I meant to post this last week but our Sundays are BUSY now with our new assignment at the MTC……

We have some new assignments.

1. I , Faye, have been asked to facilitate an English language learning class from the church’s Pathways program. The students will be some of the local employees at the area office. I’m going to a class that is already in session to watch and learn this Thursday. The class is starting this September and will meet in one of the area office conference rooms after work on Thursdays at 5:00. I won’t be teaching, the students teach themselves with the curriculum provided. But I’m excited! I can do English!!!

2. President Moore from the MTC  met with us on Tuesday to ask if we would serve in the branch presidency for the English speaking missionaries at the MTC. We are still learning what our responsibilities will be. I do know that we both will be giving a talk in Sacrament Meeting on different basic gospel subjects once a month. The couples in the branch presidency take turns speaking along with the missionaries. Spending time with the missionaries is one of my favorite things here! What a blessing to have this responsibility! We will pretty much spend most of the day on Sunday at the MTC.  President Moore said that even though these missionaries will be learning Spanish, Sunday meetings are in English except for the opening and closing prayers and the sacrament prayer. The meetings on Sunday are so we can be ‘fed’ spiritually, not to learn Spanish. I agree. I had just decided that I was going to start going to all of the English speaking classes in our La Molina ward for that very reason. I’ll miss the good people there but looking forward to the MTC experience. I need to get used to calling it the CCM. That’s what they call it in South America. It stands for Centro de Capacitacion Misional.

Last week we spent 4 days in Bogota, Colombia. Here’s part of a letter I wrote to our children:

June 13, 2017 – Dad and I flew to Bogota, Colombia yesterday to do some teaching at the MTC here. Yesterday, we taught a health class to the Spanish speaking missionaries and tomorrow we teach some new missionaries that will have just arrived. That will be a bilingual class. The class is 10 Laws of Health for South American Missionaries. Today, we have a free day to sight see and do some shopping. One thing I am shopping for is hairspray. They don’t have it in Peruvian stores. I have looked and looked. You can only get it in expensive salons and it is indeed expensive. I’m told it is a regular item here like in the United States. I will be stocking up.

There is one little wrench in this trip… We both have some altitude sickness going on. We didn’t realize that Bogota is over 8,000 feet. Yesterday when we got here, we both had headaches. We thought it was from the “headache” at the airport. It took FOREVER to get out of that place once we landed. There are much more efficient ways to move people and luggage! The class was supposed to start at 2:00 but we didn’t arrive on time so it started at 3:15. The MTC president’s wife, Sister Hansen, gave us something like Excedrin, I think it was, for our headaches and we felt better at dinner time. We went to dinner last night with President and Sister Laney from the Bogota North mission. They are from Gilbert, AZ and know my sister, Diane’s, family and Carter’s sister, Michelle’s, family. He was Michelle’s stake president for 6 years until he got called to be a mission president. There was another couple at dinner with us also who were going home today, the Meyers. The first part of their mission was in Peru and they knew Curt and Joyce Mayberry who served in their mission. Super small world!!! We took pictures!

After dinner with the President and Sister Laney

No more headaches this morning, but I am a little light headed and Carter is just plain tired. We both slept really good last night, but it is 9:30 in the morning and he is back in bed for a half hour to see if he can have some energy for the day. He is also on the healing end of a cold. There’s no time difference here and he is not feeling sick from his cold anymore, so I hope we can make it out of our hotel room. It a nice hotel room, but I don’t want to stay in it all day long. There’s hairspray to buy and there’s a beautiful city to see. The air is fresh and clear here. It feels like mountain air. The Laneys said they drink water right out of the tap. We are told that Bogota is more Americanized. There is a Costco type store here and lots of American restaurants, but I’m not really interested in going to those restaurants. I like to see what the local fare is like. We are told they have some good Mexican food! We are going to pretend it is local fare.  :o)  We haven’t found any Mexican food in Peru…or chocolate chips or brown sugar.

Carter is snoring lightly as I type. Good sign! 

We both felt better later in the day…. found some hairspray….ate some Mexican food. It wasn’t good old Southern Arizona Mexican food but the chips and salsa were good. The restaurant had a Nacho Libre theme! We did go to Costco and bought a bag of Kirkland chocolate chips and some sheets for our bed. They barely fit in my carry on, but I got it zipped! Something else I can’t find in Peru yet is corn tortillas…. only flour tortillas. I should have looked for those in Costco too.

Mexican food with the Hansens

Wednesday morning, before teaching the second health class, we went up to Mount Monserrate to see an old Catholic church. It was beautiful at 10,000 feet overlooking the city of Bogota.

Beautiful archways in the Catholic church on Mount Monserrate

We ate lunch at a little restaurant up there. Here’s a receipt for 2 bowls of soup, 2 bottles of water and a coconut lemonade. At first glance it looks like it cost almost $43,000 but that’s in Colombian pesos. In American dollars we only paid about $14.34. It’s weird to be paying for everything in million denominations!

The bill for our lunch up at Monserrate  –  $14.34

At the airport returning home,  we ran into 3 missionaries who were finishing their missions in Bogota and on their way home. We had 3 hours to spend talking with them. Two of them knew some English. One of the missionaries was from, (you guessed it), Venezuela!……… and is from San Cristobal where Carter served! He and Carter hit it off and had some great conversations about San Cristobal and the people there. We talked about our families. He asked about our children and it was so sweet to witness his caring concern when Carter told him about Ashton.  Elder Callejas was sitting across from him at the time and immediately moved to sit right beside him, looking him straight in the eye and would look at me intermittently. I’ll bet he was a kind, caring missionary.

Elder Callejas and Carter

Elder Callejas, from Venezuela; Elder Chaves, from the Dominican Republic; Elder Acosta, from Argentina? (not sure); and Elder Mayberry in the Bogota, Colombia airport

Written by Faye