Guinea Pig for Lunch...

EATING CUY (Guinea Pig) - a favorite dish of the lady who made it for him. He doesn't write about it here but you can listen to him tell his story HERE!  (If you listen, we were just late getting our letters written. He did get them!)

And I found someone's humorous post about their experience on the internet-How to Eat Guinea Pig in Colombia.

Hey everyone! Everything sounds and looks really fun! 
This week transfers came in and Elder Cortes is going to Cali while I'm
staying here and getting a new companion! He's from Colombia and is going
to be the new district leader. I'm sad to see Elder Cortes go but it'll be
for the best to have a change. Like that Ben Folds song called Still. Great
song...

This week we had divisions with the zone leaders and I was in my area with
Elder Donoso. We taught some SUPER stellar lessons and were very direct. We
went to the house of a recent convert but couldn't go into the house
because there wasn't a man in there. So Hana (the recent convert) called
one of her friends to come over so we could come in. While he was on the
way,we were asking Hana about him and she said that there might be some
problems because "he hates American people". So I was practically sweating
bullets and when I told him where I was from he gave Hana a look like, "Why
didn't you tell me?!" Well he's practically an atheist too, so we had a
 very very tension filled discussion but we ended with feeling the Spirit
super strong and bearing our testimonies to him. He said he would read the
intro to the Book of Mormon and so we have hope for him. :)

We also have been working with the nonmember husband (boyfriend, not,
married) of a less active member. Before, he would never listen to us and
would leave if he knew we were coming because he knows we can't enter
without man. But lately, he's changed! He now lets us in, listens to us,
and now we are working towards getting them married so they can go to the
temple and be sealed. I think the temple is what got him interested. But we
used the Mormon Message about living bellow our privileges (with President
Uchtdorf). We said that they were living bellow their promised
blessings and so that got them excited for marriage! Man I love the Spirit!

The Mission office hasn't paid our light or water bill for the past two
times we've had bills. SO the electric company cut our power and we've been
planning with candles and flashlights during the night. The worst part is
that our hot water is made with electricity. So we have been showering in the
ice cold mountain water haha. And our heater is electric so we haven't been
able to use that either. That wouldn't be so bad if this wasn't the coldest
week in the history of the universe! ;) But we had a member fix us up with
SOME light. Now we have the lights in the kitchen and hot water in one
bathroom. So we hope the office takes care of it.

Elder Cortes is being transferred to Cali and I'm getting a new companion.
He's Colombian and he'll be here Wednesday night.

Love you guys! You're all in my prayers!!!
Love
Elder Skinner

 Scripture Study by Candlelight!

If you listen to his audio file you can tell he's a little traumatized by the fact that he ate this! Haha!! But I think he'd be traumatized if he met the chickens or cows he eats before eating them too.

Future Vegetarian?

Yum?

Colombia Cali Mission is 40 years old!

Things are going swell here in Colombia! Transfers are next week (already? Sheesh!) and we are both pretty sure Elder Cortes is leaving. He thinks that I'm going to get called to be the district leader as his replacement  and be training a new missionary. That sounds horrifying and I don't know how much I want that. But all is well if it happens haha. 

I got your letter and read about Garrett and the kids swearing at school (Garrett is in his first year of junior high and gets to experience so much swearing it's really bothered him. He's not used to hearing the F-word constantly... ) and I remembered something that I found when we were living with Gram in California before we moved to Layton. It's called the "No Cussing Club" and the website has a place wear you can sign up and get some stuff like a bracelet, a book of words that can be said instead of bad words, and some other stuff I can't
remember. I thought G and O would like that and if he wore a bracelet, it would spark some sort of missionary opportunity. I'll let you guys decide what to do from there ;) haha.

This week was sooooooo long. It feels like it's been a hundred years since I've written. But it's been a decent one. We had a Karaoke activity in the church and it was a big hit. We had about 50 people (give or take) with lots of investigators and less active members. Elder Cortes and I had the spiritual thought which was about enduring to the end and it was super
cool. I did feel left out considering I don't know a single song they played (not really left out. Just kind of like that black sheep you know?).

The mission turns 40 years old this Saturday and we are having a huge devotional and it's going to big a huge deal. Just for the occasion, they made a list of all of the converts from the last 2 years and gave to us to update and invite the people to come. It's going to be cool but because it's this Saturday night, we can't hold any baptisms. So that's annoying.
But hey, it'll be cool!

The tiredness issue has eased up a little (He's been super tired during the day. While I think a lot of it is just being a missionary and learning a new language, I mentioned that he should make sure he's getting enough to eat and vitamins, especially iron.) and I'm pretty sure it's because I've been eating this cereal that has 90% of the Iron we should have daily. So I think that's helping. If you want to try the cereal, mom, It's Quaker Oatmeal Squares. It's yummy too! So I'll keep you posted on that.

