March 9

Something I was thinking about this week is that as missionaries we only really see the people who are struggling in the gospel. We had stake conference this week and I realized how many really active, happy members there are in the stake. However, we only visit the less active ones who are having problems in the church and, often, problems in their families too. It can be a bit depressing because we can see what will make them happier, but we can´t do it for them. However, we also teach a lot of investigatores who are learning about the church and whose lives are improving. However, they still need a lot of support and help from us.

I was thinking about that and also about how doctors only really see people who are sick and social workers only see families that aren´t working and a lot of other jobs deal only with the people or the parts that aren´t working out, but beyond that there are a lot of things that are going well, but that don´t need the attention. 

Anyway, here are my pictures:

First there are a lot from the last zone meeting. Elder Aguilar and Hna Aguilar are showing that they have the same last name and Elder Harris is making kissy faces because he know it drives Hna Aguilar nuts.

Then there are several blurry photos of my success in french braiding my hair. I think it came out really well, but I haven´t had the patience to do it a second time. 

This Saturday an investigator of the elders got baptised and they had me give the talk on the Holy Ghost. Actually they told me ahead of time, but I thought they were joking. Anyway, I wrote my notes on my hand during the talk on baptism and I think it all came out pretty well. I will be impressed if you can read my notes in spanish.

This week we also had intercambios with the sister training leaders, which is my opinion didn´t go that well. I got sick that morning and still don´t understand why. It wasn´t the normal stomach thing (I actually have been completely healthy this whole cambio) and I think was stress related, even though I didn´t think I was stressed and couldn´t think of any reason to be stressed. However, I learned a lot from Hna Santeco, especially about how to do daily planning better and the importance of keeping the area book more up to date. I didn´t get to show her how well I´m doing, but that really isn´t what the purpose of intercambios is supposed to be. 

February Temple Trip

March 2

First we have Sebas (Sebastian) hiding under a washtub waiting to scare Hna Nuñez when she gets out of the bathroom. He is the 4 year old son of our pensionista, Hna Anavel, and is adoreble, He is also just starting preschool, and while he enjoys it, we can also see that he´s pretty stressed by it. Did you ever have trouble getting us to eat when we were little? Hna Anavel´s kids never want to sit down and eat their lunch. 

The close up is of a sort of bland popcorn snack, that is made with the big, tougher corn that is common here. We think it´s called tostado and also that it´s really cheap because investigators often give us a lot to take with us. 

 Next we have photos from the baptism of Noelia and Graciela and also the card we made Noelia. I did the design and Hna Nuñez wrote the message because I hate trying to think of thoughtful things to write in cards even when I really care about the people. Can you read the Spanish?

 The baptism was a really special experience for everyone. Noelia was really nervous before we started the service, but after her baptism gave a simple, but hearfelt testimony that she was happy about the decision she had made to be baptised. Hna Graciela, her mom, has been incredibly firm in her decision ever since she started to listen to us and stop opposing Noelia´s desire to come to church. Pablo, an investigator of the elders was also baptised at the same time. 

The baptism was a really special experience for everyone. Noelia was really nervous before we started the service, but after her baptism gave a simple, but hearfelt testimony that she was happy about the decision she had made to be baptised. Hna Graciela, her mom, has been incredibly firm in her decision ever since she started to listen to us and stop opposing Noelia´s desire to come to church. Pablo, an investigator of the elders was also baptised at the same time. 

Noelia´s grandma, brother, and sister also came. I´m really happy for this family. I´ve really seen how the gospel has changed their lives. Noelia and her mom get getting along much better and Noelia is making friends at church and she was super shy when we met her. They are hoping Alejandro, who´s 12, will want to be baptised too and Dayan will be able to be baptised when she turns 8 in a few years.

Pablo was also a miracle for the elders because he showed up in the ward a few weeks ago from Santa Cruz and told them that the missionaries were teaching him there and that he wanted to get baptised, but had to move here for work. The elders were about to call the missionaries in Santa Cruz and confirm everything and finish teaching Pablo.

The other person in the photos are Hna Tania, our lovely young women´s president, with her baby.

Noelia and Graciela are so special to me and so eager to keep learning from the scriptures and the classes at church. Noelia also became good friends with another of our investigatores, Valeria, and I hope they will be able to support each other to be firm in the gospel. 

