Valledupar

Familia Arrieta noche de hogar

Leaving La Playa this week was kinda bittersweet. I loved la playa!  I knew the whole area like the back of my hand. I had found every investigator we had and there were lots of people about to be baptized this next transfer. 

Buuuuut, on the other hand, I'm in Valledupar, in a trio with two white guys!!!!   Having a North American companion is super rare.  But to have two.... it's pretty awesome!  Elder Selman is from a hicktown outside of Logan, Utah and Elder Lund is from Provo, Utah.  Elder Selman is like Chase but a little more red on his neck. Ha.  Elder Lund is a little bit like Christian Larsen. It's fantastic!  They both work super hard and we laugh a lot.  In the apartment we try to talk in Spanish. But when somebody cracks a joke, it's almost always in English. 

We got here by bus and the trip took 6 hours. We left Tuesday morning and had to help a lot of missionarires get organized. Then Wednesday President flew in on a plane to have our monthly meeting with the zone leaders and stake president of Valledupar.  Elder Lund has been here for six weeks, so we tried to contribute but we hadn't even attended church yet.  It was pretty good.  Then president took us out to lunch and ice cream.  It was pretty awesome. 

General Conference--we always watch it in the stake center.  We went into the secretary's office to watch it in English on the computer while the rest of the stake was in the big room, Chapel.  It was pretty awesome.  I got a lot of answers to questions I had.  

We had 4 investigators attend but they were all deaf.  Apparently here in our ward it's like a deaf community.  All the deaf people who live in Valledupar assist our ward.  Like a Spanish ward but with sign language.  We have a couple of investigators who are deaf.  I'll write you more about this next week.  We teach the lessons in sign language.  It's pretty crazy.  Sign language is different in every country, so it's not even the sign language that they speak in the US.  I was surprised at how much I could communicate in the first lesson we taught.  I really felt the gift of tounges...(or maybe the gift of hands, haha).   

So Elder Selman and I are learning, and Elder Lund has kinda figured out enought to get us all around.  

Dad--I heard about Colombia's soccer team when we came here, but I didnt hear we lost.  That's kinda sad ; (  

I'm proud of Camille Satchwell going on a mission!!!  I also got a letter from Shaylee Nye.  She got her mission call this week to Philadelphia Pennsylvania!!!  That's pretty awesome!!

Love you hope you have a great week!

Elder Burk