Week 19

This week was great! I was super nervous to get my first Latino companion because I'm not super confident I can speak Spanish, but actually it's been good! We pretty much talk about whatever and I can keep up haha! Sometimes I have no idea what he says, but I'm learning a little bit more at least! I am also the only white guy in my district, so I am completely immersed in Spanish now. Before there was two other white missionaries in our ward, so I could hear a little bit of English, but now there isn't anyone that speaks English for miles! But it's good I love talking to these guys, and I'm starting to feel confident in my speaking abilities. I also gave a talk for like 15 minutes in Sacrament Meeting this past Sunday.... It went well I think... I hope some people could understand me haha!

We found a part of our area that hasn't been contacted by missionaries in about a year. It's great but we have a ton of work to do! I'm working really well with my companion, and I am excited to see what kind of success we can have together in our area. I hope all is well at home! We are doing good here, just baking in the sun and drowning in the rain! Haha! Love y'all!

Love,

Elder Cole

 

A little from the family email:

 

Rodrigo is a super great investigator we have right now and he has a baptism date for next month. 

 

It´s been hot, but I´m getting used to suffering in the heat haha!

My new comp is Elder Ucañán. He´s pretty cool and I can talk to him pretty easily.... sometimes I have no idea what he says, but most times it's good! He has been here for a little over a year and is really good at teaching, so we are working well together.

Our investigator that got baptized last week is super great and wanted to be baptized. And without fail, every time there is a baptism, something goes wrong in the life of the investigator the week of... The day of the baptism we were in the house eating lunch and got a call from a member saying that our investigator was getting evicted from her house! I couldn´t believe it! These people are super poor and live in a one room home that is like 8 feet by 12 feet. We just got done giving them a new roof as a ward because every time it rains, everything they own gets wet. For the first time in at least two months, they could rest easy in the rain and three days later they get evicted! So right after lunch we visited them. They said they had an argument with the owner, but smoothed things over so now they can stay. But even before that happened, our investigator told us that it didn´t matter, she was getting baptized tonight! It was good! 

Also I am the only white guy in my district now so I am completely immersed in Spanish! It's good I can understand almost everything! Love y´all!
 

Love,

Elder Cole

Week 18

This week was good! Tomorrow I will have a new companion! He´s from Peru and only speaks Spanish! So I´ll have to get good at Spanish really fast haha! But I actually love Spanish - it´s super great and right now I can at least hold a conversation! But I´m excited to have my first Latino companion and I hope he can help me get rid of my American accent and teach me to speak like a real Latino!

I´ll be staying in this area and I´m actually really happy because we have some really good people we are teaching, and I´m excited to see their progression more! This week I really got to see the power of Satan in the lives of each one of us... In my mission I have the opportunity to talk to all kinds of people and I can really see the things that have destroyed their lives. Addictions are one of the most powerful tools of the devil. Everyday we talk to people who are struggling to quit smoking or drinking and just feel defeated. And its so sad to see the incredible influence that cigarettes have on people. It changes everything about their lives. There are a ton of people that were happy before and were going to church, but now with their addiction they feel ashamed to come to church and even though they want to change, they feel hopeless. We also meet people who have or are doing drugs. And these people are some of the saddest people I have ever seen. We have met both men and women in their 20´s that were smart and healthy, but now they can´t even speak understandable sentences because the drugs have messed with their brains! I´m so grateful for the things that my parents taught me and the knowledge I have from the Word of Wisdom! As sad as these peoples´ lives are, there is hope. That´s what I love the most about the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that through this gospel all people have the chance and the hope to change their lives and truly be happy! I am so grateful for the part I can play in helping people change their lives! We get to meet people with messed up lives, but we also get to know people who have changed their lives and now are just happy and thankful for the Lord´s hand in their lives!

