November 14, 2016 - NO TRANSFERS, 6 More Weeks at Least of Villavicencio

No transfers for me!  Or anyone in our district.  The other 2 districts in Villao lost about half of their district.  But I'm pretty happy that I don't have to move and learn a new area again!  And our district is really cool so I'm glad we are all here.  Elder Valverde called the Sisters in our district when we found out that nobody was moving and told them that I was going to Neiva and they were crying on the phone which was hilarious.  Then he called them an hour later and told them he was kidding and they called him words I can't repeat...  Also the big news of the week, we have house, we think.  All the paperwork has gone through and we should move in on November 25!  Also, we get to buy all new stuff for the apartment so it will be so much better than what we have now!  I hit 4 months yesterday which was good I guess?  I don't know.  Other than that nothing really happening here.  I wish I had more to say, but things are boring here. I haven't been able to send photos in a few weeks so here are a bunch. 

MY BOX!!!!

Me during weekly planning

Elder Hernandez during weekly planning

Eating Lechona.  Google it.  It is amazing!

Elder Herandez didnt think I would take a picture with it so I did it...

Elder Veach it would be funny if you held onto the tree like a Koala bear.... OKAY!

One of the most awesome families in the world!

My haircut that we tried to do at 1015 at night that we had to fix 3 days later

The Elders of Esperanza with the Familia Gonzalez

Distrito Esperanza.  My hair is much better here...

Elder Hernandez and I after a bad rainstorm.

October 31,2016 - Who Invented Insects???

Haloooo!

Hey yall!  This week was super uneventful.  I can't think of a single thing interesting that happened... Oh so we were walking on our way to an appointment this week and I looked inside a house as we walked by and they were watching Clear and Present Danger!  I stopped and went back to look to make sure and they definitely were!  I was laughing for a good 5 minutes because before the mission that movie was all I knew about Colombia!  I want to watch that movie again because there were places in that movie that they were in places that looked exactly like parts of my last area!  Also, Mama I got your Box!  And it was amazing!  Elder Valverde was in Bogota for a Leadership Conference and the box was there so I got my box at 2am that night!  I was waaaay excited!  But I still don't have any letters from any of the people who told me they sent them...  We had a pretty good week this week.  Looooots of walking though.  Also we will probably be moving in the next 2 weeks.  Elder Valverde got a call from president this week because President found out that we are living in the area of the sisters and basically told us that this was our most important thing was to get out of their area.  So we spent part of the week house hunting, which without a car is not the funnest thing in the world.  We might have somewhere to live we are just waiting to see if the paperwork works out....  Other than this I cant think of anything!  Thanks for everything yall! 

Matthew

October 17, 2016 - Well I got bit by a dog... Also 3 months in the Mission

Hola Familia,


So this week was pretty uneventful and yet had some crazy stuff happen. So most of our week nothing really happened. Lots of walking from appointment to appointment for the appointment to fall. So yeah that was fun. I hit 3 months this week which was just kinda whatever to be real. Just really hard to be motivated that day. Lots of heat and lots of rain this week. So kinda funny. Thursday and Friday it absolutely dumped from the sky! Soo much rain! Friday there was literally anywhere from 2-6 inches of water on the roads depending on where you were! I forgot to take a picture which I was pretty sad about. Then that night we were walking away from this lady we are teaching´s house, who couldn't meet with us shockingly, and her dog freaking bit the crap out of my leg! I was honestly more mad than hurt. It tore my pants though which is bad because I only have 3 non suit pants now. But I only have a bruise on my leg which is a real blessing. If it had drawn blood and I would have had to the hospital I might have killed something. Anyway, the next night we went back over there to teach again and she couldn't again which was kinda nerve racking, but nothing happened which was very good. Today we climbed this mountain for P-Day which was really fun, but it dumped the whole way up so we were absolutely soaked. Anyway, to be honest the hike was pretty anti-climactic, but it was still fun. There were all these super cool bridges over the valley which were really cool, but they were also like a shake weight for your legs so I am waaay sore. I took a ton of pictures.


