Newfound Sense of Fatherhood

Newfound Sense of Fatherhood – Dec. 17, 2012

ALright Alright Alright. Weeellll I have quite a few new changes in my missionary life that I  will tell you about but FIRST I would like to congratulate one of my best and oldest friends GAGE PALLO for serving an honorable full 2 year mission. Man he is a stud!! I am so excited for him in his future endeavors after the mish and I am equally excited for Nicole and Aaron who have such an awesome son!!! I have to say that I have some pretty big shoes to fill. Literally his feet are huge lol like if he goes skiing with you guys I don´t even think that he´d have to rent any, just wax those big ol feet and your good to go! But really the example he has set for me is honestly more than I can describe in words. Todavia me falta muuucho tiempo y aun mas trabajo para llegar a ser como el grande indominable ex Elder Pallo. If shay can´t translate that OR DAD with his mad pokito spanish skills you’ll just have to drag Gage over to the computer. Oh ya dad its poquito not pokito yes papa I HAVE been writing in spanish as well as talking. So anyways, from the botom of my heart Gage, thank you:) 

ALRIGHTY well if your wondering where I´m writing this e-mail right now i´m back in Bogota. BUT I haven’t been transferred, yup I´m going to have a kid this next change. Yup I never thought I would have a kid at 19 years of age but ya know you just gotta take what life throws at ya, I don´t even know who the mother is yet (BROMA) but ya. I totally thought I  would have one more change with Elder Ortiz and kill him, so not even caring to stay up and hear about the changes I went to bed. Then at 11-o-clock my compa woke me up from downstairs yelling COMPA COMPA VEN POR ACÁ TU VAS A ENTRENAR!!! so yup that was when I got the news that I am going to be training for these next 12 weeks con mi querido hijo. Obviously after that I couldn’t get to sleep at all thinking about how crazy the president must be and how in the heck am I going to even teach this kid one thing lol. Honestly I am really excited and a little bit nervous at the same time. There’s a lot of feelings swirling around in me right now so that’s why this letter is called a newfound feeling of fatherhood. I think it´s pretty catchy:) But mas que nada I am really excited because I know a new missionary will bring a different excitement to the work and he will actually want to work sooooo I think that these next few months are going to be super awesome!!! I have high hopes. 

So anyways I´m here in Bogota sitting next to my VERY best friend here in the mission Elder Albrect. He was my comp for 3 weeks in Bogota, if you can´t remember who he is he´s the tall red head kid in my pics from when I started. Yup we got here at 12 and the assistents told us we had the whole day to do whatever we want here in Bogota. Go figure I am the only one that has served in this humongous city (I am with 3 other elders from the zone who are also going to train) so not wanting to get lost, stolen, or spend a lot of money, I  just called up my buddy Albrecht (who is serving here in Bogy) and took a bus to his house and we´ve just been hangin out all night!!!!! It  has beeen so tight to see him again. Tomorrow we´re going to the temple at 10 then I think we´ll have a meeting with president and then wait the whole day for the newbies to get out of the ccm,  have their interviews and then we´ll get assigned our new comps, and then I´ll head back to Tunja sometime tomorow night. Only to come back here Wednesday night and stay the night so we can get up and go to this Christmas thing that we have for all the areas close to Bogota. SOOO lots of bus rides and traveling. 

So pappy your letters just get funnier and funnier.  I don´t even care anymore if people think I am weird for laughing out loud at the computer. About 5 minutes ago I had tears in my eyes and was about to die from hyperventilation. Also I would absolutey love to hear all about your mission pa.  I’ve realized that I’ve never really asked you about it. I know that’s just cause I had never gone on one myself but now I  really wanna know!! Also just to let you know I LOVE COLOMBIAN HOT CHOCOLATE :) 

So I am really running out of time but I want to tell you a little story that I will DEFINATLEY tell you when we skype. I can´t write as good as I can explain myself in words. But anyways we went and did some service last Saturday. We were supposed to be building a second floor on to a less active/non-member family but when we got there this guy who is the husband and father of the family took us to go cut and haul some trees to where they were working on the house (I still don’t know why he needed the trees and after this experience I don’t care to know) but anyways he took us on a hike over the mountain that there house is on and down the other side about half way (BY the way the top of the mountain you can see for miles and it was beautiful) anyways the old guy starts to hack away at a tree that I´d say the base is like 12 inches in diameter.  From the first hack I can tell that he´s not very experienced in tree cutting and it fell down the hill. Then he told us to go haul it up the hill.  It’s like 25 feet long and probably weighs  like 200 pounds so we did that and it was sooo hard, by this time I was a little upset so I told him to give me the axe and I´ll cut the final tree. Well yup the tree fell UP the hill this time so it was a lot easier. Boy I tell you what,  Tony Meline would be SOO proud of me:) Then we  had to haul these wet  trees halfway up the mountain and down it too. I was kinda ticked for one because I felt like I lost a little strength and for 2 the old man was pretty much yelling at us to go. Anyways I know that wasn’t a good explanation but just ask me about it when we skype. Oh also I´m not sure what time you guys want to skype? i can do it the 24th at night or the 26th at night too so whenever you guys want. AND plan for an hour and a half cause thats what our zone leaders told us!!! LOVE YOU GUYS SOOOOOO MUCH!!!

Ps. Shay send my retainer, (hope it still fits;)

      Elder Crook (B.A, S.C, E.D)