Mission Week 39, Yopal Week 4, "We had about 30 investigators come to church this Sunday!"

Our Mission President came to our ward this Sunday.

This week we had a whole bunch of exciting stuff happen!

First off, all the missionaries in Yopal headed out to Sogamoso again. We had our little conference with our Mission President this Tuesday. He shared with us the importance of focusing on the doctrine and not going to over board when we teach. When we teach, we should be simple and bear testimony as much as we possibly can. This will open the door for the people we teach to feel the spirit and testify of our words.

We tried to apply what our president taught us this week. I can say that we've seen much success in following his counsel. He truly has the authority to receive revelation for the MCBN (Mission Colombia Bogota Norte).

This Sunday we had a mountain of investigators come to church. We had about 30 investigators come to church this Sunday! (That is divided between 3 companionships) It was a great Sunday to be there as well because our mission President was able to be there. He mad changes to the Presidency here in the Rama. He also announced that 2 stakes will soon be here in Yopal. We are having trouble getting a stake created because there are so many less active members. We literally have a list of about 987 people that we need to go visit. One by one we're getting it done.

Yesterday night, just before returning to the apartment, we were standing outside waiting for the other companionship to arrive. While we were waiting this drunk man showed up from around the corner of our building. He had his beer bottle in his hand and he yelled to me and said "Hey you!". He slowly waddled over to me. My heart started beating super fast. I don't know why I didn't run... He Got right in front of me and told me "Give me your phone" ( I was confirming appointments). He put his hand out and rested it on my shoulder and I was like ah pailas I threw it... But! He looked at me for a second and then said "AW Naw man your cool!" And then he just waddled away. There are always drunk guys here in the street yet that was my first encounter with one haha. The Lord is always there protecting his children!

Also! Just because it was super funny, this morning when we got up, we walked out into the kitchen and everything was just flooded. The floor was soaked with water. I walked over to our washing machine and water was just flooding out of it. Our washer machine works a little differently because we don't have water. We have to manually put in the water with a little hose. I had stuck the hose in the washer machine the night before, and left it running ALL night long! The water was almost covering our feet walking around. We ended up pushing it all out with broom sticks.

Loves to y'all! 
Elder Horton

Impressions of Yopal:
1. Taxis here are very cheap. We end up paying like 5 mil to go considerably long distances.
2. When something doesn't go your way here in Colombia the people will say the word "Pailas"
3. There are so many iguanas here!

My zone making a Pyramid

Hand stand one arm

My Missionary Tag

My Zone at La Playa Blanca

Elder PumaCondor and I at La Playa Blanca

Parrot

Elder Peterson (In my group from the MTC) and I

     

Mission Week 38, Yopal Week 3, "Tried eating armadillo, It's actually good"

This week was sick cool! I got some nice pics too.
Many exciting things happen that you can never explain them all. 

I honestly cannot remember what happened this week haha! I do remember that the President of the mission is coming to the area next week. He's going to be making changes to the Rama (Branch) of Yopal!

I'll send lots of pics next week Que Pena! 

Love you all

DAD look what I ate this week! It's actually super Bomb. Its armadillo!

Mission Week 37, Yopal Week 2, "Put every bit of trust you have and give it to the Lord"

I don't know any other way to start an email without "This week", What a great week" etc...lol

THIS WEEK was yet again another amazing one full of miracles. Elder Pumacondor and I didn't have a whole lot of time to work in our area because half of the mission got called into Bogotá. A member of the seventy, Elder Held came to our mission on Friday. Funny thing about traveling here in Yopal, we're out in the middle of nowhere. We have to take a bus to a place called Sogamoso. It's a 6 hour bus ride. Then, from there, we have to take another bus to Bogotá, which is about 5 hours. Elder Held talked about many important things concerning the missionary work, but we also had the opportunity to listen to Elder Held's wife. She talked about "Pensamientos" or "Thoughts". The human brain has about 6,000 thoughts daily (According to what she said). All of us are always thinking about different things, and images go flying into our heads and back out again. If you guys would like to, read about "thoughts" in the dictionary in the Book of Mormon and you can do a little more studying there. Something interesting that it says in there is that we all have been given the power to think for ourselves. We all have our agency to choose. She related it to staying focused in the mission field, but! She also related it to being happy and staying positive, along with keeping bad images out of our minds. Now go get your Doctrine and Covenants and read chapter 6 verse 36. This verse had a changing effect on me that will stay with me forever. It says to Look unto the Lord un every thought, never doubting and never fearing. I put the words never in there because that's how I understood this scripture. If we have the Savior in our minds in every decision that we make, how could we choose the wrong instead of the right? You're either going to choose the right or recognize the wrong choice you made and you'll know what you need to do to get better and improve on. If the Lord is always in your thoughts, then you will always be able to make the right decisions. The only thing is, we aren't perfect. If we kept our minds on the Lord for every 6,000 one of those thoughts we would be pretty dang close to perfect. I know that if we will all try to keep our thoughts centered on the Lord that we will be happier, that you will smile more, and that your outlook on the burdens of life will become calmer and filled with peace. Put every bit of trust you have and give it to the Lord and I promise each and every one of you as a representative of Jesus Christ that your lives will be blessed. You will be filled with the spirit more abundantly, to help guide you and keep you safe from sin.

