No Stir Fry Please, City Tour and Feeling the Spirit

7/14/2015

Well the food is not too bad here and some of it is more than palatable. So far the worse meal I had wasn't actually Spanish but Chinese stir fry.  I just do not like stir fry at all, so that meal I detested. We get some American food a lot so it is nice.  Every Pday here at the MTC I get to go to the temple which is awesome, although I will miss the temple when I go to Quito.

I believe I will continue to send emails in English unless I want a quick tidbit in Spanish.  Mainly to help you guys out with not having to translate. 

As for my experiences here it has been great.  I got a Colombian soccer FIFA World Cup jersey today which is worth about $14.  It is definitely a good souvenir to get from Colombia and most likely the only souvenir from here that I will get.

We went on a tour today were we went to the top of this mountain and saw the city and it was just massive. It was very chaotic and spread out everywhere and didn't seem to have much organization to it. But you could see very clearly the edge of the city as it changed from city to forest so quickly.  The forest just went on in the mountains and was so much green. The city is different from Phoenix as it is so much concrete and they have the forest right next to them so they have no green in the city. Seriously it was grey and brown. But it was nice to see the forest which stands in such sharp contrast to the city.

The experience here is definitely great and even though we are teaching faux investigators it is still spiritual. One investigator we taught was named Camilla and this was a 16 year old girl whose father was the bishop and her mother was the Relief Society President so you would expect it to be a strong family, right? Well this 16 year old girl was living with her novio (boyfriend) who had gotten her pregnant and her father had kicked her out and church members mocked her. She was inactive and in just the toughest scenario ever. Well, we managed to get her to live with her family, read the scriptures, pray to God, and start the repentance process. She prayed and knew she should be with her family and her novio should just help care of the baby when it was born.  It was just awesome the fact that we got that situation. We were led by the spirit most definitely and that was just great as I felt the spirit so much and I got to help this estranged girl go back to the arms of Jesus. I am so ecstatic for my mission. We also had a three-hour proselyting activity which was nice. We placed one Book of Mormon and got 2 contacts, got rained on but I just loved it as I just felt trapped in the classrooms. I have learned a lot and will learn a lot more as I get a Latino companion next so the last two weeks will be neat.

Love you all,

Élder Throop