August 16, 2016 - Final week in the CCM!

This week was waaaaayyy boring.  Nothing new happening.  I taught an entire lesson in Spanish which was pretty cool.  That was my goal for the MTC so I'm glad I got that.  Today, Elder Clayton from the Seventy was here which was good.  Two and half hours of devotional in Spanish, which I understood most of, but I now have a massive headache! I was focusing so hard!  The Clayton's are the nicest people!  Also, got to meet my President and he is way cool.  His wife is the nicest lady ever!  Also, something I have been forgetting every time!  So no Latinos can say my name because their sound for V is the same as for B... So, sorry for the vulgarity but, they say one of 3 names: Beach, Beash, B*tch.  So about half the day I get sworn at which is kinda funny.  Next week, I get to get out of here!  Love yall!  

Love Matthew!!

August 9, 2016 - 4 Weeks down, 100 to go... (That number was according to my Comp so if it is wrong then h

Hey Y'all!

Sorry about no group email last week.  I was trying to respond to as many people individually as possible.  Thanks for all the updates I love hearing from all of you!  Last week we got to go contacting around the CCM for 2 hours which was frustrating but good.  Elder Argyle and I got 3 contacts and gave a Book of Mormon which isn't great, but better than most of the other Elders did.  Our last week we will get bussed down to somewhere else and do the same thing only with all the Latino Missionaries. The language is progressing, but it is super hard.  I am really glad that we are surrounded by Latins because that helps so much!  I don't know how missionaries in Provo learn anything.   Well, nothing else really happens here so I guess that is it.  A member of the Seventy is coming next week so that should be good.  Love yall!

Pic - Elder A and I with our new habitacion mates.  Only the 4 people on the right are in our room I have no idea who those other people are...

July 26, 2016 - Week 2 at the CCM

Hey!!!

Week 2 went by both really really fast and really really slow.  I am totally adjusted to the small portion size of the food and am losing some weight.  Most of the missionaries are way cool and very patient with our lack of Spanishing.  My roommates are super cool!  They are Elder Correia (Cali, Colombia, 23), Elder Morales (19, Guatamala), Elder Beccerrit (Venezuela, 24), and Elder Peñafiel (18, Ecuador).  They are seriously awesome and I love hanging out with them when we are done with classes.  Three of the missionaries in my district are seriously soooo immature.  I'm just like grow up y'all.  Spanish is super hard.  It is seriously killing me.  We just finished what is called Basic Core which is 210 common words, 40 phrases and 4 scriptures in 10 days which sucked.   Like a lot!  I got all of it done except for Moroni 10:4-5.  I only got verse 4.  We are now studying whatever we need to vocab wise which some of the missionaries don't like but I am loving because I don't have people telling me exactly what to do and study.  I have grown to love personal study from 7-8am because I can study whatever gospel topics I want.  I am so tired and brain dead all of the time.  I have a real hard time staying awake in the mornings.  So funny story of the week.  We are sitting in Sacrament meeting and during the last talk this Latin Hermana was talking so fast I literally could not understand a word she said. So I was tired and I laid my head on the bench in front of me and I started to doze off and right as I fell asleep for some reason I picked my head up like 3 inches and dropped it really hard onto the bench in front of me making this super loud noise.  So the sisters on the bench next to us and Elder Argyle and I just start trying so hard not to laugh.  It was seriously so funny.  Presidente just glared at me from the stand, but I thought it was so funny.  Everyone here is so scared of him.  I'm honestly not.  He is just a slightly more serious version of Dad with some weird rule quirks.   Also, his wife is the nicest lady ever!  Her voice sounds exactly like Aunt Lori's which is a little strange, but she is the best!  The stomach problems are super real for a bunch of us here and she helps us out and is just so nice!  The temple was good today.  I did it in Spanish so that was a little tough, but I understood about half of it.  The sad thing is it will be closed for renovations until like October so I have no idea when I will be back.  That is about all I got for this week.  Just lots of Spanish. Love yall tons!

This might be the last batch of pictures for awhile sorry.

Pic 1-Me and Elder Beccerritt??? Never remember how to spell his name

Pic 2-The sign outside the temple

Pic 3-Habatacion 2!

Pic 4-The Bogota Temple

Pic 5-Some ugly ginger kid in front of the temple-his mom actually thinks he is very handsome!!!!

Pic 6-For some reason all the missionaries were holding their nametags in front of the temple and taking a picture so I did what everyone else was doing.

August 2, 2106 - Week 3 of the CCM

Hey Mama!

