April 6

Thanks for the letter and pictures. I only had two pictures this week and the computer was giving me problems, so you´ll get them next week. 

I finally got your letter (Dad) this Friday along with a letter from Grammie in Newburyport and a Christmas letter from Brother Gentile. Thanks for the news and thoughts. 

I´m sad to hear that Grandma and Grandpa are thinking of getting an apartment. I´ve always had an unrealistic dream of living in the big brick house in Allentown. I agree that they do have a lot of stuff to be moved. I´m thinking of all the old kids books and comics on the little bookshelf downstairs. 

I don´t think there are any mormon spanish phrases. We never say adios, just like in English you rarely say ¨goodbye¨. We say cuidese and hasta luego ( take care of yourself and see you later) when saying goodbye. The missionaries have plenty of slang, but half of it is english. 

It´s interesting to see how people adapt to new places. For example, one sister who has been in the mission a few months longer than me has had a lot harder time adjusting. From what I can see, it´s all about attitude, and also that she came not speaking a word of Spanish and changed areas four times in the amount of time that I´ve just been in one. 

The difference is that she is always finding the things she doesn´t like about Bolivia or all the says that it´s different from the US instead of just accepting it as a different place. Also, she misses home a lot more than I do because; I think, she was a lot less independent before the mission. She was really sad to not be home for Easter, while I was really excited because there are kinder eggs here (I have yet to buy one, but I will this afternoon). 

The only really big thing this week was General Conference, which was great. This is the first time that I actually watched all of conference and I really enjoyed all the messages. It was so much more fun to watch in a group of missionaries (all the norteamericanos watched in a different room to have it in English) than alone at home. The general themes of the conference to me were the family and the atonement of Christ. One of the main messages I got from it is that salvation is not something I can earn through my own works, but only through relaying on Christ. However, we still need to keep the commandments to show our love for God. 

There was also a great message about the parable of the prodigal son that concluded with the message that we are really all the prodigal son. The speaker said that he had often thought of himself as the good son who stayed home, but that he realized that to God we are all prodigal children that must be forgiven even though we have made so many mistakes. In general, it was a beautiful conference and a vacation for the missionaries because we got to watch conference instead of working for two whole days. We only had two hours in the evenings to go visit people. 

Also, semana santa is a big deal here. On Friday night I saw a bunch of Roman soldiers walking down the road, no doubt, going to a reenactment at a nearby church. The tradition is to cook on Friday 12 different dishes and eat fish instead of meat. Most people cooked fish and a couple of the dishes, but not all. We can´t eat fish. :(

I love you all and look forward to the emails each week. Keep doing exciting things to write to me about. :)

Thanks for the reminder that germs cause illnesses, not weather. Everyone mentions the changeable weather when explaining why people are sick and I don´t even know the word for germs in Spanish, but there was clearly a cold or flu going around last week as the weather turned a little colder (not that much colder, in my New Englander opinion).

I´m glad you could figure out how to help Charles´ health. Hna Graciela, who got baptised a few weeks ago, has really bad asthma and ends up going to the hospital every couple of weeks. I am embarrassed to say that almost all of my knowledge about asthma comes from fanfiction, but it was very well researched fanfiction, so I know a lot more about asthma than Hna Nuñez. 

Hna Anavel's struggles with her kids (who are 8 and 4) seem very familiar to me. She is contantly fighting with Joanna, who is 8, over her homework. We try to tell her to be patient, that she´s only a little kid, and that it´s okay if she makes mistakes in her homework, but Hna Anavel is often upset with Joanna, which makes the whole house unhappy. My apologies to the boys for all the times I was yelling at you and they were just trying to eat dinner. Any advice we can give Hna Anavel? 

Oh, thanks for the family photos. Everyone says I look just like you (Mom), which I take as a compliment, and that we all look the same.

March 30

I´m sorry my last email made you worry about me. I really am enjoying Villa Mexico. Although I am looking forward to a transfer and getting to know somewhere new, I will also miss this area and all the people a ton. I feel comfortable in the ward and haven´t gotten us lost for ages. 

The fact that the last few months of one´s mission are the hardest to focus is well known among the missionaries. This feeling is called being ¨trunky¨ or ready to pack your trunk. Although, not all the Spanish speaking missionaries seem to realize that this is a word in English and not just mission slang. (and spell it tronki)

I´m glad you saw the pictures of our sister missionary gathering. It was a lot of fun. We had some lessons from the sister training leaders, a self defense class, a really nice dinner, and watched the general women´s broadcast. The self defense class was super short, but we learned some good, martial arts-y moves to get someone´s hands away from you or off your bag. The main difference with Impact is the length of the class, but also that Impact's main advice was not to be afraid to elbow or knee them as hard as you can, while this was more learning different moves that you can use to control the situation. 

