Elder Hicken is the Best

As you know, I've been in this 6 week battle so far to fix the district, and it's been a rough ride. Last week, I said I started winning, and I'm still winning. The elders are working harder, being much more obedient, and more spiritual. Everyone is more focused, and basically life is better. The LZ recognize the progress, and as expected, aren't contented. Basically, it's what they should say. Great, they've come a long way, but compare it to where they could be, and it's your job to get them there. There's three weeks left of the long cambio, so I'll see what I can do.

Outside of that, it's been rough in terms of progressing investigators. Our investigatos are great and receptive, or that at least what it always seems like. Absolutely no one came to church yesterday and so we're like what is this. We had a couple people commit and we verified with them and all, and it was all seguro, and they didn't come. I was pretty upset. Diogenes, who had a baptismal date, and didn't come so now we're going to talk straight and put another date. Pezo and I decided that a part of our unsuccess could be that we just simply need more people. We've got more than enough work for the week, it's actually difficult to fit all the people in. But, we're going on the hunt real hard this week for stellar families.

So, this family from el Carrillo that we got completely soaked looking for? I found them on an intercambio with Elder Eno, LZ, on friday. and it was a small victory. Actually, we didn't find the family, just their house and their 200 year old tio [uncle].

This week, we did a Noche de Hogar with the family of Valentina, a family that was less active a month ago. Basically the mother, Vivianna, invited the entire block and they almost all came. There were a lot of people (or, in Colombia, un poco de gente) that night and it was great, we met new people, and we're planning visit again this week and start the ball rolling.

This week, Pte Calderon is finally coming to the famous Colombian coast. Maybe it's bad, but when people come, I always hope they experience the extremes of temperatures just so they understand what it's like here. Like that it's 40C one day, and it rains super hard the next. Like when Gma and Gpa came from California a couple of years ago and the weather suddenly dropped to like -20F for a couple days and everything froze.

Yesterday was one of those days that it rains an entire ocean and floods everything. It was great. We were in ward council when it started, and after it ended Elder Pezo remembered we left the balcony glass doors open (we normally do, just that it normally doesn't rain like it did yesterday) and we left running to the house hoping the damage wasn't bad. The streets had a good foot of water, deeper in some points. I got some video of trucks with the water halfway up their tires, and it was crazy. After like 3 minutes, we were completely soaked and Elder Muñoz tripped and fell in one of those deeper parts and got super soaked and all our shoes were wetter than a car with it's widows open in a malfunctioning car wash where it's spraying water, but doesn't move the car forward. It was a good time, but my shoes ended up super wet, and when we got to the house it was partially flooded, and we took over an hour trying to get the water out. The Colombians do a thing here when it rains, and it's sweeping the streets. It may sound normal to you all, but remember when I say about a foot of water in the streets. The rain's coming down and there's a foot of water, and there's people in the streets with a broom sweeping the same spot over and over again like they're trying to move the water away. None of us understand it.

On intercambios with La Granja, with Elder Zuchel, we were teaching and these bright orange and pink chicks were playing in the dirt. After the lesson, we started playing with them and it was just odd, these bright colored chicks. 

I love the woman's shirt.  They could have stopped with the first phrase  

STOP WAITING FOR FRIDAY

but then we wouldn't have had the pleasure of being amused at how poorly the designer (or translator) actually is at writing English 

MAKE THE MOST 

THE MOMENT YOU TIME 

IS NOW. 

Always Great,

Élder Hicken