So to finish off the story we had to climb up on the roof and go through the hole, i got cut on my face a little bit from glass but it all went well and it was a once in a life time experience. A neighbor had a car so we took him to the hospital in that, he was laying down in the bed of the truck screaming, it was a little funny because he was using a lot of bad words but it was sad. I'm excited to Skype, Tace and i have been talking about how we will do it and we have a pretty good plan, i just have to put a specific day and hour with him and he will get it all set up on your part. 

This last week was a good week for us, Christmas is an interesting time here in El Salvador. It is full of parades, parties, fireworks and drunk people. Pretty much everyday where i am there is a dance party or some type of party that makes it interesting and hard to work because none of the members or investigators are in their houses due to the parties. The attendance in church was really low as well so this whole month with be a month of suffering for the church but its all good. So these past two months i have been reading the Book of Mormon and i finished it in exactly two months and it was amazing. My plan is to read it every 4 months in the future which is a very reachable plan, i have learned a lot these past two months and this last week i started to read it in Spanish again and hopefully will finish before the next general conference. Also this last week we had a Christmas party in the house of the mission president and here is a picture of one of the things we did. We did a little scavenger hunt and for a picture we had to take one with every ones feet off the ground so i decided to be the main part in this picture ;) I hope you like it. 

Cole

Mom-

It sounds like it was a good week for you in the office, the things you tell me are really interesting to hear and i like to share them with my companions and friends that are here with me and they all get a good laugh from them. You don't have to clean any of the messes up do you, or is it just the nurses? Like you i had a good experience that probably will never happen again in my life but ill get to that later. I don't have my release date but i think it will be in the last week of June but I'm not fully sure. I have done some calculations on a calender of 2013 that i have and I'm pretty sure its the last week of June but ill double check when i get back to my house and ill let you know next week.

You don't think you can cook but i miss your food so much i don't think you could comprehend it. The food here is good don't get me wrong but i miss your home cooked cookies, chicken Alfredo and a bunch of other things! When i come home i will be so happy to eat your food! I'm glad you get to stay dirty for a couple of days, i wish i could not shave for a couple of days but that's not allowed, when i get home I'm going to grow a fat moustache i think.

It will be cool being a trainer, I'm not right now but i will be in a week and a half. It turns out that my companion has had problems with his visa so he isn't here yet so I'm with another companion until the 20 of this month when he comes in. Right now I'm with an Elder named Elder Escalante from the Dominican Republic. This is my first companion from there and he is very interesting, i never get bored so that's a good thing. He tells the most wild stories and if they are true he has not lived a normal life. So Sunday night we were on our way home and we were about to walk into our neighborhood when a man comes out yelling for help so me and my companion started running to where he was and we found out that a drunk man had climbed on top of an abandoned house and he fell through the roof. No one in the neighborhood has keys to the house so we couldn't open the door to get him out and he couldn't go through the window either because they all have steel bars protecting the house from people getting in. So we have a 250 lb drunk man that fell through the roof of a one story house that hurt his back really bad from the fall and couldn't move, with no way of getting him out of the house except from the place where he came...the roof and we only had three guys to get him out. Oh, he was also bleeding really bad from his mouth, which was actually blood coming from his stomach we found out the next day. So, after 20  minutes of struggling and working we got him out and got him to the hospital and he is in bad shape. We found out that he climbed up on the top of the house because he was looking for his wife...ya we should choose better to not drink because he will have problems for his whole life now. I thought it was a cool experience! 

Anyways it was a good week and I'm doing well. Tomorrow is our Christmas party in the house of the Mission Prez.

Cole

Only one more month until we finish this year and its crazy, this year went by really fast!

This last week was a good one, today was a fun P-day for us. This is the second time I've hiked a volcano here in El Salvador, it took forever! We had a good group that went so it was a lot of fun. My mission president called me yesterday morning and extended another calling for me, he asked me to train again. This will be the third time for me to train, I'm not sure who my new comp is yet but i will know Wednesday. I'm excited to train again but its really tiring and stressful but maybe i need to learn things from it. This means that i will be in my area for at least two more changes and ill be here for a total of at least 9 months and in this same zone for more than a year! I'm thinking about changing the name of my mission because I'm not in the city, I'm in the middle of no where ha but its all good, I'm ready for the third time challenge. Saturday was a cool day for me, one of the families i helped reactivate got married! Its so cool to see the progress of your investigators and the Less Active members in your ward.

