March 23

Thank you for your emails, for your thoughts and the news from home. The news here is that we thought we were going to be stuck inside for all of next Sunday because of election, but it turns out that we have a normal day, except that church is canceled. The elections are for mayor, governor, and some other smaller things and are a much bigger deal than those are in the US, as far as I remember. Gathering in large groups is prohibited and thus, we don´t have church.

The other big news here in Bolivia is that a few weeks ago the main bridge to Santa Cruz gave out and now trucks have to use a really old and out of shape road to go to the west of the country. I think this affects most fruit prices because most of the fruit come from Santa Cruz, but I don´t pay enough attention to fruit prices to really notice. 

We´ve had a pretty good week. Although almost all the members who were going to come visit with us canceled on us, which is disappointing. I also reached (I don´t know what verb to use here. In Spanish we use cumplir-to turn (an age)) 5 months in the mission. I´m not brand new anymore. 

I have plenty of photos this week.

First are several of us with Luis Fernando, who is currently our best investigator. I don´t know why he´s not smiling in the pictures. He is generally a very happy person, despite all the problems he has in his life. He is 76. He always surprises us by how much he understands the Book of Mormon because he sometimes doesn´t seem to understand us. However, I think it´s more that he doesn´t feel the need to directly answer our questions when he has other things he wants to talk about. He hasn´t come to church yet because his wife is very sick and can´t be left alone and his two teenage grandchildren, who live with them, aren´t very reliable. However, he´s a really awesome person and, now that the ward is starting to take him seriously, I think he will progress more. Also, he has a really old Book of Mormon because his stepson, who died several years ago, was a member of the church.

Then we have pictures with Brenda, who is the cousin of members of our ward and lives just around the corner from them. We aren´t teaching her a lot because she´s only 10, but she likes to come to activites and made us cute little foam thingys. 

We went to the temple with Noelia and Graciela this week. They are doing great. I didn´t realize until now how much Nicole, who got baptized in December, is struggling in comparison. The Cochabamba temple is really beautiful. I like how the walls for the first floor are slanted like Incan building are. (You can´t really see it in the picture.)

Magali, Estefani, and Corala have a new pet/animal that happens to live in their house. They already have a ton of small dogs, a rotating half dozen cats, and a random sheep. I don´t think what this thing is (I forgot), but it is very much a wild thing and not a pet. Carola is the girl in yellow and the little girl is her younger sister, Leonor. Magali and Estefani are a bit older and are not in the photos. The older 3 were baptized a little more than a year ago and are technically active in the church, but need a lot of support. 

This week we finished an assignment from the president´s assistant (2 elders who serve as councilors). They gave us a 3 week long schedule of scriptures to read and things to ponder each day all on the topic of Christ and the Atonement. I enjoyed it because I read closely a lot of great scriptures that I can now use in lessons and because it really increased my testimony of Christ and the importance and reality of the Atonement. 

I find it hard to believe that Robert is taller than Dad. You all sound really busy and constantly doing new and different things. I am also really busy, but always with the same things, just the people change occasionally.