Love y´all! Hope all is well at home! Don´t do drugs and stay warm in the snow! ;)

 

Love,

Elder Cole

 

 

Parts from the family email:

 

So I´ll be in Las Piedras for at least 6 weeks more, but its good! We have some really good investigators and I´m excited to see them baptized before I leave!  My new companion is a Latino! He´s from Peru!  I´m kinda nervous to have a companion from another country, but I´m also super pumped to get to know him and I hope he can help me with my Spanish!  I´m excited to learn from him and understand his culture more I guess... It´ll be hard but I´m excited for the change!

 

The house hasn´t flooded more and we have the power strip up. When it rains we just keep an eye on the door to see if water is coming. Haha! I hope y´all are enjoying the snow.... I won´t get to see it for at least 2 years haha!  Yeah we use the same church manuals, but they haven´t come yet and only like 4 people in our priesthood quorum have phones with Internet so its really hard for the lesson to move along.

We had a baptism this week too! She´s super great and I´m going to write more about her in my group email.... I´m not going to write that I have baptisms in my group email a whole lot cause I don´t want to seem like I'm bragging. Love y´all! 

Love,

Elder Cole

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a missionary couple that take good care of the young elders and sisters in Uruguay and they have a blog.  It's a fun and informational blog to read and it makes me (Jaycie) so grateful for them:

 

gordon-renee-in-uruguay.blogspot.com

 

 

This is a part of their blog about Trace with a picture.  :)

 

 

"We took these pictures as we visited the various zones to install mosquito nets.  I hope you can see the brightness in their eyes as they have the chance to share the Gospel.  It is a tough job, but one that brings joy to their lives.  We did the Las Piedras Zone on Friday.  It was very humid and even tried to rain.  Elder Ward and Cole met us at their house as they were hurrying back from picking up lunch.  As they arrived they were soaked in sweat.  Elder Ward’s face looked like you had just thrown a cup of water on him.  I can’t get that image out of my head as it is such an example of how hard they work."

 

 

Week 17

This week was good! Nothing super interesting happened this week.... I lived through my first RED ALERT in Uruguay I guess haha. It was kinda insane! There was more rain than I have ever seen in my life! We had to run like 5 blocks to get to our house and the first 3 blocks I was using my umbrella, but the last 2 blocks I just folded it up cause I was soaked anyway! The dirt roads were all rivers! 

This week we had a baptism for a little nine year old girl and she`s awesome! Her parents aren`t members, and she`s been going to church with her uncle. Before we even started teaching her, she was praying by herself in her home and teaching her parents about Eternal Life and that families can live together forever! She`s just the perfect example of someone that really wants to follow Christ. And she`s only nine! 

Because we were prepping for the baptism this week, some of our other responsibilities kinda suffered. And my companion was kinda having a hard time accepting it and I was kinda bummed too. But then I think about the things we did this week, and I`m just so happy with the work we did. It might not be reflected on our report to the mission, but we helped a lot of people take steps closer to Christ and we shared a lot of happy moments with people this week. This week was just great! I won`t let myself get too bummed about our report, because this week we worked for people, not numbers! 

Hope all is well at home! Sounds like there`s a ton of snow! There`s a ton of rain here! Haha! Praying for y`all! Love ya! 

Love,

Elder Cole

Parts from the family email:

Hey Ma! I´m not real sure why we are so tired, but we are... haha! I haven`t fallen asleep in a lesson yet, but my companion has started to in 4 lessons! The people always notice and then ask him if he`s tired so its kinda funny! Haha! We are sleeping exactly like we are supposed to (in bed at 10:30 and up at 6:30) but we're struggling. 

This week was good. We were really focused on our two investigators closest to baptism and our other lessons so some of our numbers kinda suffered. I enjoyed this week of teaching. We also went to a neighboring town because the Hermanas in that area needed Elder Ward to do a baptism interview for one of their investigators. So we lost a lot of time that day. Also the investigator for the Hermanas wasn`t ready to be baptized. He was super great when they were teaching him and he really wants to be baptized, but he told Elder Ward in the interview that he can not accept tithing right now because he wants to have good things for his kids. The Hermanas were pretty shocked and kinda bummed. But really it`s good that he chose to share this because now the Hermanas know what they need to do to help him. And also I believe that once he is baptized, he will be an even stronger member because he will truly accept the gospel. It just goes to show that missionary work is hard because we are helping people change their lives. 