So a little description of my area. The entire city of Villao is smaller than my last area which is good and bad. But there are literally no hills here which is amazing! My last area had some hills that were crazy! The bugs aren't too bad here as long as you stay away from the rivers. The branch has a membership of 630, but has 100 attending church. There are only 3 branches here in Villao so not many members. It is weird because in my last zone there were 30 missionaries in the zone and here there 18 in the zone. It is really little.


Anyways, Love y'all tons! Hope all is well!


Matthew

 At the top of the mtn their is this little waterfall 

8. 

The amazing view at the top of the mtn...

Me at the beginning of the second bridge.

 So on our hike last week we had to cross these 3 rope and wood bridges which was cool.  This is the lowest one..

 The Elders of Esperanza

Villao.  From the highest bridge.

My pants after the dog bite.  My purple socks protected me!!!

October 10, 2016 - I am sweating from places I did not know produced sweat...

Hey Fam!!!


So week one in Villao (Slang for Villavicencio which I will use lots because it is faster to type) is done. Welp to get the obvious out of the way, it is very hot here. Very hot. I have no idea what the temperatures are here but it sucks (low's in low 80's and high's in the 90's with no A/C anywhere not even at church). Also, it rains quite a bit here. Probably about 5x's a week. The people here are super nice! Not at all like Bogota. It is like the difference between your average person from New York City and your average person from the South. But at the same time they are really hard to teach because it is so hot that people never want to do anything at all. We didn't get too many days of rain with hurricane Matthew, funny name right? But it was raining so hard it literally hurt when it hit you for a few hours. The apartment here is well really gross. I bought a bunch of stuff to clean it today so that was expensive. The work here is really frustrating. We were having some really good success in my last area and we had a bunch of people progressing, but here there is nothing. We had 3 investigators progressing before I got here, but they split the area because there are now 6 missionaries in this tiny branch and the area that now belongs to the new sisters has all 3 investigators... So yeah. Every time I have a really good experience with Spanish something immediately happens that just absolutely crushes any confidence that I had. We had a training with President which was good. Also there are 2 other Nortes from my group in the zone, there are about 20 of us in the zone. Elder Harris and I weighed ourselves right before I left and I have lost 32 pounds since I went into the MTC so that is good. Anyway, nothing else to say! Love yall tons! Have a great week!

Elder Veach & Hernandez

Matthew's mission Grandpa now an AP

October 3, 2016 - Well I got transferred to Villavicencio...

Soooooo yeah... I got transferred.  I got the call on Sunday at 945pm. I was at the church the next morning at 9am with all my stuff to find out where I was going.  Then on a bus at 1215pm for Villavicencio.  So that was fun.  Also, I am in the part of the mission called the Hotlands so yeah... It is very hot and very humid.  My new trainer is fron Peru, Elder Hernandez.  We live in a house with another set of missionaries, both from Peru as well This could be a rough transfer, because Elder Hernandez speaks only a little English and the others don't speak English at all. I guess I'll learn Spanish really fast now! I am mostly sad about the move  because we had 8 baptisms planned for the next 3 weeks so I am sad I will miss those.  General Conference was awesome! It was so great!  We were piled in the Family History center to watch it in English.  So yeah.  Here are some pictures.  Love y'all tons.  I will talk to y'all next week!

Elders Harris, Veach and Archilla at Subway

Elder Harris and Elder Veach before the transfer

Chillin

Exchanging Ties before the transfer

Elders Archilla, Harris and Veach

Baptisms scheduled that I will miss

September 26, 2016 -

Heeeelllo!

