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.