New Companion & Bogota Temple October 1, 2014

Te amo mucho! The CCM has been alright but my experiences have been phenomenal, I have a compañero named Elder Gardner, he went to Williams Field High School(Gilbert, AZ) as well but I think I only talked to him once, which is a shame because we are awesome friends now! I am district leader and was made so three days into the mission! Its a real blessing, and I feel very comfortable in the Spanish language and people! I did go to the temple, and there is a guard. The police on the other hand have machine guns in hand that could possibly shoot through like 50 people, and they are super scary looking, and will question anyone they want on the streets. And there are a lot of them. The endowments session was awesome, and I felt so much peace and emotion as they spoke Spanish and talked about our origin. It felt as though God was saying to me: This is where you belong. I almost cried because I feel like I am at home here.I feel like they are already family to me :). I am way further ahead in the language than most of the new missionaries, and the Latinos love me for it! Their testimonios are unmatched in all the world. Some could not entirely afford to come out, some are the only miembro in their families, some have even ran away from home to be here. I gave a hand out card and taught two of our flight attendants some gospel stuff. I also taught a bus driver part of the first lesson with Elder Guedes from Natal Brazil...he was so interested that he asked if we could refer missionaries to him. The reason we took a bus ride was to go into Bogota to a crazy old health clinic to get blood drawn to verify blood type. The drivers in the city are horrible and it is not uncommon for two busses a truck and a car and a motorcycle to squish into three lanes and then drive at 45 miles an hour together. Everyone here drives a Renault. The MTC is fairly modern but you cant drink the water. Almost everyone has gotten sick. Except me. I gave a missionary in mi distrito a blessing after he practically was throwing up his lungs and the next day he was 100 %! What a blessing! A side note: Colombians use castellano but not Argentinan Castellano, they use ja instead of lla, so Ella becomes asia. I am super rushed to write, and so this may not make perfect sense. I conducted interviews of mi distrito ayer and every single one was crying by the end! I love my nuevo calling! But we learn on a program online called tall developed by language teachers at BYU. I found a few huge mistakes in their grammar or usage of certain words, and reported them to my teachers who agreed on every one, and I helped rewrite certain parts of the program for future use. I caught it 8 years too late though, because the mistake hasn't been caught since it was made in 2006. Pretty cool! We don't have much time to write, and our cameras are literally confiscated for every minute EXCEPT for when we write. Love you guys so much El evangelio restaurado es verdadero. Elder Manwáring BTW: I cried in front of my computer when I heard and saw Ava´s hair.