First Baptism

Thahaahahahammie

I bet you´re expecting me to email you. That´s a good point, cuz that´s what I´m going to do right now. First off, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL THE EMAILS!!!!!!!!! I am positive that I enjoy your emails more than you enjoy mine. It´s way fun to hear about the home and what everyone´s doing and all the hilarious callings you are all receiving. When I get back I want to be the Ward Drinking Fountain Monitor Specialist. Or maybe you guys just need another ward..... I am so stoked every week that I get to read about home and I always always have more than one email, thank you.

The truth is that, yes, I did baptize her. It was such a cool experience! Haha the water was freezing cold (its a baptismal font like we have) adn she got down in and looked at me and said, ¨I don´t want to!¨ and I just started laughing and said ¨It´s ok!¨ and we finally convinced her to get down in the water and just do it really quick so she hesitantly joined me and I messed up the prayer hahaha then I said it right and we had the baptism and she was happy and it was all good to go. Happy day. I love that family so much. Other than that, not much happened in my life this week. My companion is beyond ready to go home and I´m just going with the flow cuz I don´t want to ruin our relationship. I know my emails are always happy and cheerful and funny, but I have something to tell you that´s a little more on the serious side:

So there is this family in our ward and they are awesome! We have been over to their house dozens of times for lunch, family nights, lessons, and just to say hello. They are really spiritual and extremely nice to us and we have a really good relationship. The parents are not married and we have been helping them get everything set up to be ready to get married and it has just been a good experience knowing this family. They have a daughter named Jessenia. She is my age and I don´t know how long ago, but she was diagnosed with blood cancer. The disease is apparent in her physical appearance, she has bone-skinny arms, and a big, bloated stomach and her breathing is labored. She is always really really happy and always smiles for us when we visit her. Just last week, the youth in the stake went down to the beach for the day, and she went with them. She spent the whole day at the beach with them and I´m sure she had a great time, but it made her really really sick. She died saturday night. We figured out sunday morning and spent the whole day helping set up the funeral and talking with the family and ward members. This family was hit really hard by this loss, they really don´t have much. Please remember the Ponte family in your prayers.

I spent a lot of the day yesterday just thinking. I thought about our family and the relationship we have and how close we are and I want to take a second to let you know that I really do love you all so much. I have the family picture taped to the wall next to my bed and I look at it every night and sometimes I just talk to you guys cuz nobody speaks english haha. Thank you so much, mom, for raising me to know the things I know and for giving me so many brothers and sisters to support me. Just like you, I wouldn´t trade our big, loud, hungry, messy family for anything.

Wow, back to the happy stuff. My zone is the greatest, I´m stoked and super ready for this coming transfer and I am having the time of my life in the mission. I´m catching on to spanish and I´m building relationships with these people. Tell Zac that latins are the greatest if you just arent racist. First soccer game this friday!!!!!!!!?????????? I´m so excited! Tell Ben that he can email me cuz I need to hear it all from his point of view! Tell him that I can receive pictures and home-made videos, too! So if he has any time or if dad films anything, then hook me up. Hahaha Jessica actually gave you the iPod back??? I´m glad she got it figured out and you guys had a little time to talk, that makes me happy. Ok, little side note for Ben. Tell him to tell Coach to not let him break his knee and also tell him to tell coach ¨good luck¨. That´s all. I love you all. Keep writing me and keep busy. Enjoy the soccer season and keep me updated as much as you can.

Elder Emett

Kolby has a beard hair????

Tchippy Tchoppy Tchammy

No, the whole house isn´t small like that, but it sure is Peruvian. That means the roof (in places) is made out of stuff they found and other places there just isn´t a roof and in other places there is a roof. Houses are just different here.....and I love it. Mmk, but for reals, Zac goes running with his girlfriend?? That would be so much not fun. I was reading the part of the email where he was laying on the sidewalk wailing in pain telling curious by-standers that his mom was coming to help him and I laughed way out loud. He´s such a big teddy bear. Wow, I just pulled a record-long hair out of my beard. I think I might be a grown-up when I get home, HOW BORING!! Wow, I´m so excited for this soccer season. I´m not going to do much on the field haha, but I didn´t do much last year either and I still loved it! So keep me updated and keep Ben healthy so he can tear his ACL and join the ¨Emett Family ACL Victims At The Most Inconvenient TIme¨ group with Josh and I.

