The Bogota Colombia Temple

After the e-mail last week- I told Jayden his e-mails remind me of low budget soap operas. They leave you hanging for a week! "I'm sick. Bye." "Two hermanas are dying. Bye." This week was a lot better. I did ask him some questions, and bless him, he responded in full.

Sorry I know my emails are crap haha. Well the hermanas and everything are doing better, another kid passed out hit his head and doesnt remeber anything from the two weeks he was here, he might go home. I didnt lose the water bottle you gave me i promise. I get a new companion in like two days, some latino i am not really sure who it is. As far as my daily routine i get up at 6 and shower then we have breakfast at 8, lunch at 12:30, and dinner at 5:30. In between all of those we have classes until 9 at night. It is pretty long days but they are pretty fun. I would love some like pocket sized pictures of some of the temples from back home. Other than that i dont  think i need anything i will let you know though. I finally got the package you sent me but there wasnt a tie pin haha: I did appreaciate the toilet paper though. I believe we leave the ccm on april 6th or 7th. We have church every sunday, and then we have a bunch of english classes. Sundays are the best they are so relaxed and spiritual. Oh man  i worry about mikayla everyday, but i know that she will be okay! So the latinos left last night and there was this latino that kept trying to buy and steal my shoes haha, so i hid them and we locked our door. You want to hear something crazy? I know as much of the temple stuff in spanish as i did in english now! Oh and i forgot to mention that the first time we went to the temple i found a pack of breathmints from the last session we had haha! It is like perfect weather around here all the time! I cant believe i have been out here for almost a month! it is so crazy! I am so worried about my spanish for the next little bit, but i think we are past learning about book eating cats ahahah! Oh i would really like a copy of my patriacticle blessing!(i have no idea how to spell that) If you want to know anything let me know! I love you!

Here are some pics of the temple today.

Love, Jayden

(This first one made my heart so happy!)

Bogota, Colombia Temple

He hadn't written Sam yet, so I knew he was still online. I quickly asked him for a picture of his face. He sent me this:

Nice to know his sense of humor is still there. Wrong, but there. I guess it is from a museum they went to? The museum probably had all kinds of cool art, and this is what my boy takes a picture of.

This is him with one of his teachers in the Bogota CCM.
Sam's e-mail:

DAD! I love you! Yeah my comp gets frustrated with me a lot because i dont know as much spanish as him, but we get along for the most part! Yeah i get along with everyone in my district, right now there are i believe 11 of us white kids in there. I get a latino comp in the next couple of days so that will be really interesting. We play a lot of volleyball but soccer is so much funner. I am pretty used to the food now i eat a lot of rice! I had the poops the first like two weeks but they are solid now. I freaking wish we had the rice stuff we had in Belize! I cant believe he is linking the rest of his rig!! That will be sooo sick! I want to see it so bad! There is not a day that goes by where i dont think of Moab haha! I am glad you got brownie up and running that means brendan doesnt have to drive my jeep anymore hah! I cant believe how much the time flies here! Oh we went prosiletismo  (proselyting) and got some contacts it was so cool! Anyway thank you for everything! I love you! Keep me updated and send me pics of Moab! Tell Jim, Brian, Taras and everyone i said hi!

Love, Jayden

He seems so happy and upbeat. Just how I like him.

As an update: Mikayla's EEG came back with all of the abnormal brain activity coming from one specific part of her brain. The doctor sent us in to get an MRI- he suspected she may have a brain tumor.

It was a hard week, full of prayer and tears. I really felt like it was a tumor. Not to be a Debbie Downer- it just made logical sense with how suddenly everything came on, and with the seizures and sharp stabbing head pains concentrated in one area of her brain.

The MRI came back normal. We are so relieved and feel so blessed. It is funny how when you are going through a trial- it is hard, and then you realize how much worse it could be- and your original trial doesn't seem like much of a trial at all.

Throughout this process I have felt worried for sure- but I also felt peace. It was weird. I felt like whatever happened would be okay. I know this peace came from the prayers of others. Our names and Mikayla's were put on the prayer rolls of a few temples. I felt this. I have heard others bear testimony of feeling strength from the prayers of others, and always thought that it was just a Mormon way to thank someone for praying for you. It is real. Thank you to those of you who thought of us and prayed for us.

"In the gospel of Jesus Christ you have help from both sides of the veil and you must never forget that. When disappointment and discouragement strike--and they will--you remember and never forget that if our eyes could be opened we would see horses and chariots of fire as far as the eye can see riding at reckless speed to come to our protection. They will always be there, these armies of heaven, in defense of Abraham's seed."

(Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, "For Times of Trouble," New Era, Oct. 1980, 15)

Another week down!

We got an e-mail late last night. It seems like he is doing fine. His last e-mail said he wasn't feeling well. Of course I stressed out about that all week. Is he actually sick, or just tired, or does he have a TERMINAL PARASITE?!! What is it?!! He cleared it up in this weeks e-mail, and I unclenched.
No photos this time. I think he only has a couple weeks left in the CCM and then he will travel to Medellin and start his mission.
I pray for his Spanish to sink in. I started Rosetta Stone about ten days ago, and it is muy malo. But then again, I have a 43 year old brain, and hopefully his brain is a little more flexible to new things.

Hey Mom! sorry about the late email, the internet here was not working for awhile so we had to write later. Well i will tell you what has been happening lately. ( I hope you edit these) We have been the the Temple here in Bogota, it is super fun and i love going! The first time we went Elder V got a name and the previous work had been done in Draper, Bountiful, and St George Utah! How crazy is that! Elder V is a pretty cool guy we got a bunch of new white kids as well, they are cool i will send you pictures of all of us probably next time. Way to go on your spanish i am super proud of you! Conjugations are the worse and they dont get any better trust me! I am still struggling with the spanish, there was an Elder that we were talking to through the fence and he said that it took him 8 months to learn the language  pretty fluently. I dont want that to be me, but at this rate it seems like it. So how many likes is my Instagram post at? I really hope everyone is doing okay! I miss you guys and pray for you everyday! You dont need to do anything to your emails, i love them and they are my number one prority! So today is obviously P-day, two of the hermanas got hurt pretty bad today like they are at a special clinic right now getting looked at. I am feeling better though, we went on tour and i lost my water bottle that the ccm gave me, so i was dehydrated and they have like 9 billion people in this city and about 10 billion cars it is absolutely nuts! So between breathing in exhaust and being dehydrated i could not even function, on the bright side i fell alseep at like 7 so i got a lot of sleep! What else do you want to know about me here? Or anyone? Ask me any questions! I Love you so much! and miss you more and more everyday!

I hope you all can translate this. I can't. Who is Elder V? No one knows. What the crap happened to the hermanas? No clue. That kid! "Ask me any questions..." Oh, I will.

Hello, Bogota!

We randomly heard from Jayden yesterday at about 5pm. I have his e-mail address set as "VIP" in my phone, so it chimed in, and scared me a little. The P-Days (preparation days or the missionary day off) over in the Bogota CCM are really weird, so when we hear from him, it is an unexpected surprise!

As an added bonus, he send a few pictures! It was nice to see him. Jayden e-mailed Sam and told him his companion is 6' 5" tall, and we think he is the one next to Jayden in the group photo. Sam took a look at the photo, and thought it looked like Jayden has grown- when you compare him to his companion. I had to remind Sam that it has only been two weeks.

Jayden's  Elder Wadley's letter:

Hey things are going good! They are moving Pdays to every tuesaday now so it wont be as bad of a wait! We went out on tour today i kinda went to go see they city, and Bogota is a huge city! I will try to attach some pictures with it. It was all of the white guys out on tour to so it was pretty fun. I heard many of stories of Elder Stout, he sounds like a pretty cool guy! All of my spanish is coming along really slow but constantly progessing i guess. I have not got any physical mail yet but i try to check everyday. How is everyone? How is the snow? How is my Jeep? How is the bowling alley? How is everything? We watched meet the mormons the other night in english ha but the end of the movie there was a missionary mom segment and it made me miss you guys so much! I dont really know what else to say i am not feeling to good right now so i cant really think striaght. I love you! I will talk to you on tuesday. 

Here are his photos of Bogota, and a group photo. The fourth one is the group photo cropped in- so you can see his cute face. I miss his face.

It makes me happy to see him smiling. I also wonder where his jacket is? It looks kind of cold to me. I guess I can't stop being a mom, even 3,438 miles away. (Yes, I Googled it.) Having a kid leave the nest makes you do all kinds of weird things like Google the miles apart and Google-Earth his address.

I also say my prayers every night on his pillow because it still smells like him.

If that make me some sort of creepy, then so be it.
The freak flag is flying for the next two years.