 I also took pictures of my new agenda for the coming transfer, a photos of a photo from the caroling activity at Christmas, the chapel (the tree is pretty, but it covers the name of the church), Hna Nuñez (this morning waiting in front of the church for the rest of the zone. This is the biggest street in our area, except for the almost-highway that is our area limit on the other side). We all went to internet together because we had take an online spanish test. However, I couldn´t get it to work and we had permission to give up after half an hour of trying. 

Thanks for the letters from Elizabeth, but you´ve right I won´t have time to read them much. 

I am glad to be missing all the stress and endless conversations about rowing practices, but of course miss you all and also all the snow.

I think I will have more success finding a Quechua book here and also don´t really have any time to study Quechua. I still need to study Spanish better. I still constantly mix up hizo and hice and all the other preterite verbs and have no idea if I´m using por and para right. 

My shoes haven´t arrived yet, but I generally get packages on Tuesdays. I won´t need any other new clothes for awhile. 

This 6 week cambio has passed very quickly for me too. 

This week was really great despite the heat in the first half of the week. The ward, especially the laurels and JAS (YSA), is really stepping up to work with us. They come visit with us and also a lot of people came to the baptism. We are super busy and still haven´t visited a bunch of the corners of our area because we have enough to do in the other parts. Part of me wants to get to know another part of Bolivia, like Tupiza, where Hna Nuñez was for a while, but I would also really miss Villa Mexico. (Tupiza is almost to Argentia and actually has a clear summer and winter.)

February 23

Weather report from here in Bolivia is that it gets kind of cold when in rains all day, such as today and we went to a not as good internet in order to get out of the rain quicker. The keys keep sticking and driving me nuts. 

Thank Uncle Ben for the letter for me. I´m printing it out along with the reciepe to read in more detail later.

If you buy a third car I will want it to take to Utah. 

We are supposed to study language for an hour each day from 10 to 11. I study Spanish and my companion studies English. However, we need to leave at 10:40 to go to our 11 appointments. and usually use the other 40 minutes to wash breakfast dishes, tidy up and get ready to leave. 

However, Sister Hansen talked at the zone conference that we had this week about how we really need to do our language study and that it´s just as much a part of obedience as getting up on time and the other parts of the morning scheduel, so we are trying to make time to study.

I also got reluctant premission to study Quechua if I can find a good Quechua book. Generally I spend my study time reading and doing the activites from a Spanish book I picked up from a missionary who´s gone home (I don´t like the one from the mtc). I also have gone through chapters of the Book of Mormon writing down all the verbs and figuring out what conjugation they are. What I need to do is make a list of all the words I am always asking my companion and memorize them.

In the conference we also talked about being a consecrated missionary (sacrifice your disobedience, pride, laziness,etc) and how to do better contacts in the street (be more friendly, ask question that make people think or reflex, find out what things are important to them). We also got to watch the movie, Meet the Mormons, which I highly recommend. It introduces 5 or so different families and is very well put together. I think you will enjoy it a lot. It´s your type of movie about families and people´s lives and made a lot of us cry at the end. 

This weeks pictures all come from this morning. we went and had lunch with Noelia and Graciela, and also Elder Hatch and Elder Grover, the zone leaders. Noelia and Graciela are getting baptized next Saturday (expect photos) and both us and the elders have been teaching them because Graciela works in the elders´ area (the backspace doesn´t work very well and is driving me nuts.)

The photos are: Elder Hatch teaching Noelia new knots for her school tie, Elder Grover doing the same with Alejandro (Noelia´s little brother) and Graciela cooking (french fries) in the background, their dog Coropi, they also have two cats, everyone with the ties. The little girl is the youngest sister, Diana. The other photos are from earlier: Noelia and Graciela are starting a jewlery making business and are good at it. the pictures are from a week or so ago. The pictures of us eating are from earlier today. The dish is once again piche machu, because that it what you make when you invite people over. However, it´s really good so I´m happy to have it. Then we took pictures with Noelia as she left for school (she has the afternoon schedule from 1 to 6 or 7)

Other things I did this week are finish reading Jesus the Christ, which is really good, and hmm that´s about it. It wasn´t that exciting of a week. It´s already week five of the cambio. The week after next, I´ll know if one of us is changing. 

I hope you are doing well and not freezing too much. 

