Week five pictures c/o FB Mom site

Pictures of the CCM where Jared will have spent his first 6 weeks of training  in Colombia

Week five

Hola familia y amigos!

This week was super fun, my Birthday was at the beginning of the week and the entire CCM sang Happy Birthday to me in the Comedor which was pretty funny. Learning a lot here, Spanish is starting to come along pretty well. I finished the BOM on my Birthday which is pretty cool and I'm starting to understand it in Spanish. The days are all the same here. We get up, study, teach, study, teach and go to bed. I like it, I just don't have anything to email about. We got to go proselyte on Saturday in Bogota Norte. My comp and I went with Elder Kelley from Dallas, Texas and that was so much fun. We tracted for like 4 hours and talked to a lot of people, we gave away some pass along cards and we went up this hill that was insanely steep, it was hard to breathe at the top, it took us like 10 minutes of walking straight uphill and none of us could breathe. Then we had a lesson with an investigator, Allan, from New York so we got to talk in Ingles. It was about the Temple  and we got to watch the film about the Salt Lake Temple being made and it really made me appreciate how close the Temple is to my house back home. Then we came back to the CCM and they had donuts for us, Presidente and Hermana Hansen are the best!

Then it was Sunday, Sunday's are awesome here. We had a great sacrament meeting, a great district meeting, an awesome priesthood meeting, and then it was time for lunch, but.....  The boy's  downstairs bathroom was flooding, so my companion,our friends(Elder Justice and Elder Dumas) and I spent most of lunch plunging and mopping nasty dirty toilet water from the hallway and the bathroom in our suit pants. It sounds bad but it was actually pretty fun because we're all good friends and we were laughing the whole time and we're getting our suit pants dry cleaned for free so that's a plus! Then we went on with our Sunday and watched a video about this convert named Di Francesca an Italian pastor that found a copy of the book of Mormon, but the title page was missing so he didn't know what it was. He read the entire thing and then prayed about it after reading Moroni's promise in Moroni 10.4-5 and he recieved the answer that it was true. He never lost that book, he was kicked out of the Catholic Church  for preaching from it, he brought it with him when he fought in WW1 and the Italian Ethiopian war. For years he didn't know what it was and then he finally found out and decided to be baptized around 40 years after he first found it. He only got to go to the Temple for 10 years before he died. That story really made me think about how we take the Book of Mormon and the Temple for granted. So I invite you all to read the Book of Mormon and to appreciate how close the Temple is to where you live, because other people aren't as lucky as we are.

Speaking of Temples, I got to go to the Bogota Temple again today and that was amazing. The spirit is so strong in the Temple and I'm glad I got to go one last time with my companion. I'm going to miss the Temple. This will be my last week at the CCM so the next email you get from me, I will be out in Bogota Sur!  I'm super excited. I miss all you guys and hope you're doing good. I pray for you guys and this week I prayed and fasted for Luke. I hope you're doing good bud! Thank you for all the prayers!!

Love,

Elder McBride

Jared's Birthday

It is Jared's 19th Birthday today.   We were able to send him Birthday packages and heard he got them in time for his Birthday.    I have been thinking about him all day and was so happy to go on FB and find a new picture of Jared on the Mom site!!

Week four

HOLA!!

This week went by really fast, all the older CCM missionaries left and we got a bunch of new missionaries. The new guys are all really cool, some of them have already been in the field but they never went to the CCM so they came back for training. It is kind of the same here everyday we have awesome classes and try to speak our best Spanish. We have officially eaten 42 servings of rice, we all want to get to 70 before we leave. My companion and I got to pass the sacrament and that was super cool.  We also sang In Our Lovely Deseret before sacrament started and I played the piano. Later in the day we heard the latinos singing it too in their sacrament meeting! We got to listen to a really cool talk by Elder Rasband about how missionaries are called to serve, where they serve and I know that I am supposed to be here in Bogota. The latinos are awesome, they are the nicest people ever.

Yesterday I got pulled out of class by the CCM president because somehow my mom got a package to me for my birthday! It was hilarious ...he said it had never happened before and he had no idea how she got it here! It had a bunch of treats in it that kind of melted together but my district and I ate a ton of it after lunch.  It was one of the funniest things that has happened at the CCM.  I love my district, they are all super great missionaries. I am trying to finish the book of Mormon before I leave the CCM and I'm in Helaman right now so I think I'll be able to finish it. It's crazy to think that I've already been gone a month. It's weird here the days feel like weeks and the weeks feel like days! My comp and I have had some pretty good fake lessons with our teachers and my espanol is getting pretty decent.

