June 1

Happy Birthday, Dad! 

The photos came through just fine. The yard looks very green and summery. We are feeling the winter more here. It still gets really hot and sunny in the middle of the day, but for fewer hours than it did a few months ago. However, the seasons aren´t that distinct and San Juan´s day (the winter solstice) is celebrated with barbaques. 

You were right that we didn´t change at all this cambio. I wasn´t that surprised because we had only been together one cambio, but Hna Gonzales was really hoping and half expecting to leave, so she was really sad. She seems disappointed more easily by the lack of success here in Cobija, but we are learning to get along a bit better. 

This week we had stake conference and in the middle of the Saturday night session they announced that Elder L Tom Perry, one of the Twelve, had died. It was sad, but President Hansen reminded us in his talk (the stake had invited our mission president to give a talk) that Elder Perry had lived a long, good life and was now reunited with his wife and other family members who had died. The conference in general was really good, but none of the people we invited came.

Hna Gonzales and I eating choripan (chorizo is sausage and pan is bread), a close realitive to a hamburger, but with a sausage cut open and grilled. In addition to tomatoes and onions it has cold, cooked carrots.

 More cool street art that just recently got painted, but the pictures didn´t turn out well because cars kept passing. 

My little cactus thing. I think it´s adorable, but none of the pictures turned out very well.

 Cool street art that I took a picture of to send to Hazel. 

My new agenda, which I think came out pretty well. I really love the quotes that Sister Meyers sent with me to put on agendas.

There are about 210 missionaries and about 20 missionaries per zone, so I think there are about 10 zones. At least 6 of which are in Cochabamba. Everyone pays a lot of attention to the new missionaries because we are interested in who they are and where they are coming from and if they´ve seen the latest movies. The missionaries who are leaving get teased. 

I don´t really remember Joshua. [I told her that my cousin and his wife are expecting a baby in September.--Kathie] Is he the one that teaches history?

Thanks for the photos. Robert looks a lot like Logan in this photo and the rocks are all crisp and in focus. :)

I love you all.

-Natalie

PS I´m going to try to send you some of the photos from the mission´s dropbox, because I´m not allowed to give you the password and name. 

PS There is a graduation gift for Charles that I left. It´s wraped in brown paper with yellow and blue ribbons.

May 25

Thanks for your great email. Hna Gonzales also says that I am thought of as pretty calm among the missionaries in the pension.

Thanks for sending me things, I'll let you know in a few weeks when I get them.

There´s not much to say about this week and I don't have any pictures. This morning we went as a zone (13 people) to play wally (volibol in a boxlike room like racket ball) and eat pizza. I´m not a huge fan of wally, but I like pizza and doing things as a zone. Hna Gonzales took some pictures so I might send them to you in a few weeks.

Yes, missionaries go to Potosi in addition to Cochabamba and Sucre, also Tupiza, Villazon, and Quiriza, but the last two only have elders. I´m not sure what you mean by zones within Cochabamba (or Cbba for short). Within the department (state) of Cbba there are a dozen or so provinces (a county, more or less, I think), but I don´t know their names. With in the city of Cbba places in the city are refered to by if they are in the north or south or near a major road and, within the church, by stake and ward. There are about 7 or so stakes in the city. Yes, there is a ton of uninhabited parts. I have trouble discribing how Acton isn´t in the city, but isn't a pueble (village) either.

I also think that Hna Gonzales and I will stay together this cambio. We are getting along okay. I wish she was more patient with my Spanish, which is good, but not perfect, and I'm sure she wishes I would hear her right the first time, and not be so awkward over the phone, and who knows what else bothers her, but mostly we get along okay.

We had a great zone meeting lesson Tuesday (every Tuesday we have district meeting for about an hour and zone meeting for about half an hour) about being in the present. We read the scripture that says for everything there is a season and the story of Lot's wife who looked back to the city thinking about her riches that she was leaving behind and what she would like to do with them in the future instead of focusing on the present moment and what she was supposed to be doing in that moment. Thus we've been joking a lot this week about how we shouldn´t do our daily and weekly planning because that is thinking about the future. But really, it's very good advice to stay in the moment and not be thinking about the next month or next pday.

Other interesting things I´ve noticed about Bolivia is the traces of socialism/comunism. For example, a little boy in a family we teach is called Vladimir Ilich (he goes by ilich, who his mother tells us was someone important in the Russian revelution). Also, an investigator, Gonzalo, who is a bit elderly, likes to tell us all about what Bolivia was like when he was younger, including spending several months traveling and working on different farms. He says that a group of people would be invited to a farm, harvest rice all day and dance and party in the night and the next day be invited to another farm and do the same thing until the rice harvesting season was over. He says it was great fun for a young adult, but that in the end you worked all month or more without gaining anything. I actually don´t know anything about how Bolivia´s politics work, despite paying attention to the city elections (the people with the green banners won is about all I know).

