July 20

Thanks so much for your email and news from home. I was hoping for a
bit of international news too because the rumor in the mission is the
the US and Bolivia aren´t getting along that well at the moment.

I´ve had an interesting week because Hna Simons is as different from
Hna Gonzales in personality as you can get. While Hna Gonzales is
quite introverted and doesn´t like big activities or new people that
much, Hna Simons is super extroverted and loves to talk to everyone.
This is a very useful trait in missionary work, but it is also a huge
change for me and is a bit much sometimes. For example, Hna Simons
pretty much shouts ¨buenas tardes¨ at absolutely everyone. She is very
confident and very eager to work hard, which is great because the area
has a lot of potential, but needs a lot of hard work.

You´re right that her name is European. Her father is originally from
France, but has lived in Bolivia all his adult life.

The talk of the mission at the moment is all the problems that Potosi
is having. They are having what appears to be called a civic strike.
None of the stores can open, nor transportation, nor really anything.
The miners are striking for more industry in the city instead of just
the mine and it´s really difficult for all the people and missionaries
there. Although there is food, no one can open the stores to buy or
sell it and the missionaries had a very hard time leaving and entering
again during cambios. I think President Hansen changed as few
missionaries as possible because my new companion, who came from
Potosi, had to walk with her luggage a long way and then the bus took
a longer route than normal to avoid the protests. This doesn´t really
affect us here in Cochabamba, but we are a bit worried about the
members and missionaries in Potosi.

I am also worrying about what I´m eating, but as you say I don´t have
a ton of control over it. I also enjoy my pensionista´s compliments
that I always eat everything I´m given. I enjoy Bolivian food for the
most part, but I am aware that an awful lot of it is fried and
starches. Generally, a plate has either meat or chicken, rice (or
maybe noodles or potatoes, but mostly white rice) and what is called a
salad. A salad is not actuallly salad, but chopped vegatables (usually
cooked) and often with sauce or mayo. We also eat soup first most
days, which is usually a delicious noodle soup with vegetable and a
bit of meat or chicken. This is all generally pretty healthy; it just
needs more vegetables and fewer fried things or sauces with a lot of
oil. Vegatables are super cheap, but as often more of a garnish than a
main part of the meal. I walk a lot every day, but still seem to be
gradually gaining weight. I hope to go to an area with a lot of hills
in October, but if not I will just have to try to excersize more in
the mornings.

I really like my area and am happy to be here for more time. However,
all the cars and too many people are frustrating and I do not think I
would be happy living in a city for a long time. On the other hand,
living in a place is very different than being a missionary in a
place. If I was just living and working or studying in a downtown area
like Cobija, I would spend a lot of time inside and not have to be
walking around and trying to cross busy streets all day. What I really
like about being a missionary in a downtown area is that the tall
buildings provide shade and all the streets and most of the houses are
helpfully labeled.

I still haven´t found new batteries for my camera, but I still have
more pictures from previous weeks to send you. These include:

Also at the temple, Luis Angel was really cute reading his new Book of
Mormon with big letters because he´s just starting to read well and
the little letters are harder to read. He´s Hna Loida´s grandson. The little girl is Casey, her granddaughter.

The last few pictures from the temple. includeing when we ran into Hna
Ana Eguino, a new member of our ward who works in the temple three
afternoons a week. She is a good friend of ours and we visit her at
least once a week to help out in her house and sometimes go visit investigators with her, if they don´t live too far away.

Photos from Jose´s baptism. Hno Angelo, the elders´ quorem president
baptised him. His fiance, Shirely, is also in the picture and gave the
talk on the Holy Ghost. It was really cold and rainy that day, but we
got the baptism fount water to heat a little (not much) and people
showed up for the baptism.

The mission asked us for photos of our house. This is our house. It is
very nice and comfortable. It is on the second story, which makes it
warmer and have fewer ants (a month or two ago we finally killed all
the ants, and I am very happy to notice that they haven´t tried to
come back).

