Mission Week 22, Bogota City Week 5, "We went to the Temple."

This week was another hard working week. We had a lot of time to contact since none of the people we planned on teaching would answer their phones. This week was also election week. For voting here they shut down the main streets in town and put up tents for people to go in and vote. We found this super good bread market to go eat at that sells this HUGE croissant with chocolate and powdered sugar on it. This Saturday all of the moms met in the chapel here in Cedros for a special something. I was able to serve all of them pan con chocolate! ( bread with chocolate)

On Thursday we the marriage of Sebastian and Alejandra!!!! YES (I got a pic). This Saturday we had his baptism and then on Sunday he was confirmed a member and given the gift of the Holy Ghost. I was able to participate in his confirmation!

This Friday we went to the temple for the first time since I was in the MTC! We went through with Juan Josè and carlos Javier. Both are our recent converts. They both had the opportunity to do baptisms for the dead for the first time in their lives! Juan Josè was able to actually help with baptizing! That was something special to see for me. During our time in the temple I was actually able to help with confirming a lot of the names! Elder Arteaga and I we're just sitting down watching Juan Josè and Carlos when one of the temple worker came up to us and asked us for help in the confirmation room. What was awesome was they asked me to do the confirmation part. First time doing that and it was in Spanish haha.

Other than that we've just been grinding hard trying to find new people to teach and baptize :)

Love you all and hope you have an amazing week.

Love, Elder Horton

Impressions of Bogotà 

1. If you want stuff from the USA, you have to go to Price Mart (Its basically Costco) But you have to buy a card in order to get in. It`s 35 mil!!
2. In order to get around town here you have to take the Transmilenio (sets of buses that have specific routes)
3. People will start trying to speak to you in English when they see you which is pretty great since we get a lot of good contacts in that way haha

Mission Week 21, Bogota City Week 4, "Taking the Lead in Teaching Lessons."

I took charge this week as Elder Arteaga only has one more week before he heads home. Im started to get everything down here. I know how to find houses, I can use the phone better now, and I'm starting to take the lead in teaching lessons.

This Tuesday we had Intercambios with Granada (the area right next to Cedros). I stayed in our area, and my compa went to Granada. My companion for the day was Elder Weaver. He's from Colorado, and has about 7 months out on the mission. This day was a little challenging for me since I had to take the lead in everything haha. Finding houses was probably the hardest part, but I was able to figure it out with time. One special person we met with was Maricela. She was a reference given to us from the sisters in our area. It took me about an hour to find the house. We had to call Maricela about 15 times since I was having no luck. It turns out we wrote down the wrong direction, but finally on that 15th call we figure it out haha. When we met her she had a big smile on her face, and I'm pretty sure it was because of how long it took me to finally figure out where she lived. We taught her the Restoration since she had actually asked, "Why are there so many churches?" We told her that we would LOVE to explain why! She was interested about the end of our message when we told her that she could find out for herself if our message is true. We taught her about the Book of Mormon and the promised that if you read, ponder. and pray that god will answer your prayer through a special feeling that testifies of truth to our hearts which is the Holy Ghost. We invited her to read the Book of Mormon, and she was excited to receive one.

This Saturday we had an open house activity in the chapel in Chia. A bunch of Zones came down for this. When we got there the activity had already started. I was able to fill in for one of our Zone Leaders who was at a station explaining about prophets. There were five station in total for this room. The first was about Jesus Christ, second about prophets, third Families, fourth Temples, and fifth The Book of Mormon. We each had about 3 mins to explain our topic to people coming in. I'm pretty good at explaining prophets now. After about 2 hours of that we ended the open house.

I learned something pretty cool while I was learning about the seed that we plant in our hearts (Alma 32). So first of all you need to understand the tree of life story in order to understand. Alma explains that we first plant the seed of faith in our hearts, and that if we have faith, we will feel the "swelling motions in our hearts to know that its true. Once we gain that testimony we have started on the path to the tree of life. I compared the iron rod to that seed of faith that starts to grow. Each time we learn something new and feel the spirit, our knowledge is growing, and we are taking one step forward on the path to the tree of life, or the seed of faith is growing a little bit more. Imagine the iron rod as that root, thats starting to grow and grow. Until finally once we have reached the end, our tree starts to bring forth fruit that we can partake of (the fruit of everlasting life). Never stop learning, our mission here on earth is to learn something new every single day. I know that you can accomplish that if you read in the Book of Mormon!

Love you all, and I hope you have a great week!

Elder Horton

Mission Week 20, Bogota City Week 3, "The Power of the Book of Mormon"

Helllllllooooo Everybody!

This was another week and guess what is was also GREAT!  We had a lot of success as we found 4 new investigators to teach. They all came from families that we are currently teaching are through part member families.