Easter is a little confusing because for all the catholics the whole week is equally important (I think) and not just Easter. Also, we have General Conference this weekend, so there´s no Easter program at Church at all. Also, Easter is pedestrians´ day in all of Cochabamba, which means there are no cars or motorcycles anywhere and everyone has to walk or bike. This is a great idea in general because everyone dusts off their bikes and the little kids can use the whole street for tricycles and scooters without worrying about cars. However, it´s always on General Conference and some of the members live really far from the chapel. Dia peatonal is always the first is april, which happens to be easter this year, but is always general conference.

there weren´t any cars Sunday either because of elections (cars, motorcycles, and gathering of large groups are prohibited on election day). We couldn´t have church either.

The animal from last week wasn´t there anymore. I´m not sure if it got sold or just kicked out for eating someone´s pet bird. 

Pictures this week are of Hna Nuñez reciving her ¨carta trunky,¨ which has her instructions about the last few weeks of her mission. She has only one more transfer after this one. Behind her you can see the votes for what we are going to do the pday after this one. The decision is paintball again, because there isn´t really much to do in Cochabamba. Aparently, there used to be bowling, but the bowling place closed a few months before I got here. Today is going to be really boreing because it´s the very end of the month and no one has any money. 

Then there are two blury pictures of the temple at night. The mission home is just across the street from the temple, so I took these pictures as we were leaving. President Hansen also gave us roses, which I put in water bottles on the counter. The pink one is mine. 

Other news is that Jose Maria Leyes won the election for mayor. Since we don´t read the news I know the names and colors of the different parties well, but not any of the issues. 

Also, Hna Nuñez has had a cold and bad cough for days now, which I have still managed to avoid catching. I think it comes from the way the weathers been lately. Cold, rainy nights and really hot during the day. I got sun burnt again, but not too badly. 

This week we had intercambios with the sister training leaders and I went with Hna Rumaldo to her area, villa luz. This intercambio wasn´t as eventful as the last one and was really just a normal day in someone else´s area. They eat lunch with two pairs of elders and the elders are fun, but just as immature as ours were when we ate with elders. 

Thank you for all the pictures. Who took them? They turned out very well. I think Charles looks different, but I´m not sure how. 

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. 

March 16

This week we had a fun activity with a bunch of the young single adults. We (the 4 missionaries in the ward and the ward mission leader, Hno Lopez) invited them to come on Saturday afternoon to talk about missionary work and make and eat pizza. Everything ran very late, but it turned out well in the end and we hope to have more people who want to come visit with us.

We continue to visit Noelia and Graciela several times a week to keep supporting them. We also really enjoy visiting Noelia and Graciela. They are doing well and happy to see us. It makes me really happy when Noelia asks us questions that show she is reading her Book of Mormon really closely and how excited they both are to go to the temple with us next week.

This Sunday one of the leaders from the stake came to give a talk in our ward, reviewing a few things from the stake conference the previous week. He gave an example of how we should try to learn from conferences and lessons in general. Once there was a penguin who knew how to fly. All the other penguins wanted to learn too, so he said he would teach them. The next day all the penguins came to learn how to fly and practiced all day until they could fly. Then they all walked home. He explained that when we learn something in conference or at church we also need to apply it and remember it when we go home.

This Sunday, like most, I felt like I was herding cats trying to get everyone to go to their classes. Daniela wouldn´t enter relief society without us, but we had to go track down Loida to get her to go too. Also, everytime we turned around Alejandro and Kevin escaped from young men´s. And, half of the primary is always in the hallway, which the ward is trying to work on and isn´t really our responsibility, but we try to help too. We finally got everyone into their proper classes more than halfway into the hour and finally entered relief society ourselves. Herding cats.

The photos are: my continuing adventures in braiding my hair, a cheap hard candy called ¨watt´s,¨ and a bunch of photos from today. We went to pyramani, which is more or less and national park. We barbaqued, which was very yummy, but just like in the US had lots of flys and some bees. We also hiked about 20 minutes to see a small waterfall and some very steep cliffs. This is all about an hour and a bit from my area, on the other side of the city. 

Oh, my shoes came. They seem great, but I will try to wait at least a month more before using them. 

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.)