The view of the mountains with snow as we can see them from Cobija.

Tunari: Missionaries in the snow, somebody brought a plastic washing
tub thing to try to sled, but it broke before I got a turn, a little
iced over creek, llamas from the window of the car as we returned, a
little village that is either abandoned or only used for collecting
the llamas and sheep at night (there are sheep too, but I didn´t take photos of them).

I have been using my retainer once in a while and lately, hardly at
all, because I never have time in the evening to clean it before I can
put it on. I´m trying to make time, but lately we are taking a long
time to do daily planning for the next day in the evening and I barely
have time for anything afterwards.

The other benifit of living in the city is that we can put our trash
in the dumpster half a block away whenever we want to. In Villa Mexico
we had to wait for the dumptruck to come by once or twice a week and
run outside with our trash.

With Hna Simons we are having a lot more success in Cobija. Mainly, we
are making our lessons much shorter and more to the point, which lets
us visit a lot more people each day. Also, we are working more with
the members to have references and invite them to visit with us.
We have also been inviting more people to come to church with us even
if we have only taught them once or twice, . Even if they don´t end up
coming, whether they accept the invitation or not tells us if they are
really interested in learning more about the church or if they are
just friendly enough to let us come talk to them a bit.

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?

July 6

Sorry about all the confusion with the emails last weeks. I just hit reply like normal, but it only went to Charles. I got a phone call from Hna Hansen Monday night asking if I was okay, which I was. 

I am very well aware that the Pope is going to be in Bolivia. It´s a pretty big deal, but the only real impact is the the price of traveling has a apparently gone up since so many people are traveling to see the Pope. However, there are posters around reminding people of it. If they televise the visit, we might catch a glimps of it.

Thanks for all the world news.

Wow, Charles is going to Rio!!! If there are picture, forward them to me please. 

I love hearing about all the news from home, but never have time to respond to it all. Today, it looks like only you [Dad] are going to get an email and not Mom.

There are a ton of photos, because I didn´t have time to load them last week and both weeks I took a lot. 

First are a lot of photos of Roselyn and her baby. They are so adorable together.  These photos should not go on the blog because Roselyn doesn´t want the photos of her and the baby to be so public. 

The big new map of our area up on the wall.

Some of the things up on the wall next to my desk.

Cool art of different catherals/churchs on the wall of an alleyway.

Last pday our zone went to a barbaque for the birthday of a friend of the secretaries, who helps them out a bunch. It was really fun, but started late, took a long time and then a bunch of us stayed late to help wash the dishes. Thus we were really rushed last pday.

We went to the temple with Hna Loida, a less active member, who was going for the first time to do baptism for the dead. Her two grandkids came with us and were adorable. The temple grounds had snapdragons and I took a lot of photos. 

A celebration at the local cathoic church. We stopped to watch the dances and took some videos, too. It was really pretty. We think it was probably for the patron saint of that particular church because it was only there, not in other parts of the city. 

There are more photos, but I don´t think they are all going to load before we´ll have to go.

Today we had to cancel all of our plans to visit former areas because we had a zone activity. We went to Tunari where there was snow. This last few days have been unusually cold and it rained on Saturday, which was very unusual for this time of year. Thus, the mountains were full of snow. It was rather cold, but I dressed warmly and wasn´t as cold as everyone else. 

Thanks for your letter last week too. I have thoughts to respond to it, but they will have to wait til next week (when I will also have news about my new companion).

June 29

Natalie DID write on Monday, but she sent her email to Charles, who failed to share it or even mention its arrival. It is interesting to me that when I emailed the Mission President's wife on Monday evening, concerned by the lack of an email, she responded in a way I now see was "covering" for Natalie by blaming the zone activity.

Hi Mom and Charles and Dad and Robert and everyone else who reads the blog.

I have a ton to tell you and respond to and everything, but I have no time at all and will probably have less time next week. 

