Bolivia, Jardin—Week 11

 

Muuuuuuyyyyyyy buenos dias Familia y Amigos,

I hope you all had a fantastic week, and especially the 4th of July! Let’s see, my 4th of July wasn’t really the best one I’ve had. First off, I forgot that it was the 4th of July, but my companion reminded me when we found an American flag in the trash can. Sometimes it’s hard to be an American in an anti-American country with a companion who dislikes Americans (but mostly just Utah Americans—wait, that’s me!), but all is well. I really love my companion a ton. It’s just that where she’s from they teach them to dislike Americans, but her prior companion gave me a “heads up,” so I know what not to talk about. She’s actually really cool. Sometimes we get on each other’s nerves, but yeah, that will happen when you live with someone for 24 hrs. a day. I love Bolivia. It’s just really different.

Let’s see, what else . . . We had a conference with the whole mission on Wednesday with Elder Uceda (president of the area) and it was so great. They are really focusing now on the wards and how we can help them grow. He announced that we won’t be opening up new areas, or splitting wards, but the missionaries and the members will just be working hard to get the less-actives activated so we can get the wards to grow. We talked a lot about how well wards of 300-400 work, so now we are all focused on that. I would love to come back here in 15-20 years and see the wards strengthened and bigger. The church is celebrating its 50 years in Bolivia, so I imagine it has come a long way in these 50 years. Now we just need to help them so they can function on their own. It’s not going to be easy, but we will try our best to help them out.

I hope you all have a wonderful week!

xoxo Hermana Nelson

Journal Pages
Zone Meeting
Today was great! At our Zone meeting in the morning, we learned about how to teach effectively. We watched a fantastic video by Elder Holland about the atonement and missionary work. It’s so true what he says. That sometimes, as missionaries we wonder why the mission is so hard, but he explains that it is because we need to feel just a little how the Savior felt during his lifetime. And through these experiences we can feel for just one second, a little of the pain he went through.

I’m grateful for this opportunity to serve. Something another Hermana said was that sometimes we count down the days until we get to go back home, but in reality, we should be sad to think that it is one less day we are able to be in the presence of God. I have a goal. I’m going to put all of my fears aside and work as hard as I can until that day comes.

July 4^th
It wasn’t the ideal 4^th of July. We found American flags in the streets and in the garbage, but it’s okay. We were able to visit and teach a few people today that were really great, so it was all worth it. God Bless America!

Lunch with Bishop
We met with the Bishop for a few hours today to talk about how we can help strengthen this ward. We are in the process of unifying the wards and they aren’t going to split wards or open new areas until the wards grow and stay that way. We talked about a lot of ways to help the less-active members more than anything.

Familia “M”
So, we’ve been visiting the “Familia M” for a few weeks now and we met their son yesterday. We took him to the dance practices the YM/YW are having and today his parents told us that he is so excited and is going to take work off so he can come to the practices and church with us! We are super excited. I really hope he progresses and that his family joins him. He has six sisters and seven nieces/nephews, so this could be a real strong family in the church.