P.S. I thing I look at the blog erweek and I´ve never seen one comment so either Perú version doesn´t have comments, or you´re making it up. No, transfers are not this week. The last day of this transfer is like March 8th I think and mostly likely I will stay right where I am so no worries! My companion is trunky. We went to the temple this last thursday and I saw one of the Elders from my first group in the MTC! So cool! We are such good pals. Also, I saw Grant Smith. He has been here a while longer than me, but he is from St. George, too! We know a lot of the same families and we always talk about Paco´s family and Laura´s family haha. We don´t really see the President and his wife a lot but we kinda do, but we kinda don´t. Kind of. Yeah the people are nice. We don´t really ask them to let us in to teach them, we just share a message really quick, bear testimony, and ask if we can come back and teach them with their whole family. People don´t really slam doors here. It might have something to do with the structural security of these homes, or the fact that they always just talk to us through a window, but yes, we do get rejected quite a bit and it´s usually hilarious. HAHAHAHA and no, I don´t use the dog zapper. There are about 10 dogs for every person here, but they are all sick, sad, and dying so they don´t have time to attack us. And I´ve already told you, we eat every part of the chicken. Just ask Josh, I´m sure it´s the same.

Ok, my week. We had our first baptism of the transfer. That was the quickest week of my life. I can almost understand what some of these people are saying. We found a lot of new people to teach. I drank some dirty peruvian water. It´s extremely hot. And I found my favorite family ever! The Paucar family ¨Pow-car¨. The parents are both members, married in the temple, the mom was a missionary, but they are inactive. Were inactive. We have been re-activating them and they are coming to church every week with the whole family! They have two daughters. Alisson and Fabiana. Alisson is 9 and the dad, Oscar, wants us to baptize her, so we have been teaching her and it has been so much fun! The family always gives us soda and crackers and cookies and they love me! They ask me about my family and Utah and what I´m gonna do after the mission and what I like to eat here haha. They have a picture of Joseph Smith in their house and they all think I look just like Joseph Smith, so last night we were at their house for Alisson´s birthday party and my companion asked who she wants to baptize her and she smiled big and pointed at me and her mom said, ¨Elder Joseph Smith!!!¨ Haha it was so funny. So this weekend I will get to do my first baptism, I´m way excited! I will take pictures. Oh, and today I am going to start putting together this package that I´m going to send to you. It will have some pictures, some letters, this big picture, and some Peru candy. But be patient cuz I don´t have a lot of free time to do stuff like that haha. I love you all. I hope this email answered some of your questions and is good enough until next week. I´m going to take like sixty bucks out today so don´t freak out when my card is missing like seventy bucks or whatever. Super Love! Tell all my friends Hi for me and tell Jessica to please super please hurry and send my iPod cuz I´m going insane without music!

Elder Emett

Valentines Day???

Timmytamstammy

Compassionate service leader?????? I swear there are like 6,000 more callings where you live. Here we have a bishop and his helpers and a relief society lady and a priesthood dude and like a dude who fills out papers and then just a bunch of kids. So now when somebody asks me what calling my mom has, I won´t be able to explain that either- cuz I still can´t explain dad´s calling, it doesn´t make any sense here hahahaha. Well, Happy Valenstevens Day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I´m convinced nobody here celebrates this day, and as a missionary I don´t either! So enjoy Valentines day, even though I can´t for the life of me remember what a person is supposed to do on Valentines day. Go on a date or something??? Idk. Teaching Peruvian people is way more fun than that anyways.

Yep, I have been gone for 4 months. Feels like it´s been a week! We were all just barely at the Stake Center saying goodbye and now it´s the middle of Febrero (sorry, I literally forgot how to spell that in English). Time is passing by so quickly it makes me sad sometimes. I love what I´m doing! I´m learning so much! I´m thinking about talking to President and getting my mission extended until like Ben gets home. That way, we can just have one big party and save money.