Today we went to a barbaque with the whole zone (about 16 missionaries) and it took way longer than expected and then we had to go shopping at the cancha because Hna Gonzales needed a new duffle because she´s almost certainly having a transfer in two weeks and needs to be able move her stuff. Next week is even busier because we need to visit Villa Mexico and also Hna Gonzales´ old area in Sacaba.

I got the skirts and quote. Thank you!!!! They are very comfortable and pretty and all fit well, but they are all a bit short. I have to sit very carefully to wear them. Who is Rainer Maria Rilke?

I want to tell you all about some of our investigators, but it will have to wait until I have more time.

This week I learned that the US legalized gay marriage. Detailes? All I read was one tiny paragraph in a gossip newspaper that only has a half page on international news and the main story was that british tourists got killed in Tunez.

Charles, the voice of your writing has changed a ton in the last few months. I bet you´ve probably changed a ton too. I also miss family dinners. You eat so much . :) 7$ for dinner ought to be more than enough. Or maybe I´m thinking of Bolivia. A full lunch (soup, main dish, juice, and desert) costs about 20 bs, which is less than 3$. A nice restaurant cost maybe 40bs, less than 7$.

I do remember our long weekend rowing, but am now compeletly out of time to write.

June 22

We´ve had a pretty normal week without much to write about as well.

Aw, the birthday card [to Dad, which has never arrived] was pretty. It didn´t say much more than happy birthday, but I decorated it nicely.

We are really starting winter here, which isn´t that big of a difference in temperature, but it´s noticable. For one, it hasn´t rained for a few months now and it´s quite a bit colder, especially in the middle of the city where there´s more shade from the buildings. It still gets sunny in the middle of the day, but not at all hot. Occasionally I keep my thin sweater on all day. San Juan (the winter soltices) is the official start of winter and opinions are divided as to when it ends (some say that by the middle of August it´s getting warmer, some say that October is still winter).

It´s interesting to hear a bit of news from the wider world. [Church shooting in SC] Race differences is a very interesting topic. I see it more here in the language difference between latinos and nortemericanos in the mission. A lot of latinos feel that we are in Bolivia, here we speak Spanish and get rather annoyed when a group of the nortemericano missionaries start speaking English together because it excludes the others. In my experience it´s more that all the latinos group together and when we find that everyone in the circle of people talking speaks English we switch to English.

In Bolivia I don´t hear almost anything about guns and thus think that it´s not a huge problem. Probably because guns are expensive. However, people still manage to rob and all the rest without guns. Some policemen seem to have a type of rifle thing, but I´m not sure what it shoots because it seems too simple and plain to be a normal gun.

The guy from Last Week Tonight did a program on gun laws in Australia before he started last week tonight, which was really interesting. Basicaly, Austrlian used to have the same problems as the US with guns. They changed the laws, the government bought back most of the guns and they have have much fewer shootings and other problems since. It shows that the US could completely change their guns laws and it would probably work out very well. [John Oliver gun control trilogy]

This morning I realized that I didn´t have any new pictures for you and took a few. 

The wall with some of my things stuck up there. 

Hna Gonzales washing dishes this morning.

A really cool street art thing a few blocks for our house. 

This morning we went to the cancha (GIANT market). I bought a new sweater, even though I said that I didn´t need any new shirts or sweaters and would just look at things while Hna Gonzales tried to find what she needed, but it´s really soft and I like the color. I bought a bunch of mandaries (oranges? really big clemintines?), peanuts, and cereal to eat for breakfast. Hna Gonzales was very patient as we tried to find the cereal.

We also ran into Hna Graciela and Noelia in the cancha, which was really nice and made plans to get together next Monday. They seem to be doing well. 

June 15

Thanks for your letter and the pictures too. I also got your box this week and was very happy with all the things. The economist article made me miss sitting at home eating breakfast and reading the economist or atlantic. I am wearing one of my new shirts and the toiletries were exactly what I was hoping for. The other missionaries who were there were dissapointed by the lack of chocolates, but I am prefectly capable of buying my own chocolates here if I want to.