February 18

I´m a little sad to miss all the snow and cold weather. Here it continues to alternate between hot and sunny and raining and if it rains for more than an hour or two it starts to get rather chilly.

Carnival for me was really boring. It´s a bigger deal in other parts of the city, where they started throwing water balloons and using squirt guns weeks ago. However, here in villa mexico is only started on Sunday. Sunday afternoon there were lots of little kids running around with big squirt guns and water balloons and generally having a great time. Some of them got us wet too, but it was so hot out that we didn´t mind much. Monday and Tuesday we stayed inside, but could hear a lot of fireworks and fire crackers and such, plus lots of loud music. I´n sure that lots of people had water guns and balloons and even buckets of water, but you can´t hear that as much.Today a lot of houses and cars are still decorated with streamers and balloons, but it´s pretty much over. 

With all our time in our apartment we followed the normal schedule for study in the morning (one hour of personal study, one hour of companionship study, and one hour of language study). Then we cleaned the apartment really well, updated the area book (records of all the people we are teaching, where they live, what we have taught them, etc), which took awhile, did laundry, and caught up on a lot of assorted little things like writing letters, making some new cardboard drawings to teach the Plan of Salvation (remember the missionaries who had Calvin from calvin and hobbes? I´ll take a picture of mine this week.), and organizing my desk really well. However, we still had lots of time to be bored. I´ve gotten used to having lots to do and being really busy, so I didn´t like all the free time as much as I thought I would (I was really looking forward to our "vacation"). 

Hna Nuñez and I get along fine. It wasn´t that hard to adjust to teaching with her because all missionaries learn to teach with the same basic principles and, obviously, the same lesson outlines. We talk a lot about our families and what we did before our missions, more than with Hna Aliaga. Looking back, Hna Aliaga told me almost nothing about her family or life. I´m not sure if Hna Nuñez is more soft spoken or not. She talks just as much, but I think is a bit more reserved about her feelings. maybe? 

I feel like I understand Spanish pretty well. I am aware of how much I need to work on conjugating my verbs. I know how to do it right, but I have to think about it for a second first and often don´t bother. I still never know when to use tu or usted, but I think that´s a problem that everyone has. I´m reading the Book of Mormon in Spanish and can understand pretty well, except for the Isaiah parts, but I can´t understand the Isaiah parts in English either. 

I have a couple photos to send you, but I can´t get the computer to accept my memory reader. It just doesn´t show up at all. When I finish everything here, I might have time to switch to a different machine and try there. The pictures are of us in front of the temple, we finally went to the temple. As missionaries we get to go once every 3 months, so I hadn´t gone in ages. We went really early in the morning and got back to our house by 10 or 11 if I remember right. That morning, while getting ready to leave by 5:30, the sink broke and wouldn´t turn off. We were able to stick a brick on top of it which kept the leaking to a minimum until Hno Fernandez (the father of the family who lives in the house) could fix it. Now the shower won´t heat the water and we have to use the shower in the house until it gets fixed, which is a bit of a bother. 

The other picture is of the lunch we made the monday. We had permission to leave to go to the pension for lunch and dinner, but Hna Anavel can´t cook for us on Mondays because she sells juice all day and on Tuesday she called us and said she couldn´t that day either because she was visiting her mother. We had permission from the Fernandez family to use their kitchen and food, but there wasn´t much in the fridge. Thus we had potatoes and eggs with tomato and onions for lunch for two days. Boiled potatoes the first day and fried the second. We made pancakes for dinner, which turned out pretty good. I am learning to make them thin enough that they don´t burn before they are cooked through. Next time we have to cook for ourselves I want to make latkes because all the ingredients are really easy to find here. Could you send me a recipe. I just need to know the approximate ratios between eggs, potatoes, onions, and flour. Am I forgetting an ingredient? milk?

Love,

Natalie

PS This computer is set to English and thus you are getting an email without many spelling mistakes. 

Here are some pictures from paintball. They are really unflattering because the girls have to wear an extra padded vest under the jumpsuit (this is also really hot), but we had fun. 

February 9

I´m not sending you that many photo´s this week because without Hna Aliaga always taking photos, I don´t take that many. The first few photos are from last monday. I realized I hadn´t sent you any photos of drinks in bags. What I have in the picture is milk with cinnomin and oatmeal (I couldn´t taste any oatmeal), bt fruit juices are a lot more common. 