I think that's about it for me this week, i cant wait to get your letter! I hope you have a good week and stay safe!

Love Always,

Cole

As for me, you want to know what i eat. Well where i am is very far away, from the capital its about 3 hours in a bus so there isn't much here. To eat we have two really big restaurants that sell one thing...chicken! That's all we eat here, chicken, rice and beans. I love it but it does get a little old after a while. There is Taco Bell in the capital, as well as Wal-Mart, Price-Mart (like Costco but a little smaller, we cant enter though) McDonald's, KFC, Little Cesars, Burger King and things like that. I haven't been in the city for almost a year so i don't remember the taste of that stuff ha I don't want to eat out because i cant bring myself to spend money.  We had a good week, we saw some miracles! We have been having a really tough time on Sundays with members attending church so me and my companion felt that we needed to work more with the members and so that's what we did this last week and it worked! Two weeks ago we had an assistance of 88 in sacrament meeting and this week we had an assistance of 122!! It was amazing to see that every person that we visited came to church, even the ones that told us that they wouldn't go, went! It was really cool to stand in the doorway and welcome all of the members that came and see how they felt the spirit during the sacrament meeting. I had a funny experience with my Bishop yesterday when we were visiting some less active members. Somehow he knew that i don't like to spend money on buses, it gets expensive, so i ask for rides. Well he said Elder lets see how well you can ask for a ride and put your theory to the test and see if you can get a ride for us back to the house. Well the first person that drove by i asked for a ride and they gave us one, not only did they give us one but they went out of their way for us and dropped us off at his doorstep. After i jokingly said, Bishop you didn't have faith in me and he said he didn't for that purpose, it was a funny experience. Other than that everything went well for us and I'm doing well.

Well for me this last week was a really interesting week. Saturday morning we got a call from the mission president saying that my companion had changes and that i wasn't going to have a companion so i was being put in a trio until they find me another companion. So i went to another area Saturday, Sunday and today. This morning i got another call saying that i was going to be changed to another area to help some missionaries that are having a lot of problems not working and not obeying the mission rules, this will be interesting. I'm a very relaxed person and don't rat people out but I'm nervous about that because i know they aren't doing what they should but i don't want to be the rule breaker. Mom, its kind of like you when you had to break up two people kissing in their car at a church dance....i bet you didn't feel good but you had to do it. This next week will be interesting but hopefully i get my new companion in these next couple of days. Oh i also wont be getting a real missionary, it will be a mini-missionary that wont be Set apart, interesting. Some interesting facts that we found out this week. Our mission is getting 80 new missionaries in these next couple of months so a lot will be required of us in these next couple of months but we will see. Its kind of cool being the older missionaries in the mission but its really weird because the younger ones really look up to us, its cool. The mission president will be splitting almost every area in 2 to be able to give areas to all the new missionaries.

It is really hot here still, we passed the rainy season of no rain in my area so ya its really hot. The buses don't have AC, only the super special ones but those cost a lot...we go on them when we can because they only have the big routes not the little ones.My Spanish is good, i still have a lot to learn but i can say whatever i want and i understand everything so its just the little things now...it is tough to learn. Ya i wouldn't want to go to a college in Ohio but if i had to i wouldn't mind it. I'm just looking at all my options right now so we will see whats up in December. I don't want to wait until i have 24 years of age to get married, that's too long mother! Being with Dev would be really cool, we have been talking about it a lot.(Devan is his bestfriend from Texas, he’s serving in Hawaii right now).

Well i think that's about it for me this week so i hope you have a good week and all goes well.

