November 24

Thanks for your letter and news. We actually saw a bit about the snow on the news here. Our pensionista works on the weekends (she sells the most amazing peach juice) and gives us money to buy dinner at a restaunte which has a tv. (We eat with members for lunch on weekend now, but have to stop doing that starting in December because too many missionaries were getting sick.) I wish it was snowing here. In the evenings it´s very nice and cool and it gets quite cold if it rains all day and there isn´t much sun, but most of the time it´s hot and sunny.

I finally got the paper letter from Mom on Thursday, but it had a stamp saying it entered Bolivia on the 7th, so I´m not sure how much of that time it spend sitting in the mission office. If you haven´t already sent a Christmas package, I would love any of the following: a new exersize dvd, church music on cd (I already own a cd with songs about Joseph Smith if you can find it), or anything by the Mormon tabernale choir. Could you also email me the recipes for pancakes, oatmeal cookies, and lentil walnut burgers (in moosewood cook book)? 

Remember, I skype home on Christmas. The members we live with have a computer that we can us that day, so I just need to know your skype address and coordinate with the other missionaries who is calling home at what time. They are working around more of a time change to reach Utah. 

We are also thinking of doing something for thanksgiving, but it´s this week so I would be surprised if we actually pull anything together. Hna Aliaga wants to make pumpkin pie, which would be great, but I have no idea if we can find canned pumpkin.

Yes, I got to see Hazel, which was really great. She hasn´t changed a bit because it´s only actually been two months since I saw here. I also met some of the other dragons, which was awkward because they didn´t know what to make of me. Her host family also couldn´t figure out who we were, but that´s mostly because they speak more Quecha than spanish. Hazel is having a great time and wishing she could stay longer in each place to really get to know them.

I´m finally getting settled in here and starting to participate more in lessons. Actually, lesson are the easy part, it´s talking to people for the first time or at the start of the lesson that´s harder, but Hna Aliaga sets a good example and I´m gradually learning.

I added more pictures to dropbox. I wish I could add captions. The one of Hna Aliaga looking sad with a letter is her letter saying exactly when she goes home, which we know is around jan25th. She hasn´t opened it yet.

The ones that look like they might be at zone conference are at zone conference which was really great. I got a picture with Elder Watts because I kept hearing about him.

I covered my agenda in pictures from the Liahona (the church magazine in everywhere nonenglish speaking) and some of the quotes Sister Meyers gave me.

I am really loving my area (our section of the ward that the two of us cover). I am still getting to know that ward members themselves, but I´ve gotten to know most of our investiagators and they are really great. I especially love teaching Roli because he really listens and thinks about what we are saying. He and his family belong to a different Christan church so he knows the Bible really well and often thinks of additional stories to relate to what we are teaching. He´s 19 and was injured a few months ago and is just now recovering and walking around, which according to him gave him a lot of time and persepctive to think about his life and what he wants to change about it. I am really excited to teach him this week lesson three, the doctine of Christ, faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end, because knowing about repentance will hopefully make him feel a lot better. We have a few investiagators with baptism dates, but we keep having to extend the dates because they aren´t ready.

We also work a lot with less active members, who are also great. A lot of them just lack friends in the church and are too shy to easily make friends there. They love to see us and talk to us and pray and sometimes read the Book of Mormon, but won´t actually go to church. 

Our ward has three sets of missionaries, which looks like a lot but it´s a relatively big ward and both sets of elders have really large (geograficly) areas, so they spend a lot of time traveling. We also spend a lot of time walking and occasionally taking the trufi, but our area isn´t quite as big and is flat.

I really love being a missionary. I love getting to know people and sharing things with them that will help them.