Hello Family,
Alright random favor, can you guys look up the conversion to metric for me for 6 feet and 1 inch? The latinos are always asking me how tall i am and i dont know what to tell them in metric, and can you also look up 6´8 cuz i wanna tell them i have two good friends at that height haha (farns and graham). Its hilarious, im not even the tallest grino here, elder jones has got me by an inch or two and we got 15 more gringos this block, a few of them taller than me, but whenever the latinos ask me how old i am and i say 19 they are like ¨WOA¨ and im like what and they say that im really tall for my age, which leads me to a few thoughts, first im thinking ´well i woulndt be much taller if i were older, people stop growing around my age, so at this point my height doestn really correlate with my age haha but oh well¨ and second i tell them that im not even that tall for an american, that im probably a little above average but not much, and they say ¨hay mas altos????¨ and i say ya lots, and then i point out elder jones and the other gringos taller than me and they are stunned, like they havent noticed the other gringos yet haha, idk but ya its always really funny, happens probably every other day
So this being my last two week block i entered latino world!!! My companion is hilarious, from bucaramunga colombia or something like that... So i love him to death but i cant understand the poor guy to save my life hahaha... Apparently everyone from his city has a way different accent than most colombians. his spanish is still really clear, but waaaayyyyyyy fast haha and he hasnt really learned to slow it down haha but thats alright because im getting way better at understanding because of it. Ahh but oh man the first few days with him were an experience haha, he would always stand up around a group of elders and tell them to listen and then just spit rapid speed spanish leaving them all laughing really hard, so he quickly became popular amongst all the latinos because hes apparently really funny, but all the time id just be sitting there having no idea what on earth he said and why it was so funny haha and am just couresty laugh on my own... but over the past week and a half ive learned a lot. When hes not going as fast i can get a fair amount of what he says, and even when he is talking way fast i can pick out a good amount of words and actually tell where the words start and stop, so ive still got a long ways to go but im progressing!!! hes awesome though, hes always got the biggest smile, and even though hes only been a member for a little over a year (k this leads to another cool side story) he knows a lot about the gospel, hes our district leader, and i love teaching and working with him!!!
So for the side story, he was baptized a little over a year ago by a greeny gringo from idaho, and his city hes from (my companion) is in the north most part of the bogota north mission, and the elder who baptized him who goes home soonish is here in bogota and came by the CCM the other night to say hi to him!!! And so it was waaaayy cool for me to see a gringo speaking awesome spanish, and even more impressive a gringo who could understand my companion, and so see that this kid baptized my companion who is now serving himself and gonna be an awesome missionary!!! Made me way excited to get out to Cali where i hope to do the same!!
Alright well not much has happened this past week, just the typical classes and practice lessons and all which are going well, but have been completely in spanish lately, instead of just partly, and they split up us gringos on our last block, so other than at meals with the other gringos all i hear is spanish... soooo much spanish, its great, im learning a ton!!! But some days it seriously is like getting punched in the brain cuz my head hurts from concentrating so hard all day on what everyone is saying... But something waaaay cool that ive noticed that doesnt surprise me is this: I can always understand waaaay better and speak way better during lessons, the gift of tongues is mind blowing, and so for this i have learned to love teaching lessons even more and am stoked to get to Cali!! The other day our investigator asked us a question about an analogy she heard comparing the restauration to a broken mirror and she explained how she didnt understand it, and she expalined rather quickly, yet i caught every word and without even realizing it opened my mouth and words flew out in spanish easily clarifying the analogy, after wards my comanion and i even laughed with each other a bit cuz i have never spoken spanish like that in my life, but ya i testify that the gift of tongues is real and it feels incredible to have it haha... except closing prayers are not something i really enjoy anymore, because after the prayer ending our lessons my spanish is cut in half again and im back to the stumbling gringo who asks everyone to repeat everything four times before they give up and walk away... but ya its fun haha!!
We went proselyting again the other day!! to answer your question mom about talking to the natives, its a bit scary with the first one or two each time we go out, but after that we get comfortable and its a blast!! I still cant get most of what they say but im seeing improvement, OH but i did have one way funny story proselyting this time!!! We were talking to a guy who said he doesnt want to join any church but that he loves learning what all have to offer, there was some weird word for guys like him in spanish, a term used for people who i guess believe everything but dont pertain to any one church, cant rememver the word, but anyways, he said hes seen a lot of us missionaries walking around but never talked to us, but that hes noticed we always have a gringo with a latino, and he asked me if I was sent here by the see-uh to patrol the drug action here in colombia, and i was like whats the see-uh, and after he tried to explain it to me for a few minutes I finally realized he was talking about the CIA!!!! hahaha so ya he asked me if us gringo missionaries are sent here by the CIA to monitor the drug trafficking and ya i stumbled a lot to explain no, that im just a missionary with a message i know to be true, and ya but that was super funny haha!!!
alright well they are kicking me off now, but its good to hear from you all again!! keep me posted!!! I leave early tuesday for Cali and should be able to email real quick when i get there, but i dont inow for sure, so it could be a week from monday before the next email!
les amo
nos vemos
Elder Tenney
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