Saturday, October 11, 2014

Here's the Update

Wow, so lots of things have happened to me in the last few days...

It all started last Thursday night when Presidente called me to be the new assistant. Since then I have not slept much, but I love it. 
Friday I made my way to Cali with the branch president from Buenaventura. We spent an hour and half in dead stopped traffic and 3 and half hours after that we made it to Cali.
Saturday was General Conference. It was super awesome, 
I LOVE GENERAL CONFERENCE
Then Saturday night we had to pick up a sister missionary who had to come home to Palmira because she had appendicitis while she was out on her mission. Her flight got in at 12:45am… So by the time we got back to the house on Sunday it was 3am. After that we went to General Conference. Super awesome as well.
Sunday night we spent the entire night in the office getting things ready for this week. It was a gnarly week, hahaha.
Monday we had to get 14 missionaries their auto sufficiency training, this took all day. We also had to get the training ready for the new missionaries that were coming in.
Monday night we were dealing with getting all the missionaries who are going home ready to leave, weighing their bags and all that jazz. We were finally able to be to sleep at 12am to wake up at 3am.
At 3 am we took all the missionaries to the airport, got them through international check in and out on their flights. After the last went through check in at 7am we had to make a mad dash to the bottom floor of the airport, where we received 25 new missionaries, 14 of them are from the United States. All day we were taking them around Cali fixing up their Colombian IDs, taking them to Cristo Rey, and just making sure they had a good day. We went to bed that night figuring out the training for the new missionaries and the trainers for Wednesday. 
Wednesday we woke up early, at 5am, so that the 12 people in our house could all shower in time and be at the bus terminal at 7 to direct the transfers from all over the mission. All the missionaries who have transfers in the mission, which is around 60, travel from all over Southern Colombia to Cali to do transfers. It’s chaos. Everyone wants to talk and to say how it went in their old area and we are freaking out because we are like: 
“WE HAVE A TRAINING TO DO WITH 50 MISSIONARIES IN AN HOUR PLEASE GET ON THE BUS!!!!!”… Hahahaha. 
Everything went as planned so awesome. It made me remember when I met my trainer; it’s such an awesome experience to see the new missionaries start the same journey that I am in right now. It has changed my life indefinitely. 
When they all left we had to figure out the leadership council with all the Zone leaders would have on Thursday. So we were late to go to sleep AGAIN figuring out how we were going to train those Zone Leaders. 
Thursday rolls around and Elder Walker and I are walking zombies, hahahaha. We have HUGE bags underneath our eyes along with all the secretaries that help us like Elder Rebolledo (My KID!!!) Let me just say that when Thursday night got here we were so dead that Elder Walker and I went out to track our area and to teach and honestly I’m pretty sure nobody understood what we were saying.
Yesterday was our first normal day since I got here. We came to the office in the morning, planned all day what we are going to do in the individual training of the missionaries in the personal interviews that we are going to start with President next week. Then after we had finished planning, which was like 5:30, we went out to our area for the first time in a week. We found some super awesome people. I’m so excited to work with them. Like a family of 10, the Córdoba Family, we found them looking for an address in our area. Our area is called Terrón Colorado. It’s huge, and it’s on the side of the cliff on the way out of Cali heading towards Buenaventura. That is our area… Cliffs!
I love being here in Cali. I’m super excited to work here in the office/mission home. My new companion is Elder Walker from Utah my first companion from the United States. We are having so serious good times. We are constantly speaking as much Spanish as we can together but at times words just come out like Todos los días encontramos at least two hahahaha (Not sure what this means…)
President came in one day to see how our trainings were turning out as we were preparing them. He walked in the room to find us watching videos of the district in English, reading talks and scriptures in English, but talking in Spanish and writing down our ideas on the white board in Spanglish. We are actually having a great time. 
We have someone who looks after us because we have no time to do our own laundry and stuff, so we have María, she’s awesome. I love María. She makes us lunch, cleans our house and our clothes. She is the BOMB. 

I love my life in the mission. 
I love who I am, 
I love being a Mormon. 
It means so much to me now. It’s more than just reading the scriptures. It’s about loving your existence and all of those around you. I hope that all of you that live in the United States reading this blog will take time to go to the movie theater to see Meet the Mormons.
I love you all.
I don’t have too much time to write a message this week however I will leave you all with this Challenge: 
Go to the movie theaters and watch Meet the Mormons. 
You will not regret it. I promise
I love you all 
Talk to you next week 

Elder Lyle

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