This week brought new challenges as well as new friends. (Dryers, cars, toilets, showers and door locks) I’m learning that things like birthdays and Thanksgiving isn’t really about a cake or a turkey.  It’s about the people that we share them with or the memories of times past.  My sister came to visit and reminded me that I can have confidence in myself because I’m surrounded by people that want me to succeed.  The success is not mine alone but my friends, family and my Heavenly parents.  Thank you all so much.  Lorelei

This week was a good week for us, it sounds like it was an interesting one for you as well. Your were right when you said we cant do anything by ourselves, no matter how good we are at something. Its just like Michael Jordan, he didn't win all of those championships by himself, he had a whole team to back him up. Its the same thing here for us because we can have all the investigators we want but if we don't have the support of the members and their help then we wont get anywhere in our missionary work. I'm glad you have so many people there to help you when you need it and when you don't need it.

This past week for us was pretty good, we had changes and i have a new comp from Guatemala. His name is is Elder Vasquez and he is sweet. I'm really glad we had changes, things are looking up for us now that we get along really well and the members can see that. This past week we found a lot of people that are ready to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ and I'm loving it. I'm was ready to change areas but its ok being here another change, i think ill be here a change after this as well but we will see what happens. Nothing really big or funny happened this week, well we did have a mission conference and changes which means that two days in a row we had to wake up at 3 am to take 3 buses to get to the chapels where we were having the conferences. In one day we had traveled about 7 hours in buses, it was an interesting experience. I'm not sure if i wrote this last week or not but ill say it again, a member of our ward that we helped reactivate and baptised his family gave me a coin from El Salvador from the year 1911! Its really cool and really old so that was something cool that happened.

Im glad you had a good visit with Kimberli and you had some good experiences. I think thats about it for me this week so i hope all goes well for you and you stay safe.

Love you lots,

Cole

Dear Coleicious,

 

Well, honey, what one thing did you learn this week?

    What were you most grateful for this week?

 

I think these questions should be asked of each of us each week.  This week I learned that I cannot do everything by myself.  I had to rely on lots of different people this week.  I tried things myself but then had to call in reinforcements.  Brother Taylor to fix plumbing, tow trucks and car repairmen, sisters to engineer plumbing connections and friends to complain to, and children that call to check on me. At one point Kimberli were in the bathroom, wet and laughing because we had just made three projects into even bigger messes needing "professional" help.

 

I am thankful for your dad this week.  The owner of Highway garage was helping me with my car situation and he called me at work about your dad.  He told me that Dad was well regarded in the auto body industry and they had a write up about his contributions in their newsletter.  He offered condolences, and took a little off my bill. Can you imagine what the consequences could have been if he had been unethical or mean?  Because of him, I can be proud of my name.  People are watching and making snap judgments about us all the time.  When people at work find out that I'm Mormon they bring up other LDS families in Aurora.  I'm thankful that they are people I am proud to be associated with.  Think about it......I'm also grateful for orthodontia.  I am a smile, people (at work) can't believe I'm still smiling through every weird thing that happens to me.  But, they don't know what we do, do they?  If I had yucky teeth I wouldn't be comfortable smiling all the time.  So thank you Dr. Pizza (my orthodontist) and my parents for paying the bill.  So, find something to be grateful for and share

 

Take care of your name!

Love, mom

This last week was really cool for us, we had two baptisms! One was Friday night and one was Sunday right after church. We planned one right after the mutual on Thursday and one right after church to have a good assistance at the baptism and we for sure had it. The baptismal room is really small so we didn't all fit in there it was cool. The people who were baptised bore their testimonies and it was really powerful, one is really sure he wants to go on a mission and he doesn't really have the support of his family, which is kind of sad but its really cool. We just got news about our chances and i found out ill be in my same area again but my companion will be leaving. This means that ill have 4 changes in my area, about 6 months and in this zone ill have about 10.5 months. I was really hoping for changes because ill have 16 months with only 3 areas which is very very unusual but i just have to keep in mind there is a higher power telling me where i need to be so i just have to accept it. I took a picture of the shoes i am using now and have used all my mission and they are still going strong, they have 16 months! I hope you like them mom ;)