We live HERE

Actually, I think we live up another little canyon. The red brick buildings in the center look similar to our apartment complex. There are three buildings in "Montefiori" with a locked gate and a gateman, "guardia", on duty 24/7. The Torgersons live in the next building over. Since we live in a little canyon, we get a nice canyon breeze. The windows have no screens so we have to close them when we turn on the lights in the evening, but we can open them again when we turn off the lights. It is raining today so it is a little cooler but the temp always seems to be in the 70's or maybe around 80. It is 20 degrees C. (68 F) this morning, last night it was 25 C.

27 Feb 2012

We now have a phone line and internet! So I spent the last hour checking email and all the kids blogs. Pretty soon we'll have pictures to share. We have gone to the office a few days and done some work there learning how things are done here. The president and the assistants have been gone to zone conferences. We will find out more what we will be doing when the president gets back in a few days. We went to church yesterday in the San Fernando branch with the office elders. Everyone asks how we feel about being here. I'm not sure what to say. We are happy to be here, a little overwhelmed and hoping we can be of service to the mission. Tomorrow we will go shopping with the Torgersons. We hope we can find some of the things we think we need. Actually we can function as we are since I did find hot pads at a nearby grocery store--a small store, but bigger than the one we pass on the way to the office. Tomorrow is Sister Torgerson's birthday so I would like to find something for it. Maybe we should try a panderia (bakery). The office elders are planning supper--hot dogs completos. I think that means with "the works".

Arrived!

After one and a half days of travel we arrived in Cali. The plane didn't leave Bogota on time, in fact we left after we were suppoed to arrive here. The flight itself only took 40 minutes. We had lunch at the mission home with the Prince's, the Torgerson's (the other senior couple), a sister missionary and a friend of the Prince's from the D.C. area. After lunch we went to our apartment. It is on the 8th floor! Sister Prince had bought a lot of things for the apartment. We are in the same complex as the Torgersons but in the next building. After we had a rest the Princes took us shopping. We bought a few more things for the apartment and some groceries. This morning we did a little more settling in and are now at the Torgerson's using their computer. We will go to the officina in a few minutes and meet the office elders.

The short version is...we arrived safely and all is well.

In Between

We had a wonderful two weeks at the MTC. The first week we had classes from Preach My Gospel and prepared some practice missionary lessons. The second week we trained on the computer and programs that the church uses for the missions. Both weeks we had devotionals or language classes in the evening. We really liked the improvements in the teaching. The emphasis on meeting the needs of the investigator and using questions helped us. Maybe we learned more because we were hearing it for the second time. That was certainly true in the office training. Some things we have done and some were new but we were able to tie it to experiences we had in the office in Monterrey. In language we are also benefiting from more experience. We are using Liz's internet connection since we canceled ours. We fly out Tuesday, 21 Feb, in the morning. We will stay overnight in Bogata and arrive in Cali about mid-day on Wednesday. We will be home for about four days.

So it begins...

We were set apart this afternoon by our new stake president, Kenneth Hale. We were both promised our family would be cared for while we are gone. President Hale also promised our house would be safe. He didn't know I was worried about it. We were both promised good health. I'm sure he didn't know about Harold's health problems before our last mission. In fact, he didn't know this is our second mission. (He raised his family in the other stake and only recently moved to our stake.) We know his councilors well, Eric Johnson and JR Vera. I told President Vera that I'm going to come back speaking Spanish so he'd better learn it while I'm gone. Harold was counseled to use his priesthood to bless the people in Columbia.

Yes! We are missionaries!