4 baptisms, Goats milk and some pictures!

Sounds like things are going great at home!!! I love hearing from you guys and hearing all the things that are going on.
I can't believe I pass my six month mark this week!!! Crazy right?!
This might be a crappy letter because my comp and I had some confusion with the washing machine we rented and we are just barely starting to write at 5:30 when P-day is supposed to end at 6, it leaves a lot of controversial confusion. haha.
We baptized M on Saturday along with three daughters of a family we've been working with. We've been trying to work with K but we honestly haven't seen much of him since we had the talk about the video he saw. We also don't know what he saw in the video but we are pretty sure that it's in regards to polygamy or the temple.
But our baptismal service was wonderful and super duper spiritual. I was able to baptize M and A (13 years old). Elder Cortes baptized N and D. We are still working with two others who are having a hard time leaving coffee completely. So yeah it's going swell!

We found TEN new people this week and so your prayers are being answered!! We are having a hard time getting a hold of these said ten though. So keep praying ;)

love you guys! Read the talk "A Time to Prepare" by Ian S. Arden for family home evening. This will hopefully help with the whole "nothing but video games" problem.
Love you! 
Love Elder Skinner

I don't think I'm supposed to publish names of people and since his audio file has first and last names I won't post it. And I don't know how to only put part on here. But he told a funny story about trying Goat milk. A lady walks around with a goat and some cups and you pay her 1000 pesos to drink some. He'd given his companion a hard time about drinking it before cuz " that would be so gross," so his comp pressured him to try it. So he did! They asked for and paid for it, the lady took a cup, squeezed the milk right from the goat's udder into the cup, and gave it to Justin. He said it was actually really good except it was warm, which was weird. So that was a bit of an adventure for him. :) 



A Funny sign in the park. (Don't Pee in the the Park)  



 Four Baptisms 



 A Pretty Sunset



Pretty flowers







Rural Pasto 



Chapel up in the mountains.



  Me in front of the chapel.

Baptism!

I got your package!!! Loved all of it! The mp3 player is beautiful but i'm
not exactly sure how much of the music I'm allowed to listen to. I'm asking
President Pricoli about it and just not listening to it while I'm waiting
on the response. What a good boy. We sent him a bunch of classical stuff. 
I loved the letters that everyone wrote. Ian, work on your handwriting.
I love to hear that everything is going well.

This week was super long and good. We had a baptism on Saturday for a lady
we've been working with for what seems like a lifetime. She's super sweet
and her daughter wanted to be baptized too but she didn't feel ready. They
wanted to be baptized together but her mom decided she was tired of waitng
and thought that if her daughter saw her be baptized then it would help her
feel ready. (I'm so glad too. It was something her daughter needed to see.)
So yeah! Elder Cortes baptized her on saturday and I stood in the
confirmation circle on sunday! SUPER RAD! (like the Aquabats song)

We hit a rough patch with one family. The oldest daughter stopped
listening to us after the first lesson so  she wasn't really ever in the
picture. Their oldest son went back to his university 13 hours away a few
weeks ago so we were left with the son (17), the dad and the mom.
They were all scheduled to be baptized last saturday with Lorena but we had
to change i. The dad wants to be
baptized like none other but his dad got sick and he had to miss his
baptismal interview so we have to get a new date. The son also ran into or
was shown an anti-Mormon video on youtube and now he's got some doubts. We
are saying all the right the things and now we just have to wait. We are
working though and they are still absolutley amazing :)

We had a cultural activity on Saturday for the ward and investigators. All
of the missionaries in our ward brought games from their countries
(Argentina, Mexico, and Chile) and I was completely stumped. I don't have
any equipment for american sports and they don;t sell it down here, they
already have a lot of our original food, and most of our original culture
like Nascar and country I don't like. Rock and roll is from America but
how much can I do with that while I'm a missionary. I just ended up singing
an Iron and Wine song. What really bothered me though, is that when I asked
for suggestions or said I didn't know what to do, EVERYONE would just start
saying "oh burgers! Hot dogs! Gross and unhealthy food!" which bothered the
HECK out of me. Everyone down here has that classical stereotype that all
Americans eat burgers everyday and put oil in everything. The funny part is
that the Colombians use ten times as much oil as us. They'll pour oil into
a soup that they made with oil. I've drunk hot chocolate that had oil
bubbles floating at the top! And they deep fry EVERYTHING!
;) but whatever.
I'm having fun. I'm missing you guys and such. It's weird that so much is
changing while I'm gone. Owen will be ten, Garrett will have the
priesthood, Emily will be dating AND Driving and Ian might have a mission
call. Wow ;) Ian's changing a lot and that's weird (but also good).
Love you mom! I hope you don't change because I like you haha :) 

A cool Flower, a high class baby store and some "ray bans" I got for $5. 

