6/8/15

hello! Good week am i right? School´s out, my awesome sisters ran a half marathon, the gospel continues to be spread around the earth. There´s just so many reasons to smile!

that´s actually something I´ve learned here. Staying positive and always having a smile on can completely change everything. There´s always things to get us down and I was a little discouraged for not having a ton of success recently and I thought that i wasn´t being of much use to the work here cause cobija´s still small and still isn´t perfect. But then I looked at where cobija was a while ago.... wow. it was bad. pretty much in Riberalta, guayaramerin, and Cobija the church had a lot of problems a while ago. But in the past little while they´ve progressed soo much. There haven´t been a ton of baptisms but the branches are stable now. Actually, we had an exchange with the zone leaders this week and I told Elder Alonzo that I was a little frustrated so he told me his story of Riberalta. He was in Riberalta for six months and didn´t have a single baptism and the attendance hardy grew either. he was also discouraged but then he told me that the fruits of our labors aren´t always immediate and we can only do our best and the lord will do the rest. After listening tohim i was able to see the progress that cobija´s made and it was just a whole lot better. Also, after being more postitive, our lessons were more powerful, we felt the spirit more, and a lot more members got excited and happy. it was super cool. So stay positive!

So we´re looking for a new apartment right cause ours is super humid and grows mold super easily and just not super nice haha. So anyways while we were walking around we contacted this guy, wilder, and it just so happened that the apartment next to his was available and it looked super nice! so we called the owner, looked around, and then called the zone leaders to come look at it. They then informed us that the hermanas in cobija used to live there and they had to move becuase that apartment is actually above a sewer ad apparently that sewer broke once and their house got filled with not very nice things... so we´re not going to live there haha.

After that we were walking and this super drunk guy called us and man that was the experience. Talking with drunks has always been really funny to me. anyways, his name´s Andy. he speaks almost perfect english, even when drunk so that´s a pretty impressive if i say so myself, and he has a sweeeet house. Pretty rich drunk guy. but the thing that surprised me most is that he started talking to us that he lived in the US for 20 years, that he´s been to Utah, and that he graduated from Columbia. I didn´t believe anything cause he was drunk but then he showed us PICTURES of him in Utah in front of the temple and a diploma from columbia! what in the world! So that was amazing and then he started talking about how he loves the church and how Joseph Smith is the greatest man to ever walk the earth. The he said that Moroni is god and that the angel moroni on top of our temples is baby god. So it started out pretty cool but then he started spitting out apostacies HAHAHAHAHA oh! he also wants to turn his house into a mormon church. SCORE! Free chapel for the mormons hahahaha!

Becken lima is a kid of a less active family and they want to baptize him so they´re active now! We´re hoping he can get baptized in three weeks. his mom is actually the equivalent of a senator in bolivia so that´s cool too. She has some issues that women aren´t called as prophets or have the priesthood though... it´s ok though. one step at a time.

fabricio has attended twice now and really likes coming to church and stays for the whole three hours! he has a couple of doubts about getting baptized again but his cousin is helping him out a lot cause he had the same doubt when he was baptized.

Overall everything good, everything nice, Always got reasons to smile. Love you!

Elder Buma