I went on my first companion exchange this week with our zone leaders in Chia (a place far far away). Elder Vincent was my compa for the day. He's from Brigham city Utah, and the FIRST American person I've been with since I got here on the mission. I was actually able to talk english for a little bit which was pretty nice. Our first visit for the day was with a member family. We gave service by helping them pack candles that the family made (the family runs a candle company).After we headed to the center of Chia. There is this huge shopping mall but everything is outside, this was a gold mine of people to start talking to. Right off the bat we were able to get someone interested and wanting to learn more about us. We met Josè Ricardo (old dude chilling in a chair). We shared the brief history of the Book of Mormon with this man and instantly he seemed interested. He ended up telling us that he was going to start reading the Book right then and there, and continue to read it every single day! We got his number and address, so Elder Vincent and his compa are going to have a great new investigator to start meeting with! We taught four lessons that day, each lesson was certain scriptures in the Book of Mormon. We taught about prayer, repentance, and the importance of baptism. When I woke up the next morning, Elder Vincent asked if I wanted pancakes! The man had pancakes!!! I was super stoked to finally eat some pancakes. We smothered those puppies in peanut butter and jelly, and finished it off with a glass of Sunny-D.

We are always getting calls from people asking us to help them with moving to another house. This week we got a call from the Escobar family (Family in the ward). They needed our help to move so we were there and ready to help. After getting them all settled into their new home they invited us to go eat dinner with them.

I had the opportunity to teach one of our investigators in english for the first time on my mission. His name is Alejandro, and he is trying to learn english. I was able to teach him about the Book of Mormon, and the promise the President Gordon B. Hinckley has made with us, that if we read the Book of Mormon in another language that we will be fluent in that language. I felt prompted to promise Alejandro that as he would take this challenge to read the Book of Mormon in English and seriously study it, that his english would improve drastically.

Teaching Manuel was the best lesson of the week for me. He's one of our new investigators who has accepted a date to be baptized on the 23rd of June. We taught him about the Book of Mormon, but went more into depth with him because he can understand things very well. We read the introduction with him, and shared with him the invitation by Moroni, to read, ponder, and pray about the things in this book, and the promise that if he did that he would feel the holy ghost testify to him in his heart that the Book of Mormon is true, and that Joseph Smith truly was a prophet of God, who translated the golden plates into this book that we have today. Manuel is excited to start reading, to receive his answer!

Mission life isn`t easy, but it sure is fun, and full of experiences of feeling the Spirit, and learning how to become your best self!

Love, Elder Horton  

Package received from the fam

Opened the package from the fam...I LOVE YOU MOM!!!

Fat manikin lady we found while walking around the shops of Bogotà

Mother's Day, "A Call Home"

Mission Week 19 Bogota City Week 2, "One step closer to being fluent in Spanish"

This week we had the baptism of Juan Jose! That was a super spiritual experience for me. It always is, because I realize now how much that it changes a persons life. Juan kept on saying when am I going to get the Holy Ghost! His confirmation was that following Sunday, and guess what!? Juan Jose asked me to do it!! That was my first time confirming someone as a member of the church. My Spanish is getting pretty good now. I can talk to people normally. I still mess up a billion times throughout the day, but that just means I'm getting one step closer to being fluent!

We decided to start working with the members this week since we had a video sent from our mission president for us to watch. It was a discourse of Elder Utchdorf talking about how we can better use members in the ward to strengthen our investigators relationships with people, and help them have desires to continue to come to church. We decided to try it out with our investigator Sebastian! He has a testimony and knows that the church is true, and we have also taught him all of the lessons. Now its just a matter of helping him have the desire to come to church every Sunday. We had a member of the stake presidency and the bishop of our ward come with us, and we taught the lesson on how we can continue to learn and serve in the church. We had them share personal experiences and their testimonies with Sebastian. He felt their love for him, I know he did because the spirit was with us. Sebastian started to open up to the stake member and the bishop as he gained more trust in them. He has desires to keep coming to church to learn and to grow. I know that the importance of members helping your missionaries is very important. Please!! Help them!! Your short simple testimony and personal experiences could change the life of an investigator and give them a different perspective on the importance of coming to church. As you show your concern and love for them, they will grow to love you and this will give them the desire to come to church!

I had to go to the dentist here which wasn't too fun. I guess the last time I went to the dentist and I got my cavity filled, the cement stuff wasn't put in right, so this lady drilled it all out of my tooth and then started over. That feeling of your tooth getting drilled is one of the most uncomfortable feelings in the world.

Other than that my comp and I continue to chow down on pizza because we got the PROMOTION STILL! Were literally paying 3 American dollars each to get a big pizza and soda. Life is good.

Love you all! Read the Scriptures! Pray daily and nightly! The Lord loves you, I know it!

With Love,
Elder Horton

Baptims of May 5th in Cedros, Bogotà (with the sister missionaries)

Baptism of Juan Josè!