Week 61 - September 24, 2018 (Sincelejo - Week 1)

So I am back on the coast in a city called Sincelejo, we are in the San Carlos Branch. My new companion is E. Gonzales from La Paz, Bolivia, he has only been out a short time. He is a good guy and he speaks really good English. He has three brothers and 2 sisters. The weather here is super hot and super humidity. My "coast" rash has returned to my body with red patches all over. My body doesn't do to good with the heat and humidity. It is so hot that I have had trouble sleeping. I did find some fans under the beds, so we got a member, Jason, in the branch to come and install them. It helps a little, but it still is super hot at night. Thank goodness I have all the ant and bug stuff you sent when I was on the coast the last time. This place has bug and ant problems also. I put down the sticky paper and it caught two mice. So anyways we are looking for a new house and we have found one that is just up the street, so hopefully we can move to it. I really do miss my last area and especially those that we were teaching and members of the ward. It was such a great area and I loved it there so much.

We did a lot of finding this week, we stop and talk to everyone, and added 23 new people to teach. One thing I like about the coast is that the people will listen to you, everybody we stop will at least listen to what we have to say, and a lot of them will let us come and teach them. It was a short week this week because Tuesday we had our district meeting, then we had a meeting with Elder Fallabella who is a General Authority Seventy, he is from Guatemala. We traveled Wednesday to Monteria, spent the night there, spent all day Thursday with him, then finally came back to Sincelejo on Friday. We have a few people that we are teaching that should be getting baptized in the next few weeks. Had some great lessons on Prophets, The Book of Mormon, and the restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ. We were teaching this one group in their house, and little by little, more people kept coming into the room, we started off with 3 people and by the end there was 16 people in the room listening to the lesson. I think they just like to see a Gringo speaking Spanish. We had 7 investigators at church on Sunday which was good since we weren't in our area a lot this week.

Love you all,
Chao
Elder Moore

My furry friends that I caught

The Colombian sombrero vueltiao

E. Tapia and I in Sampues

Week 54 - August 6, 2018 (Rionegro - Week 6)

OK Family, its going to be a short email since it is transfer week. I am currently in Medellin to pick up my companion, Elder Quispia from Bolivia, and I don't have my camera or audio recorder. It was a busy week with lots of traveling. I have realized that a lot of missionary work is just opening your mouth. I have no problem opening my mouth, whether that is eating or talking to people. We do lots of contacting people as we walk from appointment to appointment or anytime we are traveling. Keeping a rough estimate, I know we contacted over a 100 people this week, 60 of them said we could come to their house, out of that 10 of them actually came to church. I know a lot of people just like to talk to me because I'm an american. So I just talk to everyone. Even when we are on the bus, I will start talking to people, I realize as we open our mouth and invite others we will find those that are wanting to know more.

The hi-light of the week was the baptism of Alejandro's family. Alejandro is a member and we have been teaching his wife and two daughters for awhile. Well Saturday the three of the them were baptized. They are an awesome family, and will be going to the temple in a year. I was asked to confirm them, so I was a little nervous since it was my first time doing the confirmation. They are awesome and always feed us on Sundays. They are a strong family, Alejandro wants to sell his business so they can move closer to the church, he is awesome and it going to have so many blessings.

We have also been teaching a young man named Mitchell. He is awesome and wants to be baptized, and event though he is like 20 years old he wants to get the OK from his mom to be baptized. He is the one that took us to "Piedra de Peñol" the first week I was here. He is awesome and will be baptized soon.

Another thing that happened that was really cool, was we saw this white guy that we could tell was a Gringo, and he was trying to get a room in this hotel. I go over to help him out since he doesn't speak Spanish and get him signed int the Hotel. Anyways we find out that his traveling around South America on his giant motorbike. He asks if we are hungry, and of course we always are, so we go across the street and he buys us some huge bandeja paisas. We find out he was a bishop, he wanted to do this trip like 6 years ago, but he was called as a bishop so he had to wait till now to travel. He is a great guy and told us about all his kids and where they served missions at.

Well that's all for this week!

Os Amo a todos,
Elder Moore

The Gringo bishop we met and he took us out to dinner

Mitchell with us at "Piedra Penol"

At the top of the "Rock" looking out at Guatapé

Lunch at Alejandro's house

Awesome lunch

Week 49 - July 2, 2018 (Rionegro - Week 1)

So last week I was transferred to a city about 40 minutes south of Medellin called Rionegro. We actually live in the town just outside called Marinilla, which is just 9 miles to the north. However, we are looking for a new house that is closer to the church building. The weather is awesome here with a high of around 73° and at night around 54°. It is a nice change from the heat of Planeta Rica. The people are not as open however compared to those on the coast. Our ward building is in Rionegro and it is the Porvenir Ward. My companion is E. Nelsen, he is from Utah. He actually came out in the same group as I did. He is taller than me, and so far we get along great. We also got a new mission president (President Ceballos) this week, but I haven't meet him yet.

So this was a great week for my first week in Rionegro. We did a lot of contacting and knocking doors. It is very different here than in Planeta Rica, the people are not as open to talk with us, they even slammed the door on me while we went knocking. Tuesday we went to Medellin for our district meeting, and I was able to pick up my packages!!!!! Thank you mom so much for sending me all the stuff it is awesome. I have been chowing down on all of the candy and drinking the chocolate milk. The ties are super cool and look great.

