February 15

Hi Mom and Dad and everyone else,

Wow, what excitement with the cold. We continue mostly too hot and occasionally cold and rainy. There was some exciting lightning Sunday morning, but it stopped raining before we had to leave for church.

We were supposed to ¨hide¨ from carnival on Tuesday, but we had to go look at an apartment for rent and then we (we here means Hna Bender) played witht he kids in the street in front of our house. Carnival outside of the center of the city isn´t dangerous at all, but is is impossible to walk outside without getting wet, so it was pointless to try to go out and work as missionaries. 

Yes, I have heard in general about the migrant/refugee crisis in Europe. 

I hope to get all of my photos and videos up today as we found a decently fast internet. The pictures should explain why it was such a great pday.

You should find pictures of:

getting ready for the caravan of taxis with Brayan and friends. All the cars are decorated with balloons and streamers.

Hna Bender with her squirt gun

Thiago, Brayan´s 2 year old.

Playing on a street corner with Brayan, Roberto, their cousin Ester, who is going to serve a mission in columbia, and two other little cousins. As you can see everyone got wet.

(photo with fountian) back near their house we threw a few more water balloons before everyone went looking for dry clothes. 

Hermano Carlos, Brayan and Roberto´s Dad watched from the doorway.

We then went to buy lunch (chicken and french fries) and went to a little bit outside of the city (20 minutes away) to eat it.

They actually succeded in lighting a fire. (no one present was/is a very outdoorsy type).

Hna Bender looking cute on a rock.

A nearby river. And trees.

All the way home people tried to get us wet. Sometimes we rolled up the windows and other times we threw water balloons back at them.

On the 21st there are elections. These are some of the flags for ¨NO¨ The question is whether a president can be reelected a 3rd time and the sides are SÍ and NO. Both have put up lots of flags, banners, stickers, and murals/paint all around the city.

These are the kids that Hna Bender played with on Tuesday in front of the house. 

Brayan´s baptism. He bought a white hat for the occasion, but also a shirt and tie. Also pictured: Samuel, his cousin and Ester´s brother, Tiago, Roberto, Pamela, their sister, and her daughter Luciana.

The last pictures are from a Family Home Evening that we held with the family. People who messed up in the games got whiteboard marker on their faces. 

My current agenda, the previous two, and an example of a blank one. 

You are now getting a copy of some things I wrote to President Hansen about, so save time and because I wanted to write to you about the same general topics. 

Last Wednesday we went to contact a reference who we had called a few days before to arrange a visit. However, I had forgotten his dirrection and phone number is my old agenda from the previous cambio. So we got to the general area and had to go visit him without knowing exactly where. I only remembered that it was in plena esquina (exactly in the corner). There were several houses like that so we decided to knock on one of them. To my great surprise, there was Hernesto waiting for us. As we left, Hna Bender told me that she had been praying to find him as we knocked on the door. I hadn´t even thought to pray, but I know that God answered my companion´s prayer because she prayed with faith. I want to have that same faith that God will answer my prayers, so I´m going to trying to start looking for the answers more and writing down all the small miracles that we see. 

Last Saturday, Brayan was baptised. We were so happy and so was Brayan. He is truely converted. He is really nervous to speak is public, but shared a beautiful testimony of the Atonement. I can tell that he has truely repented and has changed his life so much. (our mission theme/thing is Teach Repentance and Baptise Converts.)

I found a cool video about love (since it´s valenitines day) on the church website. I think it´s cute.

 https://www.lds.org/media-library/video/2011-08-014-expressions-of-love?cid=HP_FR_2-12-2016_dPFD_fMLIB_xLIDyI-1_&lang=spa

February 8

Cambios were this sunday (yesterday), but we are staying put as we expected. However, all the sisters under our care had cambios except for one companionship when I thought than only one companionship would. This coming cambio is 7 weeks long and then I expect to have one last cambio and one last area for only 6 weeks. 

I have had an awesome pday and we didn{t leave time for internet. this may be the only email that you get this week, but check out my pictures and know that I am okay.

Very cute kitten in Carrie{s house.

Hna Bender{s nail paint makes me think of a oar blade. 

Cool avengers cake on display in a window.