But our baptism was super great! And Pilar (the 9 year old) is super awesome and just enjoys the church! Love y`all! Miss y`all too! Hope the snow slows down a little haha!

 

Love,

Elder Cole

Week 16

Sorry the Internet crashed so I could not send an email last week... But Merry Christmas! Christmas was really awesome here! It´s so different too! Usually at home we have a nice Christmas dinner around the table, but here we ate asado (Uruguayan BBQ) and everyone was outside with these big fires and there's music blaring, and everyone is setting off fireworks! It´s sooo much different... But I love it! 

We visited a ton of houses and at every house we sang a Christmas hymn (that wasn´t my idea) and just shared a message of Christ. Also at every house we got offered some more food and eat a little bit more. By the end of the night I was so sick, and I was still full Christmas morning! Haha! Also, here everyone sets off fireworks at exactly 12:00 Christmas Eve so we got to stay up and it was great! Like the 4th of July, but most of the fireworks here would be illegal in the US! Haha! It was a Christmas like I have never experienced .. and I enjoyed every minute of it! 

Then New Years we ate asado again with a different member family and it was just as great! Then we climbed to the roof of our house and watched the fireworks at midnight! It was really impressive and there were way more than during Christmas! 

On Christmas day while we were in church, it started to just downpour! After about 2 hours we got home and our house was flooded! We had about 2-3 inches of water all over our house and the rain was still pouring! We spent the next three hours using a dust pan and brooms to just get what we could out and stop more from coming in! It was an experience... I´ve never seen rain like this in Central Washington haha! 

I also killed a huge spider and the second I smashed it, it exploded into 100 baby spiders! I´m not real afraid of spiders, but this surprised me! Haha! 

These last two weeks have been really good for mission work too! I realize my last email was kinda depressing, but I´m just going be honest with the feelings I have each week haha! 

Really I love Uruguay and the people here are just some of the best people I´ve ever met! I have been looking forward to my mission for years and actually it´s better than I imagined! The work is pretty much what you would expect, teaching of Christ; but when you feel the way a missionary does, the mission is an experience of a life-time! We just get to feel the love of God for others everyday, and I can´t explain it, but it´s incredible!   Hope y'all are well! Have a great New Year! Praying for ya! 

Love,

Elder Cole

Parts from the family email:

I´m doing good! Our house hasn´t flooded again so don´t worry, its been close a few times haha! We can listen to music from the church that's it. So I´m going to download a bunch of music on my thumb drive from LDS.Org. Elder Ward has a little music speaker that takes thumb drives so we can use that. 

Ya I´m actually enjoying salads and vegetables now because we don´t eat them a whole lot so its nice to eat something fresh every so often. Usually I eat it with oil, the mayonnaise is ok... I eat it usually in my rice. 

We stopped by to sing for members, inactives, and investigators. I haven't had Capybara yet. They eat Capybara and armadillo mostly in the rural areas and some missionaries never get to eat them, but I´m hopeful haha!

This week was good! We ate asado again with a different member family and it was awesome! Haha! 

We had to pay to pump the septic tank because our homeowner shares our house. We are separated by a false wall so it's like a duplex or something. But she had poop coming out of her faucet and she blames us for filling the septic tank haha! 

We´ll probably have a baptism this weekend if everything goes well, but our investigator is nine so we expect it to be pretty smooth. 

I use sunscreen everyday and my shirt sleeves are starting to turn yellow because of it.... haha.... But its no big deal and I´ll try to bleach it or something later. 

Glad y´all are doing well! I won´t get to see snow until 2018 haha! If you´re still looking for stuff to send me in a box, I have some ideas of things we can´t get here but its no big deal. My list ;) : beef jerky, more brownies, sloppy joe mix, Reese's PB cups, Gold fish, Doritos, and floss picks. Love y´all!

Flooded house on Christmas day