So we find out about transfers on Saturday or Sunday so that is exciting.  It is weird that we are in week 6 here.  This week was okay.  Lots of ups and downs.  Firstly, our investigator who every time we asked how he was doing and how he felt about his baptism for the 24th he said Excited and Prepared, every time.  All of the sudden out of the blue on Tuesday told us that he didn't want to get baptized right now because he didn't feel like he had a strong enough testimony.  So he is going to go home to Venezuela for the next 5 months and then come back take the lessons some more and get baptized then...  So yeah we were really bummed about that to say the least.  Everything here is pretty much the same.  Spanish is up and down.  Some days are amazing other days not so much.  I don't know what else to write about.  For P-day we went to our DLs area to buy professional looking jackets for here that handle water better but are less bulky.  But I couldn't buy any because they don't carry sizes big enough for me.  The high point of the week was definitely when I found a Dunkin Donuts in the mall today.  I was waaay excited.  Also, I am super excited for General Conference!  We get to watch in English which I am super pumped for that!  Anyway,here are some pics.  Love yall!

Chocolate Sprinkles - Life is Good!!!!!

Matthew studying!

Matthew in front of his area!

Elder Harris studying!

Our Area view 1

Elder Harris in front of our area

Our Area View 2

September 19, 2016 - Marrrrrrrrruecos!

Hey yalls!

Just lots of pics this week!!

Love yall tons!
 

Me after the white shirt

 Elder Harris and I at Zone Conference a few weeks ago

 Our Zone

Us and the District leader and his comp before exchanges a few weeks ago

Our golden investigator plus us and the Zone Leaders

Elder Harris and I today after I got a haircut and wearing our soccer jerseys that we got as a zone

 For some reason Elder Harris wanted to take a picture of one of our lunches

Us with one of our investigators who I felt left out when we took the last pic

Us with the mom of this awesome family who give us alllllll of the references

The soccer Jerseys

September 12, 2016 - I have no idea what to write as a subject...

Hola peoples!

This week was pretty good.  The highlight was definitely when we had freaking 9 investigators and a less active family we have been working with at church this week!  Elder Harris and I were so pumped!  The Bishop and the other Elders in our ward were like how did you guys do that!?  So yeah that was awesome!  Also, we got to go to Centro this week.  So for the 5 zones in Bogota every week one zone goes into this area of the city which has a ton of shops and stuff so this week was our zones, Tunjuelito, turn.  It was pretty cool.  It was basically like NYC with way less cars, but it was fun.  It was a nice change of pace.  I got a couple ties and ate McDonalds which was good.  Ummmmm I don't know what else happened this week.  We have a baptism on the 24th which will be good.  His name is Hugo and he is like 50ish years old.  We are really excited for that.  Elder Harris, not my trainer, is one of the APs and he is coming to do splits with the Zone Leaders who are in our ward so Elder Harris is way pumped about that.   Oh yeah, so our zone has some serious hills.  By serious hills I mean there is a little part where we live that is pretty flat, then the entire rest of it is the sides of the mountains.  So that is not super fun but I mean whatever.  Also somehow most of our investigators live super far up the hills which is suuuuuper fun to walk up.  Oh yeah, so Hugo, everytime we teach him, gives us this drink called Agua con Panela and it is so freaking nasty!   I'm nauseous after I drink it for an hour.  I cannot fully express how much I hate it.  Today while we were buying groceries I smelled some in the store and I got all ticked off then 5ish minutes later I realized that something smelled bad and I asked my comp what it was and he was like ¨that is Agua con Panela man¨.  I was so angry!  Um so I think that is all I really got for this week.  Love yall!

These pics are of my planner.  So Elder Harris taught me how to do this cool thing with my Planner where you can put pictures and stuff on it so I cut some stuff out of an old Liahona in our apartment and did this.

September 5, 2016

So not much happened this week.  Real uneventful...  We had some good lessons.  We had 7 investigators at church yesterday which was awesome.  Elder Harris and I were super pumped!  We are teaching some way amazing families.  I don't really know what else to write about to be honest.  The language is hard.  Everytime I have a really good experience with Spanish it is immediately destroyed by an awful experience.  It is also really difficult to see any kind of progression.  A bunch of our investigators keep adding me on Facebook which is kind of funny because I just say in 2 years when I can get on Facebook I will accept your request!  Thank you all for your prayers.  They are much needed and appreciated.  