My health is now good, but was a bit off for most of the week, mostly with a lot of gurgurly stomach acid or somethings like that. However, I finally took some sort of digestive thing recommended by our pensionista´s husband, Armando, who is a doctor, and it went away at the end of the week. Earlier in the week I was afraid to take anything stronger than an antiacid because none of the things you buy in the farmacy come with instructions or even label (other than the brand name). You just ask the farmacist for something to help your stomach and she tells you to take this or that. I tried to ask exactly what it does and was just told that ¨it helps¨ and she wouldn´t give me the box to read (you buy the pills individually). Thus I didn´t take what she sold me until several days latter when Hno Armando said that I should. Thus I am feeling just fine now, but am a bit frustrated with Bolivian farmacies.

Also, Hna Gonzales and I seem to take turns being healthy. As soon as I was feeling better, her stomach and chest started to hurt again and we are going to have to make time to go to the clinic this week.

We also celebrated Hna Gonzales´ 22 birthday this Saturday (see photos), which was nice. I was worried that we didn´t have anything planned and I couldn´t do much to plan anything because I´m always with her, but I gave her a card and necklace in the morning and the rest of the pension pulled together a few gifts and bought a really delicious ice cream cake. 

We have had a really good week with our investigators. Hna Vilma came back from a trip of several weeks to see her family in Sucre and we were worried that she wouldn´t be as excited to visit with us anymore, but nothing had changed and she accepted a baptism date for the 4th of July and came to church on Sunday. Hna Vilma is a really spiritual person. I can tell that she really ponders the things we teach her and asks questions when she doesn´t understand something. She understands the covenent of baptism and I can´t wait to teach her about the temple and that she can be sealed to her husband who passed away several years about.

We are also teaching Hno Jose, who moved here from Santa Cruz already having the goal to get baptised and then sealed to his girlfriend who is already a member of the church. He has a very strong Christian background and we are focusing in making sure he understands the importance of having the authority from God to preach or baptise, etc... Hno Jose also came to church even though his girlfriend couldn´t make it yesterday, which shows that he´s not just doing this for her, but truely wants to learn about the church and be baptised.

It´s very nice that we are probably going to have baptisms in a few weeks after this area hasn´t had any for so long. I just hope that they are truely prepared by the time July comes.

Congratulation to Charles for his rowing success! And also to Robert for the last few weeks of his freshman year. Lots of luck for exams.

If you run into Hazel, remind her to write to me.

My Spanish test didn´t work becuase of slow internet and I still haven´t heard if I will have to try it again. I think we sometimes recive results, but they don´t affect anything, so most people don´t care or check them.

Cobija has much less Quechua, but a lot more people speak a bit of English. Some people even speak enough english to carry on a conversation, for example, Felix Garcia, a member of the ward, speaks a lot of English because he lived in the US working in mining for a decently long time. Also, a sister in the ward teaching high school English and Quechua and speaks both decently. She studied liguistics and I would love to have more time to talk to her about that. Linguistics still appeals to me a lot as a major.

MTC time defintely counts, thus the midpoint is at 9 months and is near the end of July. The elders genearlly celebrate the passage of time by burning things. A tie at 6 months, a shirt at one year and a pair of pants at 18 months. I´ve seen that some sister mark their 9 month midpoint by taking a picture with a pillow under their skirt, but I think that it silly and will defintly not do it.

I hope that I´ve matured in the last almost 9 months. I´ve definitly learned a lot about getting along with other people and listening to them. I hope I´ve learned how to use my time well, but I also dream about being able to get up late and sit over my breakfast reading for a really long time, so I don´t know how much is an internal change and how much is a temporary adaptation to mission rules.