The small amount of time to write is kinda killing me.  I'm not sending any group email this week because I want to respond to as many individual people as possible.  I'm way jealous of the family time!  I miss y'all.   Contacting in Bogota was good.  We got 3 contacts which was our goal, but it was way hard because we know almost 0 Spanish.  Today we went to the Immigration office to get our card that says we can live in Colombia for 2 years and to have our visas approved.  We ate Burger King afterwards and it was kind of sad how excited we all were for it.  Spanish is still really hard. Also, I found out that apparently there are only 20 gringo missionaries in all of Bogota South and we are 11 of them so I will almost definitely have a Latino trainer.  So prepare for some very discouraged emails for the first few weeks in the mission field!   I got super fried on PDay last week because I forgot sunscreen and we played soccer and volleyball for like 3 hours at 8900ft elevation...  I got to study my Patriarchal Blessing for personal study this week and I wrote about 3 pages of notes and it gave me a lot to think about when I have time to think about things.  I love you so much and I miss you tons!

Love Matthew (I will not refer to myself as Elder Veach in email)

July 19, 2016 - Week 1 at the CCM

Hey y´all!!!

So my first week in the CCM(Centro something de missioneros) is done! It has both been the longest and the shortest week ever. So we got into the CCM at 1130pm on Monday then got to bed around 130am. We were then completely thrown into the deep end with Español the next morning. So our normal day is around 11 hours of Spanish and 2 hours of gospel study and eating. I´m not sure I´ve ever been so frustrated about anything in my entire life. I am the only person in our 11 person norte (North American) district who has never taken Spanish. The next least is Elder Card who took 2 years. So out of our district we have 7 from Utah, 2 from Idaho, 1 from New Mexico and me. I am the only 19 year old, everyone else is 18 and just graduated high school so I am kinda the old man who just smiles when they don´t understand things about living away from home. It seriously is so frustrating when they tell me how to do things about living away from mommy because I´m just like dudes I am the only one of you who has lived away from mommy! My companion is Elder Argyle from Spanish Fork, UT. He is way cool. William would love him he has played baseball for like 10 years. Though he does like the Red Sox, but I guess I can forgive him. I seriously think my butt might change shapes from all the sitting we do. We literally sit all except like 2 hours in the day... The food is way better than expected. Apparently, most of it is local Colombian food. Mom you would be proud of me. I have eaten a bunch of stuff I don't like! Yesterday, we went to play basketball on the courts right next to the CCM and today to the temple. We will start proselyting around the CCM in week 3. Spanish is way tough. I am not sure if Italian is helping or hindering me... It is really hard not to be really discouraged about being so far behind because the competitive side of me doesn't want to be in last and it really kinda upsets me sometimes. I've made a lot of progress in Spanish from knowing nothing to some, but it is still really hard to not know how to express myself. So in the entire CCM there are about 100 Elders and Hermanas 17 of them are norte Elders the rest are Latinos. They are soooooo small! All 11 in my district are going to Bogota Sur. Also, interesting story so about that. So about a month ago a whole district of 8 norte missionaries got sent home from Bogota Sur for going as a district to a ¨Discotec¨. When I heard that, I just got a really strong feeling about revelation to prophets because all of us got our calls before that so they had no way of knowing that a whole district would get sent home. Both Presidente and Hermana DuVall said this is their biggest group of nortes they have ever had let alone all going to the same mission. Prophets are pretty cool I guess. Last night we had a devotional about how not to get arrested in Colombia, so that was interesting I guess. Sunday was amazing because after Sacrament meeting it was almost all in English. We had 3 devotionals from Pres and Herm DuVall just to us in English and it was the best part of the week minus the temple today. Anyway, sorry this email was all over the place I´ll organize my thoughts better beforehand next week. Love you all tons and I will try to respond to as many of your individual emails as possible!

Matthew

Pic 1: Elder Argyle and I
Pic 2: My district plus one of my teachers
Pic 3: Me in front of the entrance sign
Pic 4: The Elders in my room.

July 13, 2016 - Day 1 at the Bogota MTC (CCM in Spanish)

Hey!

I got here okay!  I was the only missionary on my flight to Atlanta, but there were 11 of us on the way to Bogota.  We got into the airport at about 9:45pm, and then got to the CCM (Centro di Capacitacion) at about 11:30pm, bed at 12:45am.  They let us sleep in today because we got in so late so we got up at 7 for breakfast at 8.  I was doing okay on the nervousness front until I got my badge this morning, now I´m freaked out!  We already had to memorize the my purpose thing in PMG in Spanish so that was fun I guess.  We have been working on Spanish for the last hour or so and it is pretty rough.  I am so thankful for Italian now.  I do keep mixing up Spanish words with Italian words which is annoying but oh well.  Our P-Day is Tuesday and the earliest I will be able to email is 1:15 my time.  Thanks for the scripture!  I really appreciated it!  I was reading Alma 32 and D&C 121 to calm myself down last night on the plane.  The weather here is amazing!  Sorry this is so short!  We  only have 10 mins!  I´ll send more on Tuesday.  I will try to get some pictures to you then as well.  Love you tons mama!  Sorry if the spelling is awful the spell check is for Spanish so it is saying the whole thing is spelled wrong.