Love Matthew

August 29,2016 - First Week in Marruecos 2

Hola Yall!

Okay so the last week of the MTC was super uneventful.   I literally can't think of anything that happened.  Then Tuesday happened.  We woke up early and all missionaries going to Bogota Sur, as well as, all the new Nortes went to immigration.  The 11 of us old Nortes got in and out in about 30 minutes because all we had to do was pick up our living card.  Then we just did a bunch of contacting while we waited for all the Latinos to finish.  The problem was half way through we found out the systems for immigration crashed and they had to wait 2 hours to continue.  All in all we waited for them to finish for 5 and a half hours.  Which for me to be that long in the sun this high with no shade is a problem.  So yeah I got sooooooo sunburned!  Then after that we went to this park and met with all the trainers and Pres and Sis Baquerizo where Colombia was dedicated for missionary work and read the dedicatory prayer.  That was cool.  Then we went to a Stake center to get our assignments.  We had a huge group, 13 Elders and 13 Sisters, 12 Elders from the US and and 1 Elder plus all Sisters from South America.  Then we had a presentation from the Assistants, Secretaries, and Pres & Hma.  Then we got our assignments which was super exciting.  They would put an area on the wall ask a trainer to stand up then announce their greeny.  We are reopening an area that has been closed for 8 months.  It got combined with another area which the ZLs are over, but they did almost no work in our area.  We had a teaching pool of 2 people when we got here, but we got a lot of work done and we got 14 new investigators so that was good.  My first night we were walking down the street heading home and these 3 crazy chicks who were high on glue, not a joke, were gettin all up in our business which was weird.  Church yesterday was good.  We are in a ward and we and the ZLs are in the ward together because the ward boundaries are huge.  I had to give a talk which was difficult, but not as bad as I thought.  When people hear I only have 7 weeks of Spanish in my entire life they lose their minds!  It is kinda funny.  I've had either a really bad cold or the flu all week.  I picked it up with 2 days left in the MTC so that has been no fun.  Elder Harris is super cool.  He is the next to youngest trainer in the new group.  He has 9 months in the mish and is from La Jara Colorado.  Anyways, I'm going to end this real fast because I only have 20 mins left and I need to email some people individually.  My PDays are on Mondays and we will probably get on around this time every week.  I dont know my address, but Ill try to get it to yall next week.  Definitely only send stuff to the mission home and only send stuff via DHL because otherwise it will get stolen.  Thanks for all!

Love Matthew! 

August 24, 2016 - I IS ALIVE!!!!

Hey sorry this is so late!  We were supposed to send this in the morning, but we didn't have time because we were on a tour of our area.  My trainer is Elder Harris from Colorado.  He has been out for 9 months.  We are in Marruecos, it is the absolute bottom of Bogota.  We are reopening the area after it has been closed for about 8 months.  So that is/will be tough.  I'm way tired, but the Spanish was pretty good today.  Frustrating at times, but overall, at least so far, isn't as bad as I thought it would be.  I would appreciate prayers for the gift of tongues and safety and health right now.  Sorry for making you worry.  Gracias for everything!

Love Matthew!

From the Mission Office-

Colombia, Bogotá, August 24th of 2016

  

Dear Family of Elder Veach,

We are President and Sister Baquerizo, from the Colombia Bogota South Mission, it is a pleasure to inform you that your son, Elder Veach, arrived well to our mission. We are very happy to share with him this wonderful time to share the gospel to these beautiful people.

He is well and happy to be here serving the Lord. We are sending you some pictures.

Thank you very much for all you have done to help him prepare to be in this wonderful time, we will be watching his progress and taking care of him.

New Missionaries and Comps

Matthew with Pres and Sis. Baquerizo

A really cute missionary!! From the mom!!

Matthew and Elder Harris his trainer