MMMMMMMmmmmmk. I´m fine. I was sick one day, but I´m fine. I ate this rat-nasty fish with something else....something, and I ate a whole mango. You can use your imagination as to why I included the word ¨whole¨. I´m totally fine now and I´m not gonna get sick again so really really really don´t worry. We have had a really good week. There are a lot of people in our area who are ready to be baptized and it is really quite an experience to help them prepare. My companion is so trunky it´s humorous, but I´m not giving him a break hahaha. He always just wants to sleep or watch a movie with the members or watch tv or sleep in, but I´m doing my best to make sure we are doing our part without having regrets. Conclusion of my mission so far- I don´t speak spanish, my room was built for a family of rabbits, I´m learning more than my brain can handle and I love it, these have been the fastest 4 months of my life, and I´m starting to see why Josh and Matt came home as such good guys. I´m kinda hoping you all forgot how Matt and Josh were when they came home, cuz there is no chance I will be that amazing or smart or spiritual, but I´m gonna keep learning.

Now for the good part haha. Yeah, I still get like 11 letters from Dad every week and I got one from Gma and Gpa Bert! Thanks so much!!! It is really fun to hear about home and to get pictures too!!! I love all my pictures of papa bear haha they just make me laugh. Is Jer losing weight?? Ok, I have this plan, but it´s a secret. I´m gonna send you all a box, but I´m not sure when I´m gonna send it and I can´t tell you what I´m gonna put in it. But it will be awesome!!! MMk, favorcito. I would super appreciate it if you all could send me another small hymnbook in english. There is an elder in my zone who is kinda having a hard time and we had a ¨work visit¨ where I was with him all day and he spent like thirty minutes singing english hymns out of my hymnbook and he loves it! So could you would you send me another one for him??? And also, IDK, a little something for Elder Huaman. I have no idea what. Probably a CD or something I don´t know, but he is going home in 3 weeks and a little something would be cool!

I love you all! I´m having the time of my life and I hope everything is well at home. Tell Jake to write me a letter or I´m not gonna tell him about the way hot peruvian chick yesterday haha. Tell Papa bear and James that I have the coolest idea ever and they need to start planning right now, and tell the rest of the family that they should be extremely grateful to live where they live. And tell Sister Collett thanks for the package!!! So nice of her!!! And yeah, the kids here would love some games! I love you mom. Thanks for everything. We have such an amazing family that we should be grateful for every day. Mucho amor por aca!

Elder Emett

Thammy????

I just wanted to take a minute to write on Kolby's blog. For anyone reading it and wondering who Thammy is it is me, his mother, Jill Emett. First you have to know that Kolby has always been into giving people nick names. For years we would say that you knew you had arrived when Kolby gave you a nick name. He named Kjirsten's oldest daughter, Bill, long before she was born and it stuck forever. This tiny little baby girl named Bill. When the next one came along he called her Little Bill. Well, the explanation on the Thammy is that for years he called me Mammy. Somehow that changed to Thammy at some point and it has stuck. Some of his friends even call me Thammy. Of course he has to come up with all variations of that word. So that is the explanation for the opening of every email.

Moving Day!

Timmy Thams

Que Dice Tham Thams????? I´m glad you´re stoked not to have a calling cuz you can come down to Peru and help me out with mine! There is so much to do! All you need to do is smile and nod your head yes and act like you know Spanish and the people will love you. MMMMMk. So everything is going good with the new companion. He has no sense of time and he is a little bit slow (which is mostly just funny) but I love that little stinker and we communicate just fine and all is well. And that letter I sent to the Pap paps DID NOT include my foto card. I repeat, I HAVE my foto card so don´t worry, just smile. I might maybe maybe send you guys some pictures today if you´re lucky, but I´m still not sure. I might just send them to Jessica again hahahahahahahaha. We are going to get some photos printed after this and then to send our letters and I am pretty sure I will send you some photos cuz you guys sent me a tons of photos and I love them a hundred. Yeah, I still see my friends from the MTC and it´s awesome! We all feel like we have just known eachother for years now haha. Yes, I use that weird towell, every morning. And I use this big, green robe that Elder Orellana gave to me haha, I feel like dad. My clothes are all holding out fine. The church buildings are all made by the church and they are all nice, there are quite a few members and about fifty who are actually active and come every week haha. Yeah I can talk to my companion just fine. Yes, they eat guinea pigs here. No, I have not eaten one yet, but the house we live in has them and yes, they eat every every every every every last part of the chicken and I´m still not used to it.