We've been running around like crazy here trying to find new people to teach on the daily. It was a little hard to find a whole lot of people because we didn't get back from our area until Sunday at 3 in the morning. I love to talk to people here. We literally found a family of about 10 just sitting outside. We went up and introduced ourselves and asked them if they'd be interested in hearing about a message of Jesus Christ. they were all down to listen.

Other than that we were able to set 2 baptismal dates this week with a mom (Maryeri) and her daughter (Maria). The father of the family (Carlos) has already accepted a date to be baptized on the 29th of September. We taught this family after a sacrament meeting and they are very excited to get baptized! they love the church and the feeling they have each time they come. Maryeri came up to us and told us that she and her husband aren't married and wanted to know if that would affect them getting baptized. We asked them if they would be willing to get married. She told us that getting papers all signed would be a little of a hassle, but that she wants to get married as well! I hope we can get everything all worked out before their baptismal dates!

Love you all! Have a great week!
Elder Horton

Impressions of Yopal:
1. This week I ate this sick food called Chiguiro! It's this fat rat/beaver(with his tail cut off) type of animal. It's actually not too bad. I'd recommend it!
2. Humidity is off the charts (it´s so dang hot)
3. The people from Yopal are called "janeiros"

Eating food with Elderes from Yopal and Hermana Nury

food from Peru called Arroz chaufa

Mini washer we found in a store

Restaurant called Nefi (Nephi)

"La Virgin" 

View of all of Yopal 

Hitting the whip off a wall looking out to Yopal 

Eating lunch with Investigators, Nidia, and Salvador

Yummy plate of food called "Costilla"

My new comp Elder Pumacondor

Mission Week 36, Yopal Week 1, "New Companion, Elder Pumacondor"

What is up everybody! This week was of course exciting as all of them always are! You just never know what's going to happen haha.

I arrived here in Yopal (my new area) on Thursday at 5:30 in the morning. It was about an 8 hour bus ride. I had to wait until Wednesday to leave because all of the Elders in the MTC were getting ready to head out into the field, and I had to accompany one of them on the bus to Yopal. Cool thing about being here in Yopal, it's called the promised land! Also the land of the forgotten (Elders). There are literally only 6 missionaries in the entire city of Yopal. Our zone is spread out by about a six hour bus ride to a city called Sogamoso Duitama. That means that our zone-leaders live six hours away haha. The ward here in Yopal is a little weird too. It's not actually a ward its a branch because there is only one chapel here in this entire city. It's pretty dang big. The Yopal branch is apart of the stake in Sogamoso Duitama. Presidente Valladares told us the he wants to create a stake here in Yopal! We are working very hard to make sure that is possible. The Problem here in Yopal is that there are like 900 less active members, and only 250 something that are attending church regularly. 900!! We are making plans in our District to start finding all of the less-active members. We have a lot of work to do here, but I'm super excited to be out here and be apart of this work. Out of the 6 missionaries living here, 4 of us live in the same house. Elder Mcfadden, Elder Mackay, Elder Pumacondor, and me. 

We got here early on Thursday morning. Immediately exiting the bus I felt exactly what I felt when I stepped out of the bus in Cúcuta, but even hotter and more humid. Elder Mackay (New Elder) and I waited around for about an hour in the terminal.  When our companions arrived they were surprised that we had arrived to early in the morning and didn't think that we'd be coming in until later that day. My new companion is Elder Pumacondor. If you know Spanish you know how SICK that name is. Just think of the Puma brand socks haha. I got all of my stuff unpacked and we got straight to work. The people here are so friendly! It reminds me of Cúcuta again. Just about anyone you talk to on the street here will invite you into their homes to hear our message.

I don't have a lot of time so I just wanna share a story from this Sunday. It was about 8:30pm. We had set goals on Thursday to find 20 investigators to teach and set 4 baptismal dates. We had set 3 baptismal dates since Thursday and had 2 more investigators to find. We prayed for the guidance of the Holy Ghost and within minutes we passed by a house. In the house there were a a bunch of dudes chillin with there shirts off. We shouted into their house from a distance asking if we could come in to share a message of Jesus Christ with them. This huge guy named Henry said of course! SO we walked in and sat down. When we got into the house we found about 8 more people that wanted to join us in the message that we were going to share. As we shared the message of the Restoration everyone was really interested and started shouting out answers whenever we asked questions haha. When we started to get near to the end of the lesson we remembered our goal of one more baptismal date that we needed to extend. We figured that a lot of the people that night in the house would accept our invitation to be baptized, but it didn't turn out like that. One by one everyone started dipping out of the lesson. Some of them talked about how they were catholic and not looking to be baptized "twice". Until it got down to just Henry (the guy that invited us in) and a lady named Nelsy. She had many doubt about here catholic church about the need to baptize infants etc.. Long story short, it came down the question and Henry had told us no. So it was just her! Elder Pumacondor asked her if she would be willing to take this step and be baptized by the proper authority of God. She said YES! It was amazing to see the Holy Ghost working in the lesson. The Lord will never let us fail if we on his errand! I know this is true!

Love You all! 
Elder Horton