Elder and Hermanita Weatherford: Early February in Bogota

(January 31, 2020) Hello! How are you, everyone? It is 3:00 PM (Saturday) and the temple is now closed for the weekend. Wow! Larry just said, Wow! Wow! Wow! We are always relieved to finish a week of work. Larry and I were planning to walk to our favorite stores for groceries, but it is raining and hailing. So I'm happy for the excuse to stay home and write about our week. The rain here is so beautiful! We are in the dry season, and when it does not rain, it is actually a little cooler here. There was a day last week when I did not break out in a full sweat. :) But today we woke up to strong sunshine and we sweated all morning in the temple, and sure enough, it is now pouring! That is why this is such a green place.

Well, we are constantly amazed at the things we learn, and we sometimes have to be careful not to laugh. Our temple president pointed out during our Temple workers' meeting with 40 workers that the clock in our meeting room was ONE minute slow compared to the clocks in every other room and he wanted it fixed immediately. (We work according to the clocks and timing is important in the temple.) But the week before, the temple held a huge meeting for every worker and guests, 250 people. The time was announced as 3:00, 3:30, or even come half an hour before 3:00 because it is always good to be early. Ha ha! The meeting was actually at 3:30. :) So we get mixed messages about time here. Larry and I still have to guess about what time we are expected to show up at the temple. Today we showed up at 7:00 AM and learned that sometime during the period between 9:30 last night when we finished our work and 7:00 the next morning, the leaders decided to start the day at 7:45 AM. :) We are tired, to say the least. Ha ha!

We have made many friends here now. :) Many people invite us to their places, and it is so sweet. We love them (see pics below). Sometimes, we try to hide because when we have time off, all we really want to do is to sleep. But it is wonderful to be hugged and invited and appreciated like that. Every day we have an experience that touches our hearts and sometimes even brings tears to our eyes. This morning, there were so many female workers at the temple that the leaders did not know what to do with me. So I stood in a corner. Then, participants came up to me and said hello and hugged me and even clapped at my funny-sounding Spanish, and I decided that part of my work might be adding a spark of difference to the surroundings. Certainly, I have gained much more from this experience than I've given. I have learned so much!

The more wealthy people here have fincas. A finca is a mix between a very small farm and a summer cottage. One of the men sometimes brings Larry and me treats from his finca. The treats are little brown chewy things that look just like meat, but that taste sort of like honey. We have no idea what they are (chicarron de cuajada), but I'm starting to like them. :) They are probably not vegetarian-friendly. Ha ha! We also love empanadas and fruit-flavored soda pop (manzana y uva). We are slowly becoming Colombian. By the way, we saw a gym at the mall on a Thursday night at 6:30 packed with 100 Colombians jogging on treadmills, so yes, they DO work out a lot, after dark. We finally have the courage to stay out a little after dark on our day off, and we are seeing another side of Colombia that I missed at first. :) So far, we have been very safe.

This week Colombia had another national strike, and the temple was almost empty. The gates were locked and the only participants were a small group who arrived by bus the day before. In contrast, today, Saturday, we had 200 adults, 50 youth, doing everything from 8 men receiving their own endowments to hundreds of baptisms for the dead. In three weeks, we are going to fly to Cali with the temple president and his wife to attend two stake conferences (Viva Colombia y San Fernando). We are so excited!!! This will be our chance to visit the place where Larry spent the most time on his mission. In fact, the current mission president in Cali (Ray Whitesides) was one of Larry's companions. Cool!

This week, a Colombian woman explained to me that families have only two children because they have to pay for school for their children starting at about age 8 if they want their children to have a good education. Then, those children learn English or French here in Colombia, go to Canada or the US for college, and they never come back. She knows two retired Colombian couples who sold everything they owned, moved to America, now work the night shift stocking a grocery store, just so that they can see their grandchildren who are being raised in America and do not speak Spanish. It is so rough for them, not enough jobs if they stay, and moving to America if they scrimp to give their children a good education. Larry and I feel powerless to help turn the situation around. Several people have asked us to get them into the University of Wyoming, but even that is probably not something that is in our power. Life is not fair.

We bought our plane tickets home for April 6. Our mission officially ends on April 4, and the church has an announcement (senior missionary opportunities) that there is a mission opening for the Bogota temple beginning April 4. :) We will fly home on April 6 and arrive late that night. Home sweet home. Sadly, our first area of focus will be to file our taxes. And of course, catching up with our loved ones at home. Our third priority will be to eat Italian food, because Colombians do not know how to make Italian food. :) They broil everything, even the caprese salad. Ha ha!

We are happy and healthy here. We are also homesick. We are sooo grateful that we came. Our lives will never be quite the same. We have a good friend who works at the temple while her husband works at an "undisclosed" job for the US government. She says that when she goes back to the US and tries to describe what living in Colombia meant to her, that people really do not understand. Their eyes glaze over. :) She said Larry and I should expect the same. I believe her. Before we moved here, I really did not know what the experience would feel like, but I can now say that living in another culture feels almost indescribable. I highly recommend it, and at the same time, I know that this experience is not for everyone. :) I feel so grateful to be one who had the privilege of being born in the US and encouraged to live abroad in order to serve and love people outside my comfort zone. Thank you all for being the people WITHIN my comfort zone. I love you dearly and I can't wait to see you!! Have a wonderful week, and I hope you feel my love for you across the two oceans of Colombia - Pacific and Atlantic.

(February 12, 2020) Yes, we are still doing great! We are loving our experiences here in Bogota! This last weekend, two different families invited us to their homes for dinner. We felt so loved. They talked to us about their lives, their families, and how honored they were that we would visit them (for 5 hours and for 8 hours). Talk about humbling. I tend to want to say, I'm just a normal funny person. But they see us as very special because we love Colombia and we wanted to leave the US to serve here for awhile. We learned a lot about their lives this weekend and we continue to feel closer to the people we meet here. What a blessing! Of course, we were so tired after those visits, but we have no regrets. Our hearts will always have a piece of Colombia.

This morning, a friend told me that I must have lost weight because when I first arrived, i was a "gordita" and now I'm not so much a gordita (little fat one). Ha ha! Also, I tried to dye my hair with Colombian dye and it is now very dark brown, almost black. Another lady asked me what happened to my hair, and I told her that I'm trying to be more Colombiana. Ha ha! I am learning how to make my friends laugh. But truth be told, I still do not really understand a lot of what they say. For one of our dinner appointments, we took a taxi. We rode in the car for an hour, then the driver also charged us a surcharge on top of an already high fare. We thought that our friends lived miles and miles away from the temple. But they offered to drive us home. It took 10-15 minutes. Aha! Another corrupt taxi driver so happy to get some Gringos in his car so that he can scam them. The government just outlawed Uber. Sad. (so now we use Didi) Things like this always remind us to be very careful because we are obviously not from here and we are sometimes targets. :) But that's okay.

Our temple presidency decided to reduce our work schedule a little (to match that of the Temple Pscy), and this small difference has really helped us feel more healthy and able to work. We are so grateful. One couple member of the presidency in particular, Javier and Maria Elvira, are special friends. Javier is a vegetarian like me so they like to eat with us. So far, when we have eaten together, he has ordered the fish, the chicken, and the pizza. That's how vegetarians roll here. Ha ha! They also have shared with us some of their insights from the scriptures and from life. They LOVE family history, and Larry and I would like our next mission to be a family history mission. Time will tell . . .