First letter of 2015 and from Pasto, Colombia!

Audio track (7 minutes) of Justin talking HERE!

Some cultural hat they have for a dance at the carnivals here.

Howdy ya'll!!

Sounds like New Years was a blast with all that sleeping you got to do (Dad...)! Here, they blow off fireworks ALL NIGHT. Like big booming and house-shaking fireworks coming from across the street. ALL night. Didn´t get much sleep that night.

But Pasto is beautiful and very mountainous. The air is very thin and I´m still getting used to that. 

Here's a picture of the active Volcano we live next to!  Galeras Volcano

The bus ride was eternally long but I arrived safe and had some nice conversations with a Catholic man. (He made sure that I knew He was Catholic. Every one is scared we are going to shove Books of Mormon down their throats. haha.)

The weather is actually pretty dang cold... Like about as cols a Utah in the fall. And how do you spell "gross"? M-Y-N-E-W-H-O-U-S-E. The companion before me was not a very clean person and so we've spent this week cleaning up this disgusting place haha. I'm pretty sure I´m the first one to clean my bathroom in literally around 6 months... There was a bag of
garbage that hadn't been moved or touched in months and the kitchen was horrid. To the point that I didn't keep any of my food in there until we deep cleaned it. (My new comp is actually pretty clean. So since there are separate bathrooms, only mine was dirty and he was totally willing to help clean it.).

A view from our roof terrace.
 (Sounds fancy, but isn't really haha. 

It´s just the third floor without a roof or good floor.)

Speaking of my new comp, His name is Elder Cortés  and he's really cool! He´s from Chile and he's kind of hard to understand. He kind of slurs everything together but I´m getting there. :)

In teaching news we have some really amazing investigators. We have two that are on date and one that is in the process of asking her mom if she can be baptized. (She´s been living with her cousins who are members. So we´ve been teaching her and she loves the church.) Yesterday we had an amazing lesson and we were all almost in tears with the Spirit. Her grandma passed away recently and she has been really liking the "Families can be together forever" message. I didn't actually know that her grandma had died until we left or else I would have talked about Grandma Joyce. I've mentioned her a lot and how I know that one day I´ll get to meet her because of the blessings we receive from the temple. This Saturday we should have two baptisms for the other two investigators. They are relatives of an inactive family who is now being reactivated because of the lesson we've been teaching.
Things have been better in this area already!

Inside the Stake Center

My new years resolution is to lose myself in the work. I wasn´t trying all that hard before and was letting my mind wander far too often but now it´s been getting easier as I´ve prayed specifically for that. Now the Lord is blessing us with more work to get lost in!
Love you guys!! Keep things fresh and don´t do drugs like the crazy New Year's partiers do.
Love,
Elder Skinner.
P.S. Google image search Carnavales de Negros y Blancos Pasto. These are the festivals that have been going on lately and they are nuts. The floats are ridiculous and crazy, some are kind of sketchy so be careful with what you show the kiddies haha.

 President of the Relief Society in Popyan. She´s also the self proclaimed second mom of the missionaries. Her older son is the one who will be living with his inactive dad in OKC in a few months.
 She will be in North Carolina.

Carnaval De Negros y Blancos floats found on Google Images from 2013