Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas! and a happy New año!

So christmas was quite different this year. I couldn`t really put my finger on it, it was just different for some reason. HAHA How was your christmasses! full of holiday cheer, turkey, presents and snow i hope!

Alright first off talking on skype is super weird. I spend all this time not talking to the fam and then i get the opportunity and i have no idea what to say. I even had a LIST! Of stuff i wanted to say but when i got on skype i guess i forgot how to read and I forgot to tell you people stuff! I Even had VISUALS because you could SEE ME and i FORGOT THEM! Come on elder buma! I had things like milk bags, pil fruit, achichayroo, salteña, all this stuff to show and i didn`t. I apologize, I dropped the ball on that one, next time will be better. Just know that overall the mission is great!

So interesting week like i said. It was awesome and weird.It was awesome cause I got to talk to my MOMMY! Love you! and i also love you other people i talked to too ;)

Anyways, then it was really cool for other reasons too. so here come the stories.

Story Number 1! We went to Veimar`s house and his dad`s nerve thing apparently stopped working so his face looked like it was melting! he couldn`t control his face and i was like GO TO THE HOSPITAL and he was like NO i went to an herbalist lady or some witch doctor I dont know and so he had this thing wrapped around his face with plants inside it which apparently cure that whatever he has which apparently commmon! I get hot at times that i feel like i`m melting but i don`t want to look like it! also it was kind of funny to see that thing on his face with plants in it. it just looked like a kid had stuffed grass in a rag and said that will help, it made me giggle. He`s fine though. His face is better if you`re wondering.

Story Number 2!

Catholics can be very frustrating! I feel your pain a little chel. Even if you teach them EVERYTHING, they understand you, they may even BELIEVE you and then if you ask them to come to church they`re like NOPE I`m catholic, gonna die catholic, tradition. GOSH! Don`t ya want the truth?! Anyways that is from a girl`s parents named Kenya. She`s a super strong member but her mom is FURIOUS that she is a member and only accepts us cause her daughter begged her to. So it`s not the most spiritual lessons. What did you do chel?

story number 3!

I am so grateful for my life! We have this investigator family Arrias and they`re awesome but really poor. They told us that before they were even more poor, they were literally living day to day. It got so bad that their kids started eating leaves from trees they were so hungry. When the hermana told us that story she just started bawling and I`m a big strong man but i ain`t gonna lie, i got choked up when i started talking to her about the love of christ and everything. It also reminded me of my family so i got a little more choked up (It also didn`t help that I had talked with my family one day before) so i just wanted to tell my family thanks for my amazing life and everything i have I love you so much.

I`m pretty much out of time but i just want to remind you all to always be examples of the believers. in every situation, every place, anytime, be an example! Love you all!

Elder buma

Feliz Christmas Day!

Feliz Christmas day!

How`s ya`ll doin?! It`s stinkin awesome here! it literally stinks and it`s literally awesome! hahahahaha man i`m funny.

Anyways it was a sweet and kinda sad week. It was sad cause I found out all these people are going home. One guy from my group and three others who have only been out 2 or 3 months. It`s not for worthiness issues, they just didn`t like Bolivia... That blew... I think they might get transfered to different missions though in the US so i hope they stay out.

On the upside we`re starting to get all christmasy up here in Bolivia! it`s not snowing or cold but still! We`ve been sharing he is the gift like crazy and that has been so fun sharing with people.

So Katerine`s getting baptized on the 17th of January! Also, her little brother wants to be baptized, and we have about four others who are progressing like the familia angulo, Simona Ortega, Rene Rocha, Erik zuñiga, and a few others that can pretty much already be baptized, we just have to get a date down. I`ll keep ya updated.

Yesterday we got to sing with all the missionaries in santa cruz in the big Plaza! It was awesome! There were lights, there was singing, there was also rain but that didn`t matter. At first it was a little rough singing wise and i learned that missionaries are blessed with the gift of tongues, not voices, but it got way better after a bit of practice. it was like a mini temple square! And SO many people came! it was super fun contacting all of them right after singing even though none of them live in my area a lot of people got really interested.

Alright so what is a Bolivian Christmas like you ask? good question. Well on christmas eve everyone stays up until midnight, then right at midnight they stinking light the city up with fireworks! Oh YA! they also eat a big dinner at midnight, open all their presents, then go to bed at like four in the morning. Then the next day they pretty much just sleep. So christmas eve is a way bigger deal.

ANNOUCEMENT so yesterday after singing the president offered to give us a ride home to our house and he told us something. There`s gonna be another mission in bolivia in six months! It`s gonna take part of our mission and it`s gonna be the la paz north mission! AH! it`s still six months away but it freaked me out!

What the junk I totally forgot! It`s raining non stop here now and bolivians are super cool and they managed to turn this city into a giant bowl so the water comes up to our shins everywhere we go... It`s awesome! we get home and it looks like we took a shower. One day my comp forgot his rain jacket and he totally fell in a huge puddle! After that he didn`t even give a crap he just trucked through all the giant lakes until we got home. It was pretty amazing. Rain is fun. 

Alright i think that`s it for this week. Can`t think of much else... Love you all! Talk to you soon! (That last sentence is just for people who are related to me) but i love the rest of you too!

Elder buma

12/15/14

Ok time for another glimpse of my life in Bolivia! Get ready folks!

Alright so you know how we had a butt load of investigators attend last week. Well like five of them said it was really boring so they don´t want to go back... CRAP! uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I don´t know what to tell those people. Maybe i should go all evangelical on their behinds and yell IF YOU DON¨T COME TO CHURCH YOU¨L BURN IN HELLFIRE! What do you guys think. Will that help?