I got to go to the Bogota Temple again today and that was awesome, It's really cool to get to go with a bunch of other missionaries. I messed up and got pants that were tight so it was a little uncomfortabile but thats ok.

Love and miss you guys and thanks for all your prayers!

Love,

Elder McBride
                                 Pictures from Elder McBride and FB moms site

                                  Elders going to Bogota South Mission

Burgers at Del Rodeo

                                                 Elder Luedtke

Cow foot water bottle

Week Three

Hola Everyone!

This week was awesome! The Spanish study is coming along pretty well and the classes are all really cool! The CCM is pretty great. It´s crazy to think that I´m already halfway done with it! All the older guys and the 3 week latinos left last night or early this morning and I was really sad to see them go. We sang God be with you till we meet again and it was awesome because the spirit was so strong. I know all those guys will be awesome missionaries! My comp and I got our rooms switched so we had to pack all our stuff up and move down to a smaller room today but it´s all good because we get to be in a room with all latinos! The latino´s here are awesome. We got to watch a live devotional by Elder Ballard Sunday night which was really cool because we usually only get to watch re-runs becuase of the time difference. We also got to watch a devotional by Elder Holland and he told all missionaries to come back better than they were before and to do it for the Brown kids(The MTC PROVO presidents grandkids) so now the big CCM joke is to do it for the brown kids. My district keeps count of how many times we eat rice here and now at the halfway mark we´re at 32 meals of rice in 21 days haha.

Today was definitely the best P-day by far. We got up in the morning to go get our visas and we got to talk to this super cool Colombian dude about Bogota and his life for like 2 hours while we waited in the line. We ended up giving him a pass along card. Then we went to the Monserrate church in the mountains in Bogota, It was absolutely gorgeous. We went to get on the tram and we found a cardboard cutout of Pope Francis so we all took pictures with it and said we met the Pope!  The view at the top was absolutely stunning, Bogota is absolutely huge and beautiful. I love the view of the city and the green mountains. The church was super pretty too, we got to walk inside and on the outside is a garden that depicts the crusificado of Jesus and it was really powerful. At the top past the church they have all these little stores and at the top they have a bunch of little food carts so a bunch of other missionaries and I ate fried intestine. It wasn´t bad at all it just tasted like really chewy bad turkey bacon. Then we went and got cheeseburgers at this place called Del Rodeo and they were amazing, they also had awesome milkshakes. After that we went and got some soccer jerseys. I got a sweet PGM(Paris jersey) because it came with shorts and I needed another pair of workout shorts. Also one of the kids in my district is really short and our classroom has a little window over the door that is supposed to have glass in it but there isn´t any so earlier this week he crawled through it and it was hilarious, our whole district was on the floor laughing. I´m excited to meet the new Missionaries coming in and hope that My comp and I can be as good as examples to them that the older missionaries were to us. Oh and they have In Our Lovely Deseret in Spanish so my district and I sing it all the time in honor of Brother Tingey. 

Miss all you guys and thank you for your prayers!! The church is true!!

Love,

Elder McBride.
 
                              Pictures from Elder McBride & Missionary Mom Site

Week three

Jared was able to upload more pictures this week.  This picture is from the Atlanta airport where he was able to see his Elementary School friend who is from California. They were flying out the same time, same airport to different missions.  Jared to Colombia and Elder Hickey to Peru.  What a small world!!

Week 2 pictures

                                  Pictures from Elder McBride and FB missionary mom site

Week 2

Hola familia y amigos!!

Miss you guys! I don't have a lot of time so I have to type fast!

The CCM is really fun here, I have a lot of classes and lecciones here and they're all super fun. The spirit is super strong here and my spanish is really starting to improve. I'm trying to memorize 2,000 Spanish words before I'm out of the CCM. I memorized moroni 10 4-5 in Spanish which was pretty hard but now I won't forget it!

On Saturday we got to go out and proselitismo with missionariies in my mission Bogota Sur and that was so much fun. My comp and I were given a libro de mormon to give away and I gave it away in the first minute of being on the bus. The traffic here is insane, its crazy. We got to go see a bautismal and that was super cool experience for being out in the field for the first time. My companion and I went with Elder Trelles a 16 month missionary from Ecuador and he was super cool. We went with his companion Elder Thompson( 20 months out from Utah) They're appartment was actually pretty nice. Sur Bogota is awesome there are people everywhere and they all seem nice, except one of the older missionaries got robbed so maybe they are not all so nice.

