar’s house, who was the leader in liberating Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia from the Spanish and he showed us the oldest part of the city with tiny little streets and the ancient Spanish buildings etc. He also showed us the historic places were Bolivar and his wife hid when a group tried to kill him and where General Santander lived and told us all about their stories etc. He then showed us the Presidential House (their white house) and capital building and where the senator’s buildings are and museums of the history of the currency with all the old money and another museum of Colombian Art. We also saw "Plaza Bolivar" which is like the center of the whole Country. They always have something important going on there because it’s a big Plaza between the "4 powers of the country" The buildings of the Executive branch of the gov, the Judicial and Legislative and of course a huge catholic cathedral. The history of this country is filled with all the bad things the Catholic Church has done to the people and all the power they have had. But it was really cool to learn so much about this country and see the historic Spanish style buildings and all the places of interest here.
This week we have planned to work with another zone in Bogotá and we will also have the Zone Leaders council and continue working with the great people we have in our area so I am very excited.
Well about out of time but thanks for everything, you’re in my prayers and I will talk to ya next week! Elder B