So, for the big news of the week......WE MOVED!!!!!! We are now living in a different room that is closer to our area and the bishops house and all that good stuff. Our new house is hilarious!!!! It was built for hobbits, I know it. All our stuff barely barely hardly fits in the room and I am taller than the shower. Not just taller than the shower head, I am literally taller than my shower hahahaha. I will send a picture of it. The new house is awesome and the people are just like grandparents to me and they own a little store so we can buy little peruvian treats if we want and all is well. My companion is a little trunky because he goes home in 4 weeks, but we are still working and everything is going well.

Ok, this is gonna sound weird, but yeah I need something. I need and American flag. A kinda big one, but not ginormous. And I need a brownie mix. That would make my whole life better. I´m gonna try to teach our Peruvian grandma how to make brownies. Try to find one in spanish haha. Other than that, I don´t need anything. I don´t even need those things, but it would sure be cool. Other news......... Papaya juice with milk is the worst thing ever invented and I can´t wait to be senior comp and do things my way. Oh, and a little side note, I was sick on Friday and I couldn´t move or eat or do anything but then I needed to be good on Saturday cuz we were moving so I said a nice little prayer and I was fine saturday morning!!!! Tell dad to keep writing and that I´m the most popular guy in my zone cuz I get 10 times more letters than anyone else. I´m gonna try to put together a small package to send you all next week. I love you all and you´re always in my prayers. Tell Jason happy birthday and tell zac he is forbidden to get married until I´m home and that we´re having a joint wedding in 2020 cuz that´s just a solid cool number. And if neither of us have found girls by then, we´re just gonna have to marry eachother. Oh yeah and I´m always always on the computer at 11 A.M. Monday morning which is 9 A.M. Monday morning for you guys so if you want to get on and chat with me you can do that. Con Amor.

Elder Emett

Erthing is good here!

Hahaha little innocent Chaddy Cakes is going to Guatemala? Isn´t Spilker in Guatemala? Does that mean he will learn spanish and he can teach it to me? That would be chill. Ok, this week is just great. Tons of tons and tons of different, but good. First off, my companion is Elder Huaman. He is from Puno, Peru which means he is from the Sierra, which means he is just over 5 feet tall, chubby, and extremely friendly. He showed me a picture of his house and his mom and the combination could just make front page on some Incan magazine. He started serving his mission in March of 2009. Yeah, this is his last transfer hahahahahahahahaha. He has been serving for 23 months! He´s so old! The first time I saw him was just so...weird. I felt like I had seen him and known him for my whole life. We teach a lot better together than Elder Orellana and I did, but we are still working on becoming best friends cuz he doesn´t know a lick of english haha. I really am having a good time with him, though. He is a good teacher and he is extremely extremely friendly and focused on the people. I feel like spanish is coming along alright. I don´t use any english during the day for any reason unless I´m singing in the shower in the morning, so my spanish is getting better really fast. I´m still having a hard time understanding exactly what people are saying to me, but that will come with time.

Ok, so food. I eat chicken and rice. Lots of rice. Sometimes we have spaghetti, but not like what you are used to. All they drink here is soda and fruit juice so I´m getting plenty of that. Oh, and we eat tons of mangoes and bananas. I bought six bananas for thirty centimos. That´s like ten cents hahaha. And please don´t be mad at me, but I can´t remember for the life of me what I ate before my mission. People always ask me and I have no idea what to tell them. All I can ever remember eating is rice. I remember flank steak and pastrami chicken and like rolls or something haha. Why can´t I remember!? You will have to remind me of that stuff cuz I´m kinda embarrassed!!!!