Hna Bender is a trooper. She{s still not great, but is still working hard. Here she is in bed with sunglasses because the sun is too bright.

Last Monday night Ester opened her mission call. Most of the YAS were there as well as her parents. She{s going to columbia cali. :)

The rest of the photos are from today. Carneval!!!!

Jose, cousin or nephew or something of brayan with confetii in his hair.

getting ready for a mini parade thing with the taxis at the taxi agency where brayan works. I think this picture came out especially well. 

Roberto in the car. 

Hna Bender with spray foam all in her hair and on the phone. 

filling water balloons. 

Brayan who{s the one who got her this the foam (note the can in his hand). We went with Brayan, Roberto, and Ester (who is their cousin) all day today for carneval stuff and fun.

I think that is all the photos that are going to load today. You will get the rest next week. 

February 1

  

Hi Mom,

Thanks for the letter and photos. You never answered my question a few weeks about about Charles. Is he doing ballet or what?

Just so you know, Hna Bender has not gotten over her parasites and everything yet. Give her a week or two. We are trying to balance working hard with all the great plans we come up with and letting her rest a bit more. 

My class assingment seems fine. I´ll enjoy ASL [American Sign Language] too and Hna Bender pointed out that it´s a bit more useful to know asl than arabic. 

Thanks for letting me know about that virus. I hadn´t heard about it here, but Aunt Beth wrote about it too this week. There aren´t mosquitos around here like there were last  year in villa mexico. Actually, I don´t think I´ve seen a single one yet. However, I will keep an eye out for mosquitos more than before. 

I had heard about the ward split because Brother Davis wrote to me in december that the ward was going to have some sort of special meeting maybe about spliting the wards and then I checked out the ward directory and ward map on lds.org. I am very glad that we will be meeting at 9 and not 1pm and that Bishop Whatcott is still bishop. 

 I will be waiting for pictures of Robert´s project.

I hope Charles can handle his classes and rowing and everything well. It´s interesting to hear about his transition to college and how he fits in with the other rowers. When I got to college, I felt very liberal compared to my peers at byu while at abrhs I had felt very conservative. 

My photos are:

In a nearby catholic church there is a huge mural of the same painting that we have in our pamphlets. We took pictures last Monday afternoon. 

We had a little party for Thiago (pronounced tiago) who turned 2 years old. Thiago is the son of Brayan, who will be baptised in two weeks, and the nephew of Roberto, our recent convert. Thiago wasn´t very happy about all the attention, but  Luciana his 1 and a half year old cousin loves attention and put on the party hat that Thiago didn´t want to wear. (when I forgot to put the flash on it turned out very blurry)

This is a fruit that Hna Wilson, a missionary that we had intercambios with this past week, gave me. I think it´s called something that starts with a g, but I forgot the rest. It´s okay tasting. You don´t chew the seeds, but just slurp and swallow it all. It´s kind of sweet.

We were really happy this week with Brayan. He´s been progressing well for a few weeks and accepted a baptismal date a few weeks ago, but this week he really had a break through. He learned about baptisms for the dead in the temple and loves it. He´s so excited to be able to be baptised for relatives and, with the permission of their family members, several close friends who have died. This motivates him to read the book of mormon a ton. He´s also been finding a ton of church videos online, serveral mormon messages, and a cool time lapse of the construction of the provo city center temple. He also wants his little son to be raised in the church and be able to serve a mission. It is so cool to see how the gosple changes someone for the better. Brayan has had to change his lifestyle so much (since these photos were taken last monday, he has also taken out his earrings), but we can see that he is so much happier. 

I hope you have a great week. I love you so much and send hugs for everyone.

Love,

Natalie

January 25

Thanks for the letter and the photos of the snow and lack thereof. It is super hot here for the last three days. Not a cloud in the sky and just hot. We are putting on lots of sunscreen and not burning, but still really hot. I hope it´ll rain tomorrow.

Notes from last week´s letter: the chickens are not wild. They just escaped from the house in front of the park. 

This week I got letters from the Pierce family, Ron Davis from the ward, and from Dad. Thank you to all of you. 

