July 13

Hi Mom and everyone else too,

Everything wraped up just fine with Hna Gonzales. She´s really a really great missionary. I might have complained a bit, but we got along okay the majority of the time. We just didn´t communicate as well as we should have. For example. she found the noise of the cars in our area really stressful and I didn´t realize that until a few days ago. I think some of the times that she was really stressed had nothing to do with our relationship, but with other things going on with her, it just affected our relationship a lot.

I´ve also been thinking a lot about the book you were reading a couple of months ago on ways different people show and recognize love. [The Five Love Languages] I finally realized that it´s really important to Hna Gonzales that I do little acts of service for her, such as wash a few dishes, or clear her plate at lunch occasionaly. She shows that she cared for me by tidying my desk or shoes, which I took more as being overly obsessed with cleanliness and messing with my things.

Besides different ways to show love, there are also different expectations on how much different people express their love. That is also a cultural difference that several of the missionaries from the US have remarked on. Latin companions expect more outward demonstrations of love than we are used to. In the US we don´t say that we care about people as openly, which makes a lot of the missionaries from the US come off as cold and uncaring. However, once you start to understand the culture better, you can adjust and remember to tell your investigators ¨le queremos mucho¨ (this translates as more of less We care about you or we love you or literally we want you) Spanish is great in that it has different words for romantic love (amar, amor) and nonromantic love (querer, which is also the verb to want). 

I forgot my memory reader in the house, so I won´t be able to send any pictures this week. I also don´t have many new ones, because my last battery died and I have to try to find a new one for the camera. There´s a radio shack in the center and I hope to find one there.

Usually for transfers we get a call Sunday night and then transfer Tuesday morning. However, early  Saturday morning, Hna Gonzales got called and told that she was going to Tupiza and would be leaving Sunday afternoon due to the problems with bloqueos and strikes in Potosi. Potosi is on the way from Cochabamba to Tupiza and has a lot of miners, which occasionaly go on strike and block all transportation into the city. I´m sure you can find more news online if you want to. 

Thus everything was really hectic as Hna Gonzales packed and said goodbye to everyone and then left Sunday at 2:00pm. Since then I´ve been with the sisters in Ingavi, the ward that shares our chapel. They also share our pension and are very nice. I like being with them, but their house is way too small  for three people. I´m looking forward to going back to Cobija Tuesday when I´ll get my new companion.

My new companion is going to be Hna Simmons, who is from Santa Cruz, a city in Bolivia, but outside the limits of the mission. She only has one transfer left, so I will stay in the area after she leaves. Hna Simmons is known for working really hard, which is great. I´m looking forward to working with her and bringing out the potential that Cobija has.

Thanks for all the photos and the news from home. I have a question: what happened to my little laptop? Is Charles going to take that to college? Also, thank Grammie for her package, which came this week. I am putting all the things to good use and especially enjoyed the cute sticky notes and lifesavers.

What other news is there here? Well, the week before last, Jose got baptised, and I´ve barely been able to write anything about him. He´s a really amazing person. His girlfriend is a member and introduced him to the church, but as we taught him and he read the scriptures and came to church, his interest and then testimony of the gospel became separate from his love for his girlfriend. He´s always been a religious person, but now feels much closer to God and bore his testimony after his baptism saying that he knows the church and the Book of Mormon are true. Our next goal with him is that he can go to the temple to do baptisms for the dead. We also went to the temple for the first time with Loida (a sister in the ward whom we visit) and she is now constantly trying to find more opportunties to go and we are starting to teach her husband, Alfonzo, who is almost the only member of the family who isn´t baptised. 

I hope you all are having a great summer. It´s been really cold here (cold for Cochabamba, a little chilly for MA), but is starting to get back to normal for this time of year (highs in the 60s or 70s and lows in the low 40s at night and until midmorning). 

I love you all. 
-Natalie 

Any news from Charles in Florida? When and how long will he be in Brasil?