I'm glad you were able to have lunch with Heather and Beth. Aunt Beth is writing to me every once in a while, which is cool.

extras

May 18

Thank Dad for all the lovely photos. They also make me hungry (We're going to go get lunch after this). I'm having to learn how to budget a bit more lately. I bought a scripture cover for my Bible at the temple, and payed two months worth of fast offering that I had forgotten about, and some other little things this month more than I usually do and am having to think more about what i am going to spend my money on for the rest of the month. I mention this because I am thinking of what I will buy to eat for breakfast. Bread is super cheap and filling, but not as healthy as oatmeal or granola, etc. Fruit is also relatively cheap, except for apples, but goes bad pretty quickly. 

If you want to send me music, I asked and Handel's Messiah is definitly missionary music. CD, although it scratchs eventually, is the best way for me to play music. At the moment our dvd player does usb music too, but not all do.  

Interesting things that happened this week( I can't find a colon on this keyboard)

We are teaching someone who looks a bit like a younger Matt Riley and also acts a bit like him.

I only have two new photos. Hna Gonzales and Elder Mandujanu making invitations for an activities we are going to have in a week or so.

We saw a church with a funny no parking sign. Most places say prohibido estacionar or prohibido parquear (parking forbidden). This one says it's a sin to park there. 

The photos from last week are of the goodbye party for Hna Zaida, who is moving back to Utah, with the relief society. It was pretty fun. Everyone brought a lot of food and danced to fairly out of date spanish music. Now one sister is trying to get me to give her the photos, but, as she admits, doesn't understand anything about technology. I sent them to her email, but she doesn't understand how to open her email on her smartphone.

Things have gone much better with Hna Gonzales since Monday. We talked and agreed that Mondays are generally stressful for both of us. For me because I feel like I have too much to do and not enough time and for her because she is more introverted than I am (I'm finding that I'm not actually all that introverted) and we spend too much time Mondays in big groups of missionaries in crowed, noisy places. Today we are just going to internet, buying lunch and a few other odds and ends and going home  because we have a ton of stuff to get caught up on, which feels a lot calmer and more relaxed. 

In general we are getting along much better than last week and learning to understand each other better. Hna Gonzales says she's going to learn to be more patient and I am trying to be more loving and have charity. I've been studying a bunch about charity in the scriptures, which are very clear about how important charity (also translated as love) is. There's the most famous 1 Corinthians 13 that says that even if you have a ton of faith or good works, if you don't have charity, it doesn't help you and that "who is found with it (charity) in the last day, it shall be well for him" or something like that. 

There is also a passage in the Pearl of Great Price in which Enoch and Jesus are talking and Enoch asks Him why He is crying when He is allpowerful and allknowing and everything. Jesus responds saying (more or less), look at my creations (the works of my hands), who I love, to whom I gave agency and knowledge, They are without love between each other. 

Thus, I am trying to be more charitable and loving, especially with Hna Gonzales.

Yes, Roselyn is very pregnant. She's probably going to have her baby (a girl called Louisse) in the next few weeks. She has a good deal of support from her mom and her motherinlaw lives in the same building and also friends in the ward. We also go visit her a lot. Although, we are trying to visit her more to really help her and not just because she wants the company, because we spent way too much time with her this weekend when we could have been visiting other people too. She wanted help making cupcakes for the baby shower (for some reason baby showers here are almost always right at the end of the pregnancy) and we thought that would take about 2 hours, maybe less. We ended up spending the whole afternoon there, making a ton of cupcakes because the first batch didn't turn out good enough and the recipe was pretty complex. I try to be very patient explaining teaspoons and tablespoons and that you have to follow the recipe when baking, especially the first time, but sometimes I just have to let her cook the way she wants to and add bicorbonato even though the recipe didn't call for it. 

As missionaries we are always talking about truth and testifying that things (the church, the Book of Mormon, the priesthood) are true. However, I've been thinking more lately about what things are important. The problem most church member have isn't knowing if somethings if TRUE, but realizing how important it is. There are a lot of things that I know are true that I would like to teach people sometimes, such as how to follow a recipe, dental hygine, how to speak English, how to use a smartphone. However, those things aren't really as important. They aren't what I want to spend 18 months doing. The gospel, on the other hand, is both true and extremely important. I've know for ages that the Book of Mormon is true, but am just know learning how much it can actually change my life. 