We had divisions with the traveling Elders. They are people who travel to every area in the mission and do divisions with us to see if we can improve. But that day, I was in some sort of funk and the whole day I was messing up on everything. I'm pretty sure it was because I knew we had someone practically grading our lessons. So that day was one that should have ended 24 hours before it started haha ;) But we learned some cool things from Elder Dean and we have been able to improve a lot more.

(I love these "typical missionary" pictures he sent. Most are from his companion's camera, so Thanks, Elder Cortes!)











































 A bug we found on the terrace.



Paper cigarettes we made with notes of encouragement for those trying to quit smoking. 

New Investigators, A Slide and a Bruised Butt Cheek

I'm very excited to hear about the pine wood derby! Bet you anything Obot's
was the coolest. Still waiting on a pic ;) Here's a couple I'm  going to send him. He's right! Owen's was the coolest, of course! PS It's a land speeder from Star Wars, in case you are Star Wars impaired. 

This week was pretty dang good actually. We found a bunch of new people to teach and one of them is looking like our next baptism.
He's an 18 year old kid who actually contacted us. He somehow knew we were both from different countries and so he asked where we were from. His name is A--- and he's super crazy and funny. Well, we taught him and his dad this week and throughout the whole lesson, A--- was finishing our sentences and sometimes even with the right answer. Everything seemed to make complete sense to both of them. The Grand Apostasy, The need for a restoration, Joseph Smith being called as a prophet, helping Christ restore His church with his priesthood power. The whole time they were both on the edge of their seats and super into it. His dad  had a lot of questions about the Book of Mormon that we were able to answer pretty well, using the Bible and the BoM. So that was really cool. We committed them both to read and pray and to come to church if they could (they travel a lot I guess).
Well we texted A---Saturday night to see if he could come and he replied with a  message saying he couldn't but that he was being very strict about reading the Book of Mormon and praying about it. So WOWZA!!!! Super cool!
The super catholic lady we've been teaching, P---, came to church for the first time on Sunday!!!! Super super incredible. We've been trying to help her quit smoking and to do so, we printed some nice(ish) pictures of Jesus to put around her house and made some paper "cigarettes" that have encouraging scriptures on them for when she feel tempted. 
 In other news, we were walking through a park with the son of our lunch family and I decided that since it was in our path way,I might as well climb up the slide and test it out. Well, it's a decently tall slide and it's made of metal so you can get going pretty fast on that thing. Well, I guess it was made before they decided put gradual curves at
the bottom of the slides because it went from like a 45 degree incline to straight flat. _/  [?] kind of like this. Well, I was going pretty fast and ended up seriously bruising my right butt cheek. That was on Wednesday. It still hurts to sit down almost a week later. And everyone in the whole neighborhood knew about it too because there a was a super loud noise (from
both me and the slide) and a roaring and a hyena like laugh coming from Elder Cortes. It was pretty funny but I still wish I had just walked around the darn thing haha.
Love you!

March in Pasto!

Hola familia Skinner!

Sorry to hear about all of the sickness that's been going around. I hope everyone is doing better now :)
There aren't really seasons here. Just hot and hot/rainy. haha.

This week felt super long and slow, but good! We did some service for a member and that practically killed us for about three days after. Man, I've been incredibly sore since then. But it was cool.
We found a less active family and they are wonderful The E... family. And they are super amazing. They don't attend church because they feel imperfect or something like that so explained to them why we have church in the first place, to renew our covenants with Heavenly Father and repent.

Well, we had some spiritual lessons with them and the 8 year old son who hasn't been baptized yet and he's been reading the Book of Mormon like none other! And he really likes it! But whenever we invited them to church, they said no and we were pretty sure they weren't coming. But then...almost all of them were there yesterday!!! WHOOT!
We also had another investigator come named I... He's around 19 or 18 and we have a hard time getting a hold of him because of his schooling. But he came and after sacrament meeting I was talking to him and he said he read the chapter in the Book of Mormon that we left him. (3 Nephi 11) He said he really liked it and wanted to keep reading!! I asked him if he prayed about it and he said, "of course!" When I asked him how he felt during his prayer, he described about half of the ways we feel the Spirit! I told him that it was the Spirit he felt and he said, "I know." So we are really excited for him and are trying keep working with him.
We found some new investigators this week too and they all look very promising.
I'm pretty excited but I'm having a pretty hard time focusing and it's really annoying. I take notes during church and that usually helps but the rest of the week is really hard. So if you have any tips, I'd appreciate them. 

Pictures of our house

  A cowboy statue in a barber shop here. 

Love you guys! Love, Elder Skinner