6-27-2011 Hola Familia,

Things are going well here in Sabanalarga. My new companion has 21 months in the mission and is senior companion but because I know the area this past week I have basically been senior companion and managing everything. It was a little unnerving at first but now I like it a lot. Now that everything is my decision I enjoy the work a lot more.
Maritza and Jesús, our two progressing investigators, are going to be baptized this friday assuming all goes well with their interview. It´s really cool for me because I contacted Maritza and Elder Luque and I both taught her. It´s been really neat to see the change in her as she has understood what we´ve been teaching, and she´s sister-in-law to Janet, who we baptized a couple weeks ago.
when I started to understand what the missionary work really was, I lost my fear of talking to people. Really we´re here to do nothing except help them as much as we can, and so it doesn´t matter how they respond, we´re still serving them by approaching them and showing interest in them. It´s just a bummer that so few accept what we want to give them...
What else...we´re eating lunch with an investigator now, and she offered to make whatever we request, which is really exciting because we´ve been eating the same thing for about a month now at the Fonda Paisa. And she´s doing it for cheaper, too. Arroz de coco, patacones, jugos...mmmmmmmmmm. I feel sorry for the people that live in the US. :P
Today was a busy P-day...but I got a lot done, and that´s what´s important.

Elder Coffman



6/21/2011 - Today is transfer day...I´m staying here in Sabanalarga but my companion is moving to Cartagena. It´s always sad to leave a companion. I learned a lot from Elder Luque, and we had a lot of fun here. My new companion is going to be a Latino, and from Bolivia same as Elder Luque.

I´m still junior companion but my new companion won´t know anything about the area so I´ll be more or less directing for the next few days.

This past week we didn´t get a lot of work done because we had so many conferences and meetings. Moving all the pews from the old house to the new one killed a whole day by itself, and this week we had interviews with the mission president and zone conference and various other things that prevented us from working. The new house is really nice though, and this week in church a lot of people attended.

(relatively speaking)

We have an investigator named Maritza that is sister-in-law of a member that is really progressing a lot. When we first taught her she didn´t understand much but we had been praying that she would be able to understand and respond, and now she understands almost everything that we teach and she has a desire to be baptized. It was a big change and really taught me a lesson about the power of prayer to help people.

I dunno what´s going to happen these next few days, I mostly just hope that my new companion is good and easy to get along with. I´m tired of sitting in meetings, I want to get out and teach!

Ah, another jugo\drink that I haven´t mentioned is chicha. It´s kinda like horchata but they make it with all kinds of grains--rice, wheat, and sometimes they add in fruit like pineapple. Chicha from rice with pineapple is probably my favorite drink here, though I´ve only had it twice. It takes more than a little effort to prepare, which is probably why. I hope everybody is doing well, it sounds like the summer is as crazy as always. Adios!

Elder Coffman