1st letter from Bucaramanga!

Is the language barrier as bad as you
feared? Ha, honestly, its worse than I thought it would be, It was defiantly humbling for me. Listening is probably the hardest part. Because we have been listening to gringos speak Spanish for the last two months, its very different. Ha, we had a stake conference this past Sunday and the only people I could understand where the Americans (hma. Hacking, pres. Hacking, elder nash). Haha and i´ll even say things I know are right but sometimes they won´t even understand me. This has defiantly been the hardest part: the language. Because I really just want to be able to talk to people so I can help better help invite them to Christ.
What is your area like? I´m in Bucaramanga, which is about a 9 hour bus ride north of bogota. Tuesday night we left for here at 9. My district came and picked me up. All the missionaries I talked to in bogota said Bucaramanga is el mayor(the best). Sweet weather, it’s a little hot but not unbarable, especially for someone from Arizona. And because it´s warm the people are always out in the streets. So we have a lot of opportunites to contact and meet people. The people here are vey receptive. We have a baptism this week, and 4 baptisms the following week! We have 9 new investigators this week, a bunch of which are saweeet. It´s also the biggest area in Bucaramanga, so a lot of walking! We either walk take the bus or taxi.
Your comp? my comp is great. His name is elder Reynoso, he is from a coastal city in peru. He´s a little 26 years old convert, who barely was able to serve (you can only be twenty five, he turns 27 in December) because you also have to be baptized for a year until you can come on a mission (I´m pretty sure about all this I might be wrong. We speak different languages). He studied English for three years and taught it, so his english is pretty good. Probably about where I am now in Spanish. So he has three months left, and president said in my interview we were going to stay together until he leaves. Luckily he´s not a trunkie and is obedient and loves to work, but he´s not a pharise so its sweet. He is really concentrated on teaching me so i´m learning a lot about missionary work and Spanish. Life´s sooo good.
Are you doing charades to
communicate or is it just understanding that is difficult? Yeah I defiantly have to work my way around it. I´ll listen for key words that I know and then base what I say off that. Ha I make my responses very basic because one, I don´t know how to say that much, and two, i´m not sure if its right, it gives be a bigger target to hit.
I bet they
talk really fast. Yes. Haha, yes they do.
What is the best way
for people to send letters? Is the pouch better than dear elder? They actually cancelled the pouch service soo, everything is email. Sweet! So go ahead let people they can email, I only have one hour to email, which I need to email you guys and the president, so I wont have much time, but I´m sure i´ll be able to send out a quick email within a month or to. As for packages, ha, I think you´ll have to straight up load it with the virgin Mary and Christ stickers, and write ministries (find the Spanish translation though) all over it. I heard of one elder having three or so of his packages never came, but nothing was on them, i´ve heard the sticker thing works pretty good. And yes send it to the mission home. As for letters , if someone wants to send those usually arrive. Fun fact: it cost about 50 to 100 dollars here to send a LETTER to the state so probably not going to happen. I just heard this from other missionaries, i´ll find out more.
• Yeah Mom, the relationships formed while on a mission are unbelievable. You never have any surface level – small talk relationships, we have incredible lifechanging moments together , it is really something great, we talk about questions in our souls and our relationship with God, and watch and help people change there live´s, there is nothing better for me to do on this earth. I think it was Joseph Fielding Smith who said ¨when it comes down to it, our greatest duty is to preach the Gospel¨. What a blessing it has been in my life. I can tell you that I have never been tireder, but I have never been happier! I have already in a week (feels so long but so fast), met such great people that I love so much. Ha I can´t even even understand what there saying most the time but, we already have such a great connections. One of these people is named Yohonny. So yohonny, looks more gringo than me, one of his birth parents were scandanavian, but he was raised here in Bucaramanga, by a Colombian couple, so he is full blown Colombian. He is a security guard at our building (by the way my apartment, and all the apartments in the mission are nice, I have some sweet photos, but i´ll probably only have time to send a couple of them! We live on the 7th floor out of 13, its nuts) Antonces, elder Reynoso said he has the most fervent love for the gospel out of all the investigators he has had. He is the best! We saw him this morning and he had just started reading 1st Nephi, and then when we saw him at like two he was close to finishing it. We´ve had such great lessons with him. AH I love this! Love him! We stopped by his booth (to let cars in to the garage) and talk with him. Another investigator we have that I already feel way close with is Orlando. Ha so he was the cab driver that picked me up from the bus ride from bogota, we contacted him on the way back and he happens to live right above us. We played soccer with him today and we see teach him and his family about everyday.

So my first legitimate Colombian experience was in the taxi Tuesday morning. (by the way the flight was awesome too, me and elder Burns talked with this guy for the WHOLE time about the gospel, he was great. HA my neck hurt really bad from looking over the whole time). But yeah, they are absolutely nuts! It was a literal videogame. Oh gosh, it was the best, weaving in and out of traffic, going in to the other lane. But the thing is they rock at driving. I trusted him the whole time. They have this crazy system of honking here that they use. Love it! The food its great, we get fed really well everyday. As for having crazy things already, ha I guess I have, I found out yesterday that I had cow intestines in my soup on Sunday. Haha, I guess it wasn´t to bad because I ate it all. It just tasted like really fatty meat. The streets here are the best, there is seriously one street that is three blocks long of just shoes, every store. Shoes. There is literally a store for everything, and most likely that exact same store is going to be across the street, cause they are all run by families so they just start up businesses out of their garages! Ha there are two stores by my apartment that just sell cardboard boxes. Across the street from each other. I love this country! So we had elder Nash here in Bucaramanga. He talked in stake conference then spoke in our zone conference. He was great. I wish I knew what he was saying the whole time but it’s the same spirit no matter what language! He´s in the 1st quorum of the seventy. Ha during the conference we did practiced teaching, and they made me teach cause I was new (my district who are all soo sweet) and elder nash came and listened to me and my broken Spanish, made me a bit nervous.

In closing, I pretty much spend the entire time writing this so my emails defiantly won´t be this long usually.

LOVE YOU ALL. MISS YOU. SO THANKFUL FOR YOU ALL. LIFE COULD NOT BE BETTER!

Yours truly,

Elder Adams