March 27, 2012
Letter from Zach......he's finally there!
Hello everybody! I am safe! Right now I am right in the middle of bogotá. Pretty crazy out here. The culture is completely different. The people of Colombia are very short. So it´s really wierd being the tallest person here. It is a miracle! My spanish is very good. I am able to communicate with almost everybody. Everybody here wants to learn english, and they all think I dont speak a lick of spanish (even though I understand every word they say) and so they alltry to tell me what they said in english, and it´s really funny. Super dooper funny because they can´t prononce the words. Then I reply in spanish and they are like, woah you speak spanish! My companion is Elder Hernandez. He is from Argentina. In the MTC, they al told me that I would be put with a gringo like me and he would help me, but no. I get to the mission home, and president Casablanca puts me with this short little latino, and says, this is your companion. See you in a month. Oh, and he doesn´t speak english. You have to teach him. Bye! Turns out he does know some english. Someone taught him every bad word in the english language. So whenever he makes a mistake I hear !%$&!¿ It´s pretty funny. Trying to teach him otherwise...
The colombians are some pretty crazy people. Right now it´s the rainy season (colombia has two seasons. Rain and sun) and we were walking down the street. We saw two guys sitting in the engine block of a semi truck trying to stay dry. But I looked closer and they were smoking! I told my companion to walk faster. Turns out it´s impossible to escape Utah county. The ward mission leader that we work with rather closely lived in springville for a year! He never learned english, but it´s such a small world! So the mail system here is horrible, but I know exactly what I can do. Have everybody send me their e-mail address (everybody that wants to) and I can write them a letter, take a picture of the letter, and send the picture. That makes it easier for both me and you! It´s even easier than sending mail because everybody I know spends their whole day online anyway, so why not take five minutes and write a nice little message to me, then hit send! Super easy! So give my email to everyone, and it will save them time and money in writing letters. Cool!
The last elders here left us a lot of baptism dates. So we have about seven people we will be baptizing in the middle of april. We are currently preparing them. yesterday a lady approached us after church and told us she wanted us to give her a blessing. Turns out she has a tumor the sive of a grapefruit in her uterus. She asked me to give her the blessing. She asked me to give it in english so I could be more detailed. So I Gave her this blessing. This is the first time I have ever felt the spirit so strongly. The spirit directed me to tell her that everything would work out for the better and that she would be blessed for her diligence. It was rather incredible for me to feel that. Afterwards she told me that she understood everysingle word, and she said the prayer back to me in spanish almost word for word. Remember she doesn´t speak a lick of english! The church is true my friends. Dont ever forget that. As we were leaving I said "Dios bendeciré" which means God will bless me, but I meant to say "Dios bendecirá" which means God will bless you, she thought it was pretty funny and I was pretty embarrassed. I´m doing great here! The reference system isn´t very good here. So we tract and tract and tract and tract.We probably walk a good five miles a day which is great! The homes are intersting. We live in a house while the other elders live in apartments. To get in we have to go through about four different locks. It´s pretty sweet place. It has two floors and is rather large for a colombian house. We are in a rather wealthy area. The colombian dream is to have a house and a car. You are rather wealthy if you have this. Some people in my area have two cars, which is almost unheard of.
My first day here, we stepped off the plane and were picked up by an AP. He took us to the temple and on the temple grounds is a hotel for visiting genera authorities and others. We stayed there for the night. The next morning we were shipped off with our new companians. The food is great but you have to be careful. It´s rude not to eat everything on your plate. We ate at a members house the other night and on my plate was this super disgusting looking piece of meat. I ate it and it definately was disgusting. It was horrible! I wanted to puke! Turns out it was... How do I say this... It was a thing that horses use to drain water... Yup. I ate that... Lots of crazy stuff here. I already have lots of stories, but i´ll save them for a day when you are more prepared to hear something awesome. Okay here is one. Today I was walking home with te comp, and this guy bumps into me and steals my watch right off my wrist! It was my cheap one, but how cool is that! That guy has some skill. Now I gotta go buy a new watch.
Hopefully this is enough detail for you. I guess I could give a bit more. Bogotá is huge. Just my area which is a small part of the city is gigantic. It would take us about four hours to walk from one end to the other. It´s a lot like new york city i´m told. And turns out I won´t be in the jungle. Gringos aren´t allowed down there because remnants of Pablo Escobar´s gang lives down there, and they dont like gringos. I´ll be sending pictures next week to give you all a better idea.
Good luck! Love you all! Don´t forget to hand out my email!
-Elder McEntire