Next, I have some pictures that I think turned out really well of figs. Figs are in season and a lot of people have extras from the fig trees in their yards that they give us. Figs are not very sweet, but they aren´t bad. Next is all the stuff I have up on my wall. It looks a lot less baren in person. I don´t understand why Aunt Heather sent me my own baby pictures, but I put them up too. Finally this morning Hna Nuñez and I realized we didn´t have any pictures of the two of us, so we took one before leaving the house. 

Don´t worry I should be able to wear these shoes for a lot longer. However, last week when my feet got soaked the shoes took a lot of damage and I realized that they might not wear out gradually like they had been. I don´t care too much about the color, but not red. They need to be able to match with everything. 

I sent Dad his letter last week after internet and they said it would take 15 days at the longest, which I think is overly opptomistic, but it might get to you this coming week. 

My observation of the week is that I don´t think I´m a teenager anymore. The 16 and 17 year olds that we teach or who visit with us sometimes feel like they are the same age as me, but I often feel a lot more mature then them. I have the prespective to see that their huge problems are not the end of the world nor are nearly as big as they seem. I remember feeling like that, like the whole world was against me, but now I have to remember to be patient as they work out that their parents are not trying to ruin all their plans, but just want them to think through their descions and get home on time. 

I´ve thought a bit about your question of if I´m really happy and that I should tell you when things aren´t going well. I think I am generally happy. There is a difference between momentary and long term happiness. At many moments throughout the day I wish I were doing something else that involved less walking or being in the hot sun or people who aren´t home when they promised they would (today we went to visit someone at 8am, which is super early to be visiting and it´s pday to boot because they said that was the only time they had, but when we got there they were leaving and really they aren´t that interested in talking to us) or who don´t want to listen to us, but still take up a lot of our time talking, while we stand there late for something else. However, at the end of the day I am happy with what I´ve done that day and how I am living my life. 

I sometimes miss watching tv or listening to rent really loud in the car or being able to chose what I´m going to eat without worrying what my companion thinks of my food choices, but I can see a huge different in how receptive I am to the Spirit. I truely enjoy studying the scriptures and, when I finally got the Liahona from Conference, the talks asnwered so many questions I had, just like everyone always said that conference talks did, but I didn´t see before. 

The other day I was thinking of how I know all the details of the characters in movies and books that I like (Sebas, the 4 year old son of Hna Anavel, has a bunch of avengers action figures and I was explaining the different characters to Hna Nuñez while Sebas disagreed with me. He will not be convinced that spiderman in not in the avengers movie and I have to remember that he´s 4 and that convincing him that Loki is more misunderstood than purely evil is not that important.) and that now I am putting some of that energy into remembering the lives of the people we teach. They are all really unique and interesting. It helps me to remember what it says in Preach My Gospel that whatever the problems people have, the gospel will help them, because I have so little experience with ecomonic or family problems. I can just tell them that praying will help and coming to church will help and that reading the Book of Mormon will help because it will. 

Today I am happy because it is pday and also because a ton of people who we invited to church came! Earlier this week I was pretty discouraged because two days in a row we spend several hours with nothing to do trying to remember someone who lives near where we were to go visit because all of our plans had fallen through. I am proud that in the area I am in we have yet to have to knock on doors to find someone to teach and don´t want to break that streak and also if we are out of people to visit after dark we don´t want to knock on random doors. 

This coming weekend is carnival. The young men and young women and ysa are going camping (each group seperatly) for 4 days and the ward will be really empty on Sunday. However, I think they are going to have a great trip and I hope the people we are teaching who are going to go can make a lot of close friends. Girl´s camp was always a great experience for me for different reasons each year. The first year I went I came back with a testimony strong enough to decide to be baptised. The second year (or maybe third) was the first time I bore my testimony in public. I also got to be a leader for the first years in the final year. 

The other reason I´m telling you about carnival is that on monday and tuesday next week we won´t be allowed to leave the house for anything more than to go to the pension for meals because there are too many people throwing water ballons and drinking. We will get a half day pday on wednesday morning to write home and do shopping or other pday things.

February 2

The missionaries definitely care about the superbowl. We were talking this morning and everyone was sure that the seahawks and patriots were playing, but no one was sure who has won, and I thought the superbowl was in november. 

