The past week and a half absolutely flew by and was a blast!!! We went to the temple again, and other than that we just had normal classes everyday... except for yesterday WE WENT PROSELYTING!!! It was leeeeggggiiittttt!!!!! It was hard but i could get used to doing it everyday and am now even more excited to get out of the MTC in two and a half weeks!!! So one of the Brazilian elders left last tuesday for his mission field, so now since my companions and i were in a three some, i got put with this brazilians old companion, elder Soares. He doesnt speak english haha but its gotten both of us a lot better at spanish working together, and its been a lot of fun working with him, hes a great guy!
So we all hoped on a bus and drove a few minutes north to a chapel from which we all branched out and went proselyting for three hours!! It was awesome!! We couldnt take out cameras unfortunately, but there were some amazing sights as we did it! Everysingle house is unique and colorful, but super run down and they have huge gates around them, probably ten feet tall, most with barbed wire on the top and some even with electric wire!!! INSANE!!! Also there was a light layer of fog that sat over the mountains (which we were fairly close to) and it made them look absolutely heavenly!!! (you like my missionary vocabularly thats coming over me). Also there was a park near by and some shopping centers which made it easy to aways find plenty of people to talk to. I didnt understand much of what any of them said haha, but luckily my companion did (spanish is way too easy for brazilians haha they pick it up so fast, my comp Elder Soares didnt know any spanish before and is already practically fluent) and I was able to say almost whatever I wanted and they understood me just fine, so that was good!! So we werent supposed to spend too much time teaching lessons to anyone, mainly just introduce our church and get reference addresses and all and tell them other missionares could come teach them later. There were a few who were strong headed catholics and tried to bible bash with us, but not too many who didnt want to listen at all, almost everyone was actually really receptive and interested!!!
OK so you guys have been watching the world cup right?!?!?! Well im not allowed to watch it of course, but ive sure heard it haha!!! The first day Colombia had a game a little while ago, we were just sitting in our classroom with personal study (we later realized the teachers gave us personal study becase they were all watching the game in their office haha) and everybody driving by was honking their horns constantly (they already honk a lot, but even more this day) when all of the sudden we hear this ROOAAARRR of cheering from LITERALLY EVERY DIRECTION!!!! IT WAS INSAAANNNEEEE!!!! From above us, below us, and on everyside, the whole city literally erruplted in cheer at the exact same time!!!!! I think the ground shook, and it was easily the most incredible thing i have ever heard!!!! Haha so ya thats how the world cup is here, pretty exciting!!! ITs happened several times since, and its a blast to somewhat be apart of haha!!!
Alright so way cool thing President Dyer told us, I asked why we dont use the formal you subject and tense with God while praying, since we use more formal words in english such as thee and thou and all, and he taught us that those terms are actually what used to be an informal tense in english, but theyve been dropped from the language over the years. People used to talk to family members and good friends with thee and thou (lets be real though, can you imagine how funnty that must have been haha) but that those words have been preserved just for the sake of praying to our Heavenly Father, who is our father and thus should be communicated with in a familiar tense. So ya thats one of the many neat things President Dyer is always teaching us, he is absolutely brilliant!
So the latino group this block are a lot smaller in number and not as receptive of us gringos and our poor spanish haha, the first few days when they would talk to us and we wouldnt understand, we would ask them to slow down and they would still just repeat whatever they said just as fast, and after a few times they would just rolll their eyes and walk away, so thats been a bummer, and also I got called as district leader and they were all way suprised at first that this norte americano who doesnt even speak their language got called, but its all good. We have a ton of fun playing volleyball with them everyday though!!! They are pretty good and its always a blast!!
K so one last really interesting story. So our investigators we have here in the CCM are just teachers being actors of course, but they are acting like real people who the techers themselves taught on their missions, which makes it seem really real and is pretty neat! The other day we were teaching one named Daniel, and he had just moved here from Paraguay where he lived with his mom (he moved in here with his dad) and he had been telling us he has trouble sleeping and stuff, and he finally confesed to us that the reason he moved here is because he killed a guy in paraguay. It was somewhat self defense, but he smashed a beer bottle against a guys head and killed him, and ran away here to Colombia. So its been unreal trying to work through this with him, and we just learned that we are going to have to learn how to report this to government authorities too with the bisop. But anyways, its just crazy to think that there are so many people around here with real problems like this, who would kill (sorry this is a horrible innappropriate pun haha) to know that there is a Savior who enabled the power of redemption and enablement to them. So ya, that is just one more big reason why i couldnt be happier to be serving a mission, I miss you guys tons, but there are poor unfortuate people out there who need this gospel desperately, and i couldnt be luckier to have the opportunity to take it to them!!! Entonces, yo se que Jesucristo ha tomado sobre si la pena de todos los pecados del mundo, y tambien toda la pena que hemos tenido y que tendremos aqui en la tierra. Yo se que no hay un mensaje mas importante, y no hay ninguna cosa que quiero mas que quiero compartir este mensaje y ser un herramiento en las manos del Senor.
Les amo
Nos vemos
Elder Tenney
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