This one Elder from our group, Elder Harris (you know his mom) got shipped off to the forest hahahahahaha. Lucky little stinker. Everyone I have talked to who has had time in the jungle says it´s the best. The people there are more friendly, there is tons of rain, nobody has any money, the whole place is stacked with fruit trees and there are these zoos all over the place with huge turtles and crocodiles and monkeys and all the other weird animals of the jungle. Probably probably probably I will go to the jungle in the next change or the one after that. So I will have some way way cooler stories in just a couple months. The area I´m in is pretty chill. Our ward is called Payet. ¨Pie-yet¨. All the people in the ward are really really nice and helpful and I really am just having a good time. We have lots of investigators right now and tons of work to do so I´m just staying nice and busy and happy as ever! I´m stoked to hear that all the cute boys are getting mission calls and getting ready to join the force. Haha I will have been out for 7 months when silly little paco enters the MTC.

Everybody thinks that my companion is ¨trunky¨ cuz he only has 5 weeks left on the mission, but he is ready to work and he wants to finish strong and we are doing good. He always gets up late, but there isn´t much I can do about that. Haha and peruvians don´t have any sense of time. There are 3 times of the day here, mañana, tarde, and noche. Morning, afternoon, and night. So we are always late to every appointment that we set, but nobody ever notices haha cuz they just don´t care here. I am developing a terrible habbit. Haha, is that how you spell habbit? It looks like rabbit.

Erthing is good here. We get way too much to eat and we aren´t in any kind or form of danger. I´m glad Josh didn´t feel comfortable with the language until 22 months into his mission, that makes me feel good. But we all know Josh is a humble genius and he was speaking flawlessly in 5 months, so I will just keep trying my best. I love you all, I pray for you all the time, I hope ben doesn´t tear his ACL, and I hope the Emett house doesn´t miss me too much. This time is just so fast.

Time for a new companion!

The Thammy Thams

You needn´t worry about me. Mission stuff gets hard at times, but I am the same old Kolby and I´m not letting things really bother me, just sometimes I don´t have a lot to write!!!!! But today I think I might have a lot to write especially to try and help you cuz you have to talk about being a mission mom haha. First things first, every six weeks in the mission we have a ¨change¨, so I have been in the mission field for six weeks and tomorrow I will be experiencing my first change that I figured out about saturday night. I will be staying in the same area and everthing, but my current companion, Elder Orellana, will be going to a different zone to serve as the zone leader there haha. I´m really sad about it. We both are. We get along so well and I know everything about his life and he knows everything about mine. We are just great pals and it is going to be really hard to just leave that behind, but I´m sure I will learn to love my new companion just fine. His name is Elder Huaman, prounounced ¨Wah-mahn¨ and nobody in my entire zone knows anything about him or has ever even seen him so this should be interesting.

There is still an obvious language barrier between me and the people so it is hard for me to teach because I´m never quite sure exactly what they are saying, but I really am being helped with it. I wrote dad about a pretty cool experience I had that he can share with you, but I´m sending that letter today so you won´t have it for a week, but I can tell you about another kinda cool one haha. The Spirit really is real. We can actually tune into it and it will talk to us. My companion and I were teaching this girl who´s parents don´t want anything to do with the church and won´t let her get baptized, but she has a testimony and wants to be baptized, sad no? Anyways, we were teaching her and I knew my companion was going to look at me to help him teach so I started listening to what the girl was saying really closely and getting a feel for what it would be that I needed to talk about and hardly a moment later, I knew exactly what it was that I needed to say to her, but I didn´t know how to explain it all in Spanish. About 3 seconds later, my companion went ahead and explained exactly what I was trying to figure out how to say. And this isn´t the only time that stuff like that has happened. I really am having an amazing time out here and I am learning a lot.

Thank you for all your support and all your stories and all your prayers. It all really helps so much. Don´t worry about me at all, we are fed well-too much actually, and I´m completely safe where I am. I want you to ask matt and josh how long it took them to actually feel like they could understand people and answer them back cuz I still feel like I know nothing! And I don´t want to be too far behind cuz I need to start learning how to help these people! I love you all, I´m glad to hear the family is doing good and I´m excited to meet Addie and Kjirsten´s future baby boy. Make sure Jake and Zac name it with a chick name. Tell everyone hi for me and tell Branson that we look the same, but he is more handsome-er. I will let you know next week what my new comanion is like. I love you all.

Elder Emett