Speaking of Roselyn again, there are so many little babies in this area. The first week here I got to hold a little baby who was only a week old while visiting an investigator (it's her sister's baby). There's also a less active sister who has a 4 month old, and now Roselyn's baby. All of the mothers are only a tiny bit older than me and the same age as my companion, which we find really weird. Neither of us feels nearly old enough to have children.

I will almost certainly choose may 3rd [2016, to return home], becasue it's closer to april 22nd and lets me complete my full 18 months. I still doesn't know what I want to study. Linguistics interests me a lot, but it doesn't feel very practical. I'd like to try to learn Arabic again or maybe do something math related.

PS Would you send me my recipe for chili.
It's in my 13wattn email because you sent it to me at BYU. I still haven't cooked any of the recipes that you've sent, except for pancakes. To make pancakes, I've had to add a lot more milk than the recipe calls for because I cant get the stoves to go low enough to cook the pancake through without burning when it's thick, but it tastes the same. 

May 11

No email today, because we saw and heard Natalie via skype this afternoon! She is lovely! Her new assignment is very challenging, so keep the letters and emails of support headed her way.

May 4

Thanks for your lovely letter. It{s good to know how you all are doing. I can imagine the Spring weather. Today, it also feels rather springish here, sunny and perfectly not too hot or to cold. However, it is technically fall. This doesn{t make a big different, but it has barely rained for about a month. It gets rather hot at noon and pretty cold at night and in the early morning, but I have finally gotten into a habit of always putting on sunscreen and find myself to be pretty resistant to different temperatures. I am used to much colder weather, so I am always the last to get cold or put on a sweater.

Hazel{s plans sound so exciting. I didn{t know there was a biking bit. I would love to explore new england like that. I sent her a postcard, but I think it will get home before she does.

Thanks for the advice on myself. I think knowing that will actually help a bit. In this week, I{ve made a lot of effort to pay attention to how Hna Gonzales is feeling (emotionally and physically) so that when she{s upset, she{s at least not upset with me. That does mean deferring to her opinions and judgement a bit more, but I find that it doesn{t matter that much. If we walk in the direction that I think takes longer or decide to take a taxi when I think we don{t need to, the effect of that choice wears off faster than being upset with each other does.

Every Thursday after weekly planning we do a companionship inventory. With Hna Aliaga she said we had to say two nice things and one thing to improve on. With Hna nuñez we just said, [things are going well. Yep? yep. This week we talked for at least half an hour and both of us cried, but we{ve gotten along much better since then.

One of the things that makes this companionship hard is that it{s a difficult area. We don{t have many new investigators and the members aren{t as excited to work with us. That puts more stress on us, but once I realized that I was able to adjust for it. 

We eat lunch with 7 other missionaries (I still don{t have pictures). Us, the other sisters in the district, and the five secretaries. There is a secretary of tramites (procedures), of registros (new baptism records), two of finances, and one more that I can{t remember, but he does flights among other things. We eat dinner just us and two of the secretaries because the others live further away. It{s pretty fun and relaxed.  We are sometimes eating all together, but often some arrive late or early so that we aren{t all starting and finishing at the same time.

I don{t really get the question about what spaces we share in common. We eat in the dinning room of the pensionista{s house and sometimes use her bathroom.

I{m missing all the boys growing up! I realize that I also missed a lot being at byu, but your descriptions of Robert are not the same Robert I remember. Does he make his own snack when he gets home from school too?

Pictures: we made brownies with Rosalin. They turned out really well. Rosalin and her husband, Rodrigo, are both return missionaries, but they only got married a month ago, so we are helping them in their process of becoming fully active in the church again. We always end up staying in their house later than we planned because they are our friends and we enjoy talking and cooking with Rosalin. The best brownie stuck to the placemat, but it was delicious and I now know how to make brownies from scratch. We also cooked (a different day) pizza,which was yummy, but very different from american pizza. The main different in that it{s made with ketchup instead of pizza tomato sauce, baloney, and canned corn kernels. 

I also came across a pamphlet on the laws related to lost children that has harry potter fan art as the picture. Look at it. It{s Harry and Ginny in their school uniforms. 

This next week we have zone conference, which we have once every three months, and also will go to the temple! I{m sure there will be photos.

I love you and look forward to seeing you on skype next week!

-Natalie

PS I almost signed my email Hna Watt

PPS If you see Sister Winroth, please thank her for her lovely card. It has a painting of the temple and I stuck in up on my wall. 

April 27

Cobija is different. It´s right in the city. The first thing you notice is that there is a lot more traffic and a lot fewer street dogs. The people are much wealthier and better educated. This is at first a benefit because they read and understand the Book of Mormon and the pamphlets, but they are also a lot less interested in learning about the church over all. In Villa Mexico we rarely knocked on doors because we didn´t need to much. We met people who were sitting on their front steps or we knocked on a handful of doors and at least half of the people agreed to let us come back to visit again. In Cobija this week we knocked on more than 30 doors and only got one yes and two maybes that we could teach them about the church. However, the ward is very good and well organized. 