Sunday's here are really cool, it was testimony meeting and it was awesome to hear a bunch of Spanish testimonies. Then we have cool classes about scripture and then we always finish with a mtc talk from a general authority and this week it was Elder  Bednar and it was about if a feeling was you or the holy ghost and his answer was just DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT. He said he's thought if something was just him or the holy ghost and he's a general authority so if he doesn't know all the time then we probably won't know either, so he said don't sit and think about if its you or the spirit, just act on it anyway!

Love and miss you guys! I appreciate the emails and I can feel you guys praying for me! see ya in a week!

Love,

Elder McBride

Picture in CCM c/o Colombia Missionary Mom site on Facebook

                                             Jared sending out the week 1 email in the CCM

Week 1

Hello Everyone!!!

My flights were all good on the way to the CCM. Their was a missionary going home on my first flight on the way to Atlanta and then there was around 40 missionaries on the flight into Bogota. Another missionary Elder Leidtke and I talked about movies, music and our hometowns the entire plane ride there. We got in at about 10:30 but it took a really long time to get through customs with everyone so we didn´t get to the CCM until 1 AM. The first thing I bought in pesos was a water bottle at the airport that cost 5000 pesos. The CCM is really cool, it's one of the smaller CCM(MTC) there's only 91 missionaries here and we only get new missionaries every three weeks. Mi companionero es really cool. His name is Elder Nelsen and he´s from Salt Lake. He´s 6 6 and I'm 6 2 so we´re like the two tallest people in the MTC. Half of the missionaries here are latin and every meal we talk in Spanish and attempt to communicate with them. 

Spanish is actually coming along pretty fast, el don de linguas is really helping. The CCM Presidente y his wife es really cool. The teachers are awesome too. Maestro Correa y Maestro saldaña. We have about 9 to 10 hours of class a day but they're all pretty fun. They took our camera the first day we got here and we only get it on P-days so sorry mom no pictures this week. I'll have some next week though. We got to talk with a real investigator the second day we were here and that was really cool. We also have classes where we teach lessons to our investigators who are really just our teachers completely in Spanish. Those classes are really hard, but fun as well. The president has given some really cool lessons about the Book of Mormon here and the spirit in the CCM is really strong. 

The food is pretty good here, we have rice everyday. They also give us Ice cream for Dinner sometimes which is really nice. A couple nights ago we had cheeseburgers and fries which was nice because it reminded me of home. It´s cool to talk with all the latin missionaries and all the other missionaries from around the USA. About fifty percent of the missionaries here are from Utah and the Latino missionaries get tired of hearing about missionaries from Utah so they get excited when I tell them I'm not from Utah. The exercise time here is really nice. They have an outdoor gym with lots of weight machines that I've never seen before. They have Basketball inside and outside along with Volleyball, ping pong and Futbol. My companion and I go run around the CCM at the beginning of exercise time everyday and it's really hard becasue of the altitude but it's getting better. I'm learning alot. So far I've memorized the first vision, the missionary objective and the baptisimal invitation in spanish. 

Today we got to go to the Bogota temple and that was super cool. They bus us out of the CCM and drive us to the Temple. It was really exciting because we got to go to the Temple and because we got to leave the CCM. The CCM is pretty small and it kinda looks like a prison but it's a fun spiritual prison filled with cool people so it's all good. It's nice to get out though. Bogota is awesome! On the way to the Temple we saw all this super cool graffiti all over the place and they have these really exotic restuarants like McDonalds and KFC. The Temple is beautiful and it was a really awesome spiritual experience being able to go, especially when you get to go with a bunch of other missionaries. This Saturday we get to go out and teach with the Bogota norte missionaries which is going to be super fun, they have you go get a Colombian soccer jersey while you're out. There´s not a lot of missionaries here going to Bogota Sur. There's only me and like 6 other Elders, no hermanas.  One of the missionaries in my room that's been here for 4 weeks said that a missionary got stabbed in Bogota sur so that was exciting. I'm excited to be here and serve the people of Bogota. It was weird going to church in Bogota and not Oregon but I'm getting used to it. I miss you guys and hope you're all doing well. The gospel is true and my next email will be coming next tuesday!

Adios!!!

Élder McBride

this is the pic of my computer. It´s hard to use the spanish computer because it says all the words are wrong.