Love
Elder Skinner

Ok...so not quite 12 in Feb, but still a lot and doing good. :)

This week was a little tough, I won't lie to you. We had to change the baptism dates for two of our investigators and have to work on getting new dates for three more because they didn't attend church. Both Elder Cortes and I got sick on Tuesday and that kind of kicked our butts for the whole week. We also had a slug problem (and yes that means what you think it means haha. Listen to the recording i sent). But hey. We still have some amazing numbers and the people we are teaching are absolutely amazing.

This one family, The Pantoja family, is just loving the gospel and have a date for this Saturday! This family is seriously stellar and totally have testimonies.

Pantoja Family

Our bishop is super amazing. He loves helping the missionaries out and that has been a real blessing for us. 

Transfers came today and Elder C and I are both still here. which is good because it would be hard for our investigators to have a new missionary at this point. SO we're pretty happy about that. One of the sister missionaries in our district is leaving Pasto and I'm pretty glad about that because I'm pretty sure she and my companion are in love hahaha. ;) She's

pretty dang cool. Should I have edited that part out? I didn't cuz I think it's so funny. 
Speaking of the sisters, they've been having a really hard time finding new people to teach so they're trying to get me to teach an English class on Saturdays to help them find people. I want to help out but it's pretty dang hard to teach a language you've spoken since you were 2 years old. (or however old I was haha.) They usually understand what I mean when I ask them if they could teach a Spanish class and they say no for the same

reason. I'm still thinking about it though because it'll help with my Spanish. :) let me know what you think.
Edited....He wrote about having trouble sleeping most nights and therefore being really tired. Also having some trouble staying focused on Sundays... Nothing too bad, but I don't think I should post all that. So even though it sounds like he's on top of the world all the time, he's got problems too. :) 
Don't worry too much about it though. I'm having a great time and it's been amazing to see the Lord working on the people we are teaching. The Pantoja family is absolutely wonderful and they have more faith than me sometimes. They showed us a little flip chart they got a long time ago and it was the purple flip chart of pictures that missionaries from the 80's and 90's used!! Like dad! Turns out, they met missionaries a super long time ago and they weren't really that interested. But now they are more prepared than ever! When they saw our amazement with the pictures, they put their names in it and gave it to us as a thank you gift. IT was pretty amazing.
Love you mom!
you're the greatest!



 

Little room next to the kitchen that gets super gross. Had a bunch of disgusting slugs in it. Had to salt the whole room. His audio file tells the whole story.









 



Pasto, Colombia

12 baptisms scheduled for February!

This week was stellar!!! We've been kicking out the spiritual lessons like it's no one's business and as of Wednesday, we have 12 investigators on date for baptism!!!!! TWELVE!! Super super amazed with what the Lord has been blessing us with lately.

In the audio he sent which I'm not posting this time...He said that they call missionaries who have 3 baptisms in a month Sons of Heleman. If you get more than that, they call you Captain Moroni. Justin says they are going for straight up John the Baptist!!!! haha. I thought that was pretty funny. 

We've been really unified in our companionship and that has made all the difference I'm sure.

He also mentioned transfers are coming up and he is really hoping they get to stay together. But he also makes it a point to be happy with whatever happens so sounds really positive. 
We found a beer bottle in the back of my toilet the other day... Which is super sketchy and could mean that a missionary in the past had a problem. The zone leaders said that is was there to displace water so less would go in when you flushed but I still feel weird about it. I mean, why a beer bottle and where did in come from? Anyways, the mission president said not to worry about it haha. Ha! Justin WOULD worry about something like this. I find this pretty cute, really. 

My Spanish has been a lot better and it's because I've been reading the Book of Mormon in Spanish out loud with Elder Cortes. We have a promise from Elder Grow from the Seventy that if we do that every day for a least 15 minutes, we'll learn more and faster. And that promise is being fulfilled.
We're preparing for a baptisms this Saturday and we might sing a hymn with my guitar. In reference to what you were saying about your family not singing, that's changed a lot for me. I've been randomly called with my companion to sing musical numbers at baptisms. That in addition to needing to help our investigators sing at church has really helped me get over (kind of) the fear of singing in front of people. I've also realized that
my singing range totally sucks.Horribly. I doubt it...I wonder who is starting the hymn and what note they are starting it in. If they aren't with a piano, it could be way off the normal key. haha I can't sing the highest or lowest note in half of these hymns. But luckily, there are some really bad singers here so no one seems to notice ;)

Love you guys!! Sorry if this weeks letter was lame
Love
Elder Skinner

Trying to prevent ingrown toenails!





mini bananas





star fruit (super good)





My new Hymn book cover.