We had a baptism of a young boy named Santiago. He is here for summer break with his Uncle and Aunt (they are members). He is super smart and it was awesome to teach him, he had questions and everything. I got to teach him a few lessons this week and then he was baptized on Saturday. It was awesome teaching him, he understood things very quickly and had good questions. Definitely saw the Lords hand during the baptism, since the portable plastic baptism font broke and started leaking right before the service. We had just enough time to have the service and started to drain it before it made a mess.

We have some good investigators here that we are teaching. We don't have as many as we did in Planeta Rica, but we have some good ones to teach. A couple of the recent investigators that have family members and friends that are not members that we want to start teaching. We went and taught Alejandro, one of the recent converts. He is the only member of his family. So we are teaching the others in the house. It was one of the most spiritual lessons I have every been in. The spirit was so strong. His wife is not a member yet, and we gave her a blessing, it was also super spiritual and I definitely received revelation during the blessing, Alejandro even had tears in his eyes.

We had five investigators at church on Sunday. Santiago got confirmed a member. Then we had testimony meeting and it was very spiritual, there was some great testimonies that were shared. One of our investigators said he wanted to go with us to El Peñón de Guatapé, which is this huge rock that sticks out of the ground that has tons of steps to get to the top. It was super cool to look out at all of the water and surrounding areas.

Love you all,
Tchao,

Elder Moore

Baptism of Santiago

Traveling to "El Penol"

On top of "The Rock"

Week 46 - June 11, 2018 (Planeta Rica - Week 16)

I'm not sure what got me sick, it could of been eating too many hamburgers at McDonald's, the water that we have been drinking and showering with (it is causing my skin to have all kind of rashes), or the virus that the missionary had that was passed around when we were all together as missionaries. I think I have been dehydrated which has also caused me to not feel good. I started feeling better midweek although I haven't been eating a ton, so we will see. Thank goodness for medicine, it has helped me recover. I have been drinking Gatorade and lots of liquids to try and rehydrate myself. I love Planeta Rica, the people are awesome, but the weather and the water here are slowly killing me. Like even when it rains, the rain smells really bad. I love it here but my body, not so much. I can't wait for the package to come so I can eat food that will help my body!

One thing that I have realized is that the adversary looks for his opportunities. Since last week we were gone part of the week and then I got sick, it didn't allow us to do are normal visits and help strengthen our investigators. The adversary was able to take that small window of opportunity and was able to put doubts into some of our investigators minds. The one challenge a few of them are having is the addiction to drinking coffee. I know we are in the coffee capitol and everybody drinks it here. Anyways they don't want to break the commandment so they want to wait on their baptism until they can stop drinking coffee. It's been a hard week, we have had our trials and tribulations, but we will get through this and things will get better.

Love you all,

Elder Moore

Week 45 - June 4, 2018 (Planeta Rica - Week 15)

So this week we spent a lot of our time in Monteria. We went there on P-day to play soccer and practice a song that we are going to sing for the President's last mission tour. Somebody in our zone rewrote the words to the song "Until i see you again" that is in the movie Fast and Furious. Soccer was fun, I didn't do as good as I have done in the past. The missionaries from South America are pretty funny, they act like they get hit and fake it as if we have referees. Only in soccer. Then we went to the dentist and had our teeth cleaned. Then that afternoon we went home because we had appointments that we had to get to. We went by Joel and Joses house. Then we had to be in Monteria again on Tuesday. They told us last minute that the mission president was coming, which really is not good since we had our week fully planned out. Now we have to call everybody and tell them we are not going to be able to make our visits. They should at least give us a week in advance notice.

We were in Monteria on Tuesday and Wednesday for the meeting with president. Tuesday morning we came up with ideas for like a little comedy show/skit for president. We set up like he was doing an interview with missionaries and he was having flashbacks of his time he has been there as president. The conference was good, president talked a lot about tithing, repentance, and baptism. He also talked about us accepting the new president, you can tell he is worried that we won't be accepting to the new president ways of running the mission. We stayed at the Zone leaders apartment along with a bunch of other missionaries, one of them was really sick and I think he got a bunch of us in the house sick. I don't know if it was from him or from eating at McDonald's and eating to many hamburgers, but I got really sick and was throwing up and going to the bathroom a lot. On Thursday when we got back to Planeta Rica I was still sick and was running a fever and still throwing up. My companion finally made me go see the doctors at the clinic by our apartment. All they did was give me a IV and a shot, not exactly sure what it was but I don't think either one made me feel any better. We went to a few visits and I tried my best, but we had to come home so I could use the restroom. After a few of the visits we finally called it a night and went back home. I didn't get much sleep since I was getting up constantly to go the bathroom.

Still sick on Saturday and have really bad headache, I continue to not be able to keep anything down. I sure do miss my mommy right now to take care of me. We went out still and visited Joel and Jose and family Soto. We still have Joel and Jose set for baptism for next Sunday. Most of the rest of the day we stayed inside and I tried to get some sleep. My companion is super humble, he doesn't have a ton of missionary clothes, and today he took and gave a white shirt, pants, his only belt, and shoes to one of our investigators because he said he wanted to look like us when he went to church. All I was able to give him was a tie, since none of my cloth wouldn't fit him. My companion has taught me that the things of the world are not important, that the gospel is the most important.

I was still sick on Sunday, but we went to church and at the beginning we didn't have any investigators, we were a little sad. Then Jose and a bunch of his friends showed up and it was good, I think we ended up with like 12 investigators at church. We had to leave early though because I was still feeling sick, so we went home and stayed there most of the day.

Love you all, Elder Moore