The missionaries also care about current events and many were listening to the newest elder summarize what had been going on in the news as he was leaving home. We had a nice discussion trying to remember what´s going on around fracking. 

I do not need any new socks. I wear the tiny socks everyday, but I can plenty and they are holding up more than you´d think. What I will need in the next month or two is new shoes. I already sent you the info and pictures of my shoes. I will eventually want another skirt or two, but that can wait several months. All of that can be found here, but I don´t have the time to search out good shoes when you could just send me another pair of what I know works great. Just remember to label everything as under 100 dollars or it will be expensive and time consuming for me to pick up. 

This week I recieved 2 letters from Dad, two letters from grammie, one letter from grandma and one letter from Aunt Heather. I am getting more mail than almost everyone else in my zone. 

Thanks for the pictures [of the snow]. My companion is impressed.

Hi Mom (and the other people who read my blog),

Thanks for all the letters I´ve gotten this week. All the pictures and drawings and cards I get go up on the wall above my bed. One of the zone leaders remarked on how much mail I get. I especially apreciated the letter from Sister Gold updating the sister missionaries from Nashua on what the other sister missionaries from Nashua are doing. It´s really interesting to hear a bit about what it´s like to be a misionary in other places and reading about their miracles they´ve seen in their missions makes me happy.

One of the blessings here at the moment is Noelia, an investigator, who is doing amazingly. I´ve been able to see how the gospel is helping her come out of her shell and start to make friends in the church.

It is raining more here than before. See photos.

It is also hot, but not that different than before. Does grammie have a photo of Uncle Ben in the rain on the sidewalk like that? I think I remember seeing one.

I am feeling short on time right now, so I´m going to copy a bit of what I wrote to the mission president. 

After a awkward day or two, Hna Nuñez and I are getting along just fine. For the first few days I felt a lot of burden and responsibility to look after my area and investigators almost alone, but Hna Nuñez gradually started to talk more and we had a really good ward council, which helped me not to feel like I or the missionaries are alone in supporting our investigators and less actives. The bishop and ward leaders will also help. 

Noelia is progressing a ton, which helps the ward get excited about missionary work, because they can see the results really quickly in Noelia. A few of them invited her to go see the temple without needing an prompting from us at all and often these weeks she knows more about the schedule of activites in the ward then we do. I´ve also seen Noelia change a lot and come out of her shell in young women´s activities. She still has doubt, but says she wants to be baptised on the date we´ve set from the 21st. 

Anyway, Hna Nuñez is a lot quieter than I´m used to and I miss walking out of a lesson and excitedly talking about what went well and what didn´t, but she´s a good missionary and teaches well and had a great idea from a fhe with a bunch of little kids. We talked about service and helped them trace their hands to record how they are serving each other at home. Hna Ruth, who invited us from the fhe also invited her neighbor and halfway though the neighbor called her kids in to listen too and we have an appointment to come back and do another fhe. 

(fhe is family home evening.)

I don´t know where all my internet time went today, but I really appreciated all the pictures of the snow at home.

The pictures and videos are from the ward talents show.

It started 2 hours late because everyone showed up late, and thus we had to leave part way through because missionaries should be home at 9 or 9:30 if in a lesson, but it turned out really well. Everyone danced really nicely and there were some funny skits. The young men did a cooking show, which was really funny and had audience participation. The high priest´s group did a rather long skit/play, which I think was on the evils of drinking, but I didn´t really understand because they didn´t speak loud enough to be heard in the back. 

The first new picture is of piche mayor (Or something like that), which is delicious. It is homemade french fries (not very salty and large chunks) with red onion, tomatoes, green peppers, sasauge, a bit of hard boiled egg, and little pieces of meat with a distintive sauce. I´m trying to remember to take more pictures of food.

We also went paintballing again as a zone, which was a lot more fun now that I know how in works and who the people in the zone are. Hna Nuñez is the one on the far side of the picture from me. In the middle are Hna Hansen and Hna Aguilar, the other two sister missionaries in our zone. 

Yes, I´m still in the same place. 

The next big thing coming up is carnivel, when I think we might have to stay in our apartment for the day because there are too many drunks and people with water balloons, but that´s just the rumor from past years. 

Thanks for telling me about the movie. I´ll think about that. At the moment, I only have time for news, not reflection.