I´ve been thinking about what to study at college and am still really drawn towards arabic. There is a synegoge (nope, still can´t spell at all) in our area and from the tiny bit of Arabic I remember and a slight knowledge of hebrew letters, I can tell that the second half of the hebrew letters on the building are the second half of the ten commandments. I remember to read right to left and can see that they all start with lamed, aleph (or whatever the name for the letter a is), which means each sentece starts with ¨la¨, which means ¨no¨ in Arabic and probably in Hebrew too because they are from the same language family. The second half of the ten commandments are all ¨thou shalt not¨ or more simply ¨don´t¨. Also you can tell that it´s the ten commandments because it´s in the two stones like the ten commandments are always writen, but it´s cool to be able to read it a tiny bit. I hope that if I try arabic again, I´ll be more dedicated about studying and will also be able to find a study group, which I didn´t realize was important until it was too late last time. 

June 8

I don´t think I have any photos this week and don´t really have time to deal with them if I do because I need to take my online spanish test which we take every 3 months or so.

I´m glad to hear that the grandparents are well. Everyone looks great and very sunny. It is also rather hot here today, but only in the middle of the day. Before 10 or 11 and after 6 it gets rather chilly. I went to church this sunday with a scarf and gloves and everyone was talking about how cold it was.

 Thanks for mailing the skirts. The other things still haven´t gotten here, but I´m hoping they´ll come next week.

We went to visit Roselyn and her baby on Wednesday. We only got to see the baby for a few minutes, but she´s adorable and is named Valeria. She has tiny, long fingers and everyone says she looks like her father, although I just think she looks like a baby.

Each agenda is for one cambio and has a page for each day.

Yep, success in the mission is determined by how hard one is working, how obedient you are to the mission rules, that you can feel the spirit as you teach, etc... However, it´s much harder to keep knocking on doors or walk half and hour to an appointment if people always say that they are busy, or are catholics or if when you get to the appointment no one is home. It´s the difference between finding internal motivation and being motivated by the people and events around you.

You can caption the photos for 3 mile yourself, I don´t know what I would say. I was thinking of tmi this week on a cold morning when I smelled a wood fire and thought of sitting by in fire in the minutes before breakfast.

Usually, I have a list of things I want to write to you, but this week not much happened to write about. We knocked on a lot of doors because we are trying to increase the number of investigators we have and a decent number of people said we could come back latter. The new missionaries arrived like they do every 6 weeks and we got to take one of them with us for the afternoon to our appointments. It was pretty cool because it made us more concious of how we are teaching and encouraged us to do everything just right, for example leaving good, clear commitments and ask for referals.

Right now I´m just feeling really tired because I wasn´t feeling that great this morning. I get sick so rarely, that I´m really wimpy when I´m feeling a little bad and just want to go back to bed. Hna Gonzales is much better at going out an working even when she feels poorly or tired. She has some osrt of bacteria or parasites in her stomach, which went away when she took some medicine against them, but now seem to be back. Also her back and feet often hurt, but she finally got new shoes today, which I think will help a lot.

Prayer is really helpful. We pray so much everyday, to ask for guidance, to have the Spirit with us, to pray for the people we teach, everything. You touched on a really important part of prayer, listening. A lot of people forget that prayer is a two way communication. It´s not just us talking at God, but also Him responding and we have to be patient and listen quietly to know the answers. We have to learn how it is that God speaks to us specifically, whether it´s more in our thoughts or our feelingings. Learning how to listen to God{s answers takes practice and also faith to keep praying as we slowly learn to listen, how to know what is the Spirit and what are our own thoughts. Something we always recommend to investigators is to ask specific questions so that they can get specific answers and understand them more easily. Because the Spirit isn´t a loud voice, or usually even an audible voice. It´s a whisper to your heart or mind that says yes, that´s good or, for me, reminds me of a scripture that answers my question or gives me guidance. There´s a scripture in the Old Testament of the prophet Elijah´s communication with God that says, ¨11 And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: 12 And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. (1 Kings 19:11-12).