Hna Gonzales only has one transfer in this area so she´s still getting to know it and the people here. She just ended a really difficult transfer. She and her companion didn´t get along at all, so I´m trying to be patient with her, but I´m starting to think it wasn´t all her companion´s fault. I know that I´m not a perfect companion either. I ask way too many questions without remembering the answers (who is that investigator, how long have we been teaching them, where are we relative to x other place). I tested Hna Aliaga´s patience too. The street noise also makes things difficult in some parts of the area. I also sometimes forget to think about other people´s feelings when I am trying to get things done. Hna Gonzales gets on my nerves sometimes because she does things (such as weekly and daily planning differently and sometimes isn´t very open to suggestions). 

Hna Gonzales has a year in the mission. She is a good missionary in general. She is a convert and only got baptised about three years ago. Her older sister got baptised first. The twin of that sister got baptised a week ago last saturday and he mom is thinking of investigating the church. She´s pretty introverted and doesn´t like having a ton of people the pension. I´m not nearly as introverted as I thought. I feel tired of talking to people at the end of the day, but I like all the chatter of the pension.

However, I know that we both have the same goals and want to get along, so I think we´ll find a way to compromise. I know that I need to be more charitable in all senses of charity. I need to love other people more and pay attention to them. I´m good at doing that when we are in a lesson and all my attention is on how the other person is feeling and thinking, but when my main goal is remembering where the streets are or which trufi goes where, I often forget. We also argued a bit other the other sense of charity. A man came into the church this Sunday with a story of how he was robbed and needs money to get back home (a few hours outside of the city). I was sure he was lying and tried to tell Hna Gonzales this, but she sort of snapped at me that it didn´t matter because we should try to help him. It turned out that the bishop wasn´t there and thus no one had the authority to give him money and they sent him of to a different ward. Hna Gonzales was probably right that it isn´t our job to judge who really needs help, but I still think he was lying. 

I was a little disappointed when I got this transfer because I thought the middle of the city was a ¨soft¨ area and that I could manage something harder. However, I´ve realized that this is actually a difficult area. The people aren´t nearly as receptive. Although, the ward is very well organized with great people, we don´t have anyone who regularly visits with us like we did in villa mexico.

the new pictures.

Last monday I went to say goodbye to Nicole and Malena. It was pretty awkward, because we´ve hardly seen them for a week or two. Nicole is strugglying because she still doesn´t have any friends at church and no one talks to her.

Hna Gonzales and I. This is a really unflattering picture of me. I don´t like that shirt much, but people will notice if I always wear the same thing. 

Elder Walton´s birthday and cake. He wasn´t that happy because he doesn´t really like celebrating his birthday, but the cake was yummy. the tradition is that the person has to take a bit out of his cake and as they do they get their face pushed into it. Luckly, no one tried to do this with Elder Walton. The other missionary is Elder Mandujano, who is also from Peru. He doesn´t know where his last name comes from. 

the view out the window. We are only on the second floor. (out of three, I think)

The apartment´s main room. The bedroom is normal and not very intersting to take a picture of. The bathroom is tiny., but the main room have lots of extra space. I put up my pictures on the walls and my pinecone too. We have lots of draw space for books or clothing, but there is nowhere to dry towels except for the two extra matresses. 

We sometimes split into Latinos and nortemericanos (or gringos), but not always. The language is almost always Spanish unless absolutly everyone nearby speaks English or unless there is a new missionary who doesn´t speak spanish much at all.

I will see Hna Nuñez occasionally on mondays, but only of one transfer more. She broke her wrist this morning playing futbol and has a white plaster cast for the next six weeks, but is taking it very well. 

I bought two new skirts and have two new shirts that Hna Aliaga left me. The second new skirt needs repairs (it´s a bit see through) before I can wear it. We might go clothes shopping next Monday, but if not, I might want some new skirts (I know exactly which ones). It´s only slightly colder and I still am rarely wearing my sweaters and blazers. 

Hna Nuñez and I did 15 minutes of stretching. Here we have more space and exercise a bit more. I´ve finally learned to do a proper sit up and generally do that and some jumping jacks and stretch for about 20 minutes. 

I now have music because I bought I cd from a sister who sells church videos and some music, so I don´t really need more. I also had a video of mormon messages, but it go really badly scratched. I have christmas music because the sister promised that it wasn´t all christmas music (it was) and a video of the apostles from 15 years ago baring testimony of Christ, which is actually really nice.