New Mission President comes this week

So Wednesday will be the big change, and it'll be a bit awkward for the whole mission, but I'm hoping it'll be a good change.

This week was again rough, basically no one came to church. The week was little bits of not being able to work. The Copa America has been on, and whenever Colombia plays, things get a bit crazy, and the APs called us twice to tell us not to go out during the game, and not afterwards either. And, I spent a fair bit of time traveling to Monteria for baptismal interviews and stuff like that. The worst is that we got to the end of the week, and thought we were going pretty fair with our investigators and that they'd come to church and all, and then nobody came to church. When I say nobody, I almost mean nobody. The ward dropped massively down to 64 people yesterday, and the bishobric flipped. There's a lot that needs to be done here, and it's only starting.

Hey, so listen to this conversation that happened last night. A sister in the ward gave us dinner and we were walking home and we decided to drop by an investigator on the way, who lives close to us. Sidenote: There used to be mangoes everywhere to eat, but now it's more rare, so Pezo found a good mango on the ground and we were like awesome and we were excited to eat it. I was walking a step ahead of the other three, and passed the phone back to them to call her, and they took it. I could hear them messing around behind me, as we walk alongside a massive rain gutter with a couple centimeters of water. After a couple seconds, I hear something fall into the gutter and a shocked/dismayed shock from the elders behind me. I'll translate the conversation to English. León says was that the cell? Pezo said that he and Muñoz were just fooling around and it fell on accident. Muñoz says it was more his fault for throwing it like that and that's why it fell. I asked them if they were serious, and Pezo said they were, and we started walking in silence. I started thinking about what to do without a phone, considering that the other companionship lost theirs in a taxi 6 weeks ago. I started putting together plans to recuperate numbers of missionaries and members and investigators and a way to complete my duties still, remembering that really, if I don't have a phone, the entire district almost doesn't have phones, because the other companionship in the district their phone stopped working. As I'm mentally making these plans, Pezo takes out the phone and calls the investigator. I noticed, and Pezo asked, wait, did you think we were talking about the phone falling in the gutter? We were talking about the mango.....and I was like gosh you freaking kids and they won that one. Heads were almost rolling that night.

Hey mom, I don't know if you've been looking at the weather here for this week. So it's been well over a week of basically the same thing. It's more or less 39 Celcius (bit more than 100 Farenheit) without substantial clouds, and the strongest sun that exists constantly for the whole week. Everything is dry, the dirt, the roadkill, the plants. Also, there's been a fair number of jokes about people frying alive outside. But, the point is it's been super hot without respite. Thinking a bit about the part in Landon's letter when he said we've all got our Gethsemane...even all the ice has melted and it's hard to find cold water. Hey, it'll be a great story for the grandkids.

It's awesome to hear about all the people getting married or going on missions! Just that all you out there without a badge, remember that the badge doesn't make the missionary. The missionary makes the missionary. The teaching that we will be held accountable for the souls we could have saved but didn't when we aren't magnifying our calling applies to all of you as well.

Happy Birthday, Talon! I think I said that in December as well...but all's well. Today we were invited to a finca to eat sancocho and relax so we're going to do that.

Always Great,

Élder Hicken