We still have four people committed to baptism though! Elmer, Erika, Caterine, y Rene. Funny story Elmer´s birth name is Elder. Weird right! He thought we just all had the same name as him when we first met him so I explained what elder meant and he understood. Anyways, they´re all progressing pretty well but their baptisms are set for after the transfer so if i get moved out of viru viru i won´t get those baptisms. sad i know. but just as long as they get baptized by someone it´s ok.

So we had an activity in valle sanchez this week right. So me and elder coello went with the zone leaders there in trufi. which is basically a van. Anyways I had no idea what i was doing to get into my seat. There was only one seat left inbetween the driver and the passenger and i came in from the back so i had to climb over this seat thing to get into my seat. And you people know I´m not the most graceful butterfly so you can imagine that i was struggling pretty bad to get into my seat and so long story short i basically presented my bottom to the entire van for like a minute while i was struggling to get into my seat. One guy started filming me so guess who´s gonna be famous on YouTube?! ME! hahahahhahaha whoops. At least i broke the ice with a lot of people and gave out a lot of he is the gift cards. I think that actually was planned by our father in heaven.

Anyways we got to the activity which was meant for investigators to get to know the church and they were expecting like fifty investigators to come... they got two there... it was only a little awkward when the number of missionaries outnumbers the number of investigators. poor elders in valle sanchez. they felt sooooo bad. And to make things worse the branch president there went to the one KFC that´s in this place in the center of the city which is an hour away and very expensive and got KFC for fifty people... Well I enjoyed it. hahahaha I got KFC! Man I missed american things.

The stake president even went to that activity and at the end he offered to take me and my comp back to our area which was nice. It was really weird though. He´s actually got quite a bit of moneyand his car is nice and leather and just like a normal car in America, air conditioning and everything! It was a very cool thirty minute drive.

Alright shout out to the greatest woman in the world. MY MOM! I got your package this week and holy cow was it awesome! Cheez itz, beef jerky, Reeces! MAN it was awesome. Elder Robinson, Elder Zaldivar, and I only cried a little. It was awesome. Also pixi stix are awesome and we did the pixi stix challenge where our zone leader elder robinson got on the ground and we just started dumping them in his mouth. We got to thirty when things finally went south and he started laughing and got the weird sludge pixi spit on the floor... THANKS MOM! Oh! also the awesome turkey craft you sent me I´m using those in a family home evening tonight. YOU ROCK!

I love you all, I´m out of time. Stay classy

Elder Buma

December 8, 2014

Hola personas!

sorry about last week, I know you were all crushed that you didn`t get an update on the amazing mission life of elder buma. Van a desculpar. Anyways, I`m writing this first so that i don`t forget this week.

So to catch you all up and the stuff that`s gone down. First off I learned some new words haha. So here`s the story. It was thanksgiving right and I, being the super nice missionary decided to buy some ice cream and oreos to make some milkshakes for the elders in my house so they could have an awesome thanksgiving. Well I went to the little market thing and there was only ice cream that`s called, ron con pasas. The picture on the thing looked like it was vanilla with chocolate chips or something so i was like PERFECT. Well Ron does not mean vanilla and pasas does not mean chocolate chip... Anyways, i`m getting ahead of myself. So i bring the icecream back, we put oreos in it, mix it up, and BOOM we got milkshake and started drinkin. It was a really weird taste though, just really weird and we kind of just thought that it was the bolivian ice cream wasn`t as high quality. Anyways, after downing our kind of disappointing milkshakes we went to our rooms and i heard ELDER BUMA! Elder robinson had looked at the empty ice cream thing and he informed me that i had not bought vanilla with chocolate chips, i had in fact bought RUM with raisins... I laughed. Haha so we all had rum raisin ice cream. hahaha. I told my president in my interview with him and he laughed too.

I had my first interview with the pres. It was awesome. Man whenever I talk to him I can just feel his spiritual power. He`s gonna be in the next avengers movie, i know it.

We also had a multi zone conference and guess who led that bad boy, ME! it was awesome, we felt the spirit and we talked about He is the Gift. MAN that iniciative is cool! Apparently you all have cards to pass out too so DO IT! the only problem with that initiative is that in spanish it`s el es la dadiva and no one knows what dadiva means so we have to explain that it means regalo. The people here generally aren`t super edumacated so that`s a little hard sometimes but it`s still an awesome iniciative.

So zone meetings are not my fave. Very long, just a little boring, and for the past three months instead of district meeting we`ve had zone meetings every week from 10 to 12:30 to basically retrain the entire mission. So they`re really long and not gonna lie, I`ve fallen asleep the past four times, mouth open, snoring, the whole shebang. So it goes without saying they always pick on me to do the practices at the end because i slept through the whole thing. They even had me teach the class one time so i wouln`t fall asleep. Haha ya that`s something i could probably improve on. hahahahahah

So the latino elders here are suposed to learn english right? well i dont know how but they always learn the words faggot and the n word very quickly and it`s all i can do to keep from laughing and tell them to stop saying that. I`m like Cam from modern family when he listens to kids swear. It`s fun.

We got Nine people to come to church this week and four of them have a date for the end of the month! Woo! man, it`s been a bit since my last baptism so i`m excited. We really work A LOT with less actives so sometimes we dont have a lot of time with investigators so i`m stoked. I`ll let you know how it goes.

Well i think that`s it. Hmmmm. what else, oH, i have a bug in my stomach that doesnt really hurt but i`ve gotten very bad gas to the point that my companion now sleeps with air freshener... poor guy... hahahahahahaha

Love you all. See ya soon fam.

Elder buma

Pictures!