We had ward conference this Sunday, which was very beautiful. The only difference between it an a normal sunday was that the stake leaders visited our ward and taught. The theme was the Book of Mormon and the importance of studying the scriptures. I am currently discovering the Bible more. I´m reading the whole new testament, (currently in Acts,) and bits of the Old testament, (currently Daniel) and I love learning all these new stories that I had never read in much depth or on my own before. 

This weeks photos are all of Hna Bender because she´s always around to be photographed and I don´t like taking selfies of myself much.

First, Hna Bender with a very big leaf from the mystery tree.

Hna Bender in the hospital. On Thursday we went to the hospital because her stomach had been weird from more than a week. She has parasites, but will take pills and be okay. She was very sad about her suero (I don´t remember what that´s called in english, but you can google it), hence the photo.

January 18

Hi Mom and everyone else,

Thanks for your letter and the photos. Hna Bender and I want to know if Charles is dancing ballet or just leaping about. Either way it looks cool. I do have photos this week so I will start by telling you about them.

First Hna Bender is chasing baby or adolecent chickens in the park. She did not catch any of them. 

A selfie after the temple trip. The white background is a very cloudy sky.

The sisters of universidad zone outside the temple. From left to right we are: Hermanas Vilca, Olivas, Beltran, Chicaiza, Rosillo, me, Gutierrez, Bender.

Then with some of the elders as well. but not all because we couldn´t gather them all at the same time.

Hna Carrie´s little kid with their kitten.

selfies with hna Mosteza in intercambios. I am borrowing a coat because it was actually very cold (as cochabamba goes) and rainy that day.

With some of Hna Mosteza´s investigators.

Hna Bender taught me to throw the noodles at the wall to see if it´s done. I thought it was a lot of fun. We are trying to cook cool things at night, but we are always very tierd and don´t have any time so we eat a lot of noodle, hot dogs, scrambled eats and mashed potates. However, we are going food shopping today after this and will buy better things, such as tortilla wraps and deli meat and fruit (mangos ) 

A cool mural.

A tree near our house. Robert, do you want to find out what sort of tree it is, please?

Selfies behind a large bush. First, we are not very good at taking selfies in which we both show up. Second, there is a story behind these. We went to an appointment and saw the testigos (jehovah´s witnesses) already at the door. Thus we hid akwardly behind the bush until they went away. Then our person wasn´t home and the husband wasn´t all that excited to talk to us when the testigos had just barely left.

Some of this photos are from a few weeks ago I don´t remember if I had sent them to you yet. 

The news this week is that Brayan finally went to chuch with his brother, Roberto, and his mom, Cristina, who both always go. They are a really awesome family. Roberto, if you remember, was baptised at the end of december. We invited them two to be baptised yesterday and they accepted a baptismal date for the 13th of feb. Cristina was especially excited to be baptised and Brayan is also eager to do what he knows is right and true, it just is a bit more difficult for him to stop going out drinking and partying with his friends and to be at church at 8am on sundays. 

Even though Hna Cristina always goes to church and eagerly awaits our visits, we were a little nervous about talking about baptism with her. She´s a bit older and doesn´t always understand everything we teach. However, we taught her about Joseph Smith and realized that she had grasped a lot from being in the room during lessons with other family members. She remembered everything about the first vision, had clearly read the pamphlet and even corrected Hna Bender when she misspoke and said that the first vision was in 1830 insted of 1820. We invited her to pray to ask if Joseph Smith was a prophet and the next lesson discribed how she recieved her answer and knows that the church is true. I´m so happy about Hna Cristina and also that Brayan finally came to church. they are trying really hard to follow God and keep the commandments. 

This week Hna Bender and I learned an important lesson on obedience. We´d been slacking a little this week on doing our morning exercizes and studying spanish and we could see the results. We were not receive the insperation to find new people to teach and were not very happy either. This cuminated with Saturday night when we could not find anyone to visit from 7 until 9 at night when we go home. We visited absolutly everyone we could think of and then tried to knock on doors, which didn´t work because it was dark out and people didn´t want to talk. We just ended wandering about being sad. However, we talked and reflected together and decided to be much more obedient this week to be able to have people to teach and have the Spirit with us more. Although in the moment I wanted to cry, I learned an important lesson that obedience really does bring blessings and that I can´t do this work without the Spirit and God´s help.

I love all of you a ton.