At Long Last

Holy cow. For 9 days I have been running my phone battery down refreshing my inbox, waiting for something to come in from Elder Wadley! Today was our day!
My e-mail:

Hey first off i wanted to say sorry! They have a weird schedule for Pdays where it is a ten to four day schedule it is freaking whack! Well the CCM has been a struggle i am constantly frustrated with the language but i am getting things slowly. I have been eating so much rice it is insane! I even ate whta the claimed was a hambuger. Sorry if my spelling sucks the computer is made for spanish and the spanish i am learing screws all my words up so bad plus we only get an hour! the rice and food in general here is alright, they have really nasty soups oh and it is all screwing up my bowels so bad haha! I miss you guys sooooo much it is insane and i miss some of the daily activiteis that i did! I have not cried yet which is good, or i am heartless. It is long days and short nights but it is good! they took our cameras so i probably wont have any pictures untiil the the send a couple to us but nothing really special. We went to the temple this week and it was so weird going through in spanish! I t was super cool though. Here in Bogota there are about a billion cars and it gets super smoggy but the city is pretty cool! There are so many skate spots and a skatepark pretty close to the CCM plus a bunch of kids go skate in the park right next to us! What a tease! I get along with pretty much everyone here! I absolutly slove playing soccer and singing in spanish with the lationos! Overall i am having an amazing time i hoope you are all doing okay! You are always in my prayers ( in spanish;) Love you all i will talk to you on i belive tueday! Love you all! pleas take care of my jeep;)

As a side note- At first the scrapbooker in me was mad that someone TOOK AWAY HIS FREAKING CAMERA! I want pictures! I want to see his room! And his room-mates! (companions), The food! The area! All of it. It is funny, because almost immediately after having negative thoughts about anything pertaining to his mission- I hear in my head a reason for what I am questioning.

These missionaries only have a short time to learn a new language, and everything else they need to learn to become a representative of Jesus Christ. They probably don't need the distractions. And I think back to the photos that Sam took while he was in the MTC, and there are several crappy photos of, well, CRAP. No lie. For some reason it is a thing with those boys to take pictures of truly spectacular bowel accomplishments. I will never understand boys- but given the recurring theme of missionaries- I guess the food at the MTC makes solid toilet activity the stuff of legend. Photos can wait. I don't want to see that!

Sam's e-mail:

Hey man! I Love You! I miss you sooo much everyday! Things are going good! We just recently broke the record 48 hours without rice haha! but yeah tons of rice! The language has been a constant struggle and i have been so frustrated! Everybody here is pretty cool i like them! My comp right now is this 6'foot 5 white guy from Mesa. We get along pretty darn well i really like him! There are quite a bit of people here mostly a lot of lations the cycle every two weeks. I absolutly love playing soccer with them and they are all so cool! Please take care of my jeep haha i miss it and working on it! I miss home tons hah i miss father son bowling time the most hah!It seems like i got here yesterday i we have been here for ten days already it is nuts! Other than all that its been going good i miss you guys and love you! Hope to hear from you soon! thank you for all your advice it really means a lot! Love you Dad:) 

Mikayla's e-mail- it made us laugh:

Hey Kika! How is it going! I am doing good! My poop smells bad from all the rice i have been eating haha! Ya in two years you will be better than me at the skatepark! I miss you lots and hope you are doing okay! Keep mom from crying to much! love you!

He only had an hour, and I think he was overwhelmed with reading and trying to respond in that time. This week has been all about finding a routine to this- for him, and for us.

We have also been having some issues here at home. Mikayla has been having seizures for about a month now. The seizures were originally accompanied by her passing out. This is what we originally took her in to the doctor for- the passing out. I started to monitor her protein, and the passing out stopped, but the seizures did not. There are usually only a couple of episodes a day. This past Sunday, the 1st, was the worst day she has had- she had nine that day.

At first, you could think "where are the miracles, that are supposed to happen when you send a child on a mission? Why is this happening?"

There are miracles. We see them. We were able to get into a specialist within days. Mikayla has to be monitored at home with an EEG machine. This normally takes weeks to get set up. There are only two technicians who do this in the state of Utah. The home health tech happened to have a cancellation today- and she is here setting Mikayla up. This is not a normal time frame for this- and I know it is a blessing- that the Lord knows that I am not patient with things like this. We are certain that this little glitch Mikayla is experiencing will be a temporary one. It has made us grateful for our health- and more aware of everyday blessings that we normally take for granted. He is looking out for us, and looking out for our boy in Colombia. I know this.

Blessings are everywhere if you choose to recognize them.