12/21/15

Alright this letter`s gonna be short cause i`m going to talk to you people in like 2 days so ya.

anyways this week was really cool. we got to sing in the plaza principal de montero yesterday and it was super fun to sing with the primary of the stake. everyone looked at us funny at first but once we started they were looking at us as if we were angels haha.

yesterday i was with my comp and we saw some people struggling carrying plastic chairs so we offered to help carry them. As we were walking we came to find that the guy is actually a returned missionary, ex stake secretary, inactive. We helped him ith the chairs and then went back with him to his house and got to share a little message. He`s the only member in his family and it seems like they`re golden investigators! hechos 10:38

Rosemeri, marta, and noelia have all accepted to be baptized! Rosemeri`s date is next saturday but we havent set a date for the others yet. We have to teach marta very slowly porque capta muy poco and noelia`s dad is in potosi and he also accepted to be baptized so we`re going to wait until he gets back in January.

Well we`re going to go to Santa Cruz now to sing in la plaza CRE (the electric company) and then eat dinner with pres. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS! love you guys!

Elder Buma

12/14/15

Buen Dia!

Alright this week I wanted to start by talking about the importance of associating ourselves with good people, and good influences.

This week has been pretty hard for some great people I know. Richard Guevara is an amazing guy. He`s reactivated and helps a lot with the work here in Pampa la Madre. Sadly his wife, who has abandoned him and her children three times before, left again but this time took his kids too. He has been crushed. He continues to work, help us, and talk with lawyers like crazy to get his kids back but he is super sad. We`ve been spending a lot of time with him this week to help him. I`m sure he`d appreciate your prayers too.

Marta Vargas is also a great lady. She`s a suuuuuuper humble investigator and suuuuper poor. She also has a husband that is definitely not completing his duties outlined in "the family-a proclamation to the world."

Throughout my time here in Bolivia I`ve met a lot of really humble people and people who have had a lot of struggles in their lives. And every time I hear of some struggle I am reminded just how important the gospel is. The Gospel changes lives. I know that. It is my prayer that I may always hold on to the iron rod and associate myself with others that will help me grab on instead of people who would pull me off of it.

On Friday i got a phone call from the zone leaders in Viru Viru and they told me that Fernanda wanted me to baptize her so they got permission from President Zambrano and I got to go to Warnes on Saturday to do the baptism! it was awesome being able to go back there and perform the baptism. man I loved that area!

Some funny things this week would be things like getting yelled at in quechua (this is an older indigenous language) and having people tell me I`m from the CIA trying to take over Bolivia. I was also reading in the bible and read in Lucas 10:8. (I looked it up: Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you). I`m going to try to apply that more when people give me cow stomach. haha!

I hope you all had a great week! Have a very merry Christmas and make it a Merry Christmas for others too!

Elder Buma

12/7/15

Sorry! Not much time today!

I`m in Montero, Pampa la madre 1. It`s a branch that had about 90 attend this week.

I`m with Elder Mayaute. from Lima, Peru.

It`s been a super fun week getting to know the area. I am terrible with directions.

The house definitely needs some cleaning.

Loving life.

Be an example of the believers!

Elder Buma

11/30/15

Hello Everybody!

Well apparently it was Thanksgiving this past week. I`d love to send a list of all the things I`m grateful for but I don`t have time, I am very grateful to have shoes though.

Anyways, this week was awesome. We were in Santa Cruz a lot for migraciones for my comp and stake conference and stuff so we lost a lot of time to proselite but we made the most of the time we had! There`s so little of it!

On Wednesday my comp had migraciones at five in the morning. When we got there, the mission secretary ElderTtaylor and the health secretary Elder Bell were there helping them out. Elder Taylor needed a briefcase and the missionaries needed food so Elder Bell asked me to go with him to get some stuff. While we were getting everything, a doctor called Elder Bell asking for a missionaries id number and he didn`t know what that was so I helped him get it. It was super weird being with him and doing that. I felt like I had gone back in time 8 months haha.

Fernanda Santisteban is progressing really well and she has a date for the 12th. She understands everything super well. We`ll see if me and my comp are still here to be at the baptism.

On Saturday we had the stake conference priesthood session and adult session in Santa Cruz but yesterday we transmitted it through internet to our chapel on Sunday. It worked... ok. hahaha! It wasn`t the best. It was raining super hard so a lot of people couldn`t come and then the projector didn`t want to work and the computer didn`t either... We got it to work but we lost quite a bit of the conference. It made for a great laugh though!

After conference we had an appointment with the familia Flores. They`re less actives and I accidentaly said that transfers were this week and they got super sad. Then they made me sad. They told us that they hadn`t felt the spirit much for the past few years since Elder Garret (whoever that is) was here but they told us that they`ve been able to feel it a lot with us and they told us how they love us and stuff. I almost cried. I love them so much.

 I usually try not to tell people about transfers cause i don`t want any special treatments or to say goodbye and then end up staying in the same area so I usually just send pictures to my old areas to say goodbye haha. 

After the familia Flores, we went to the familia Orozco and they made us pizza! It was awesome! We had a great family home evening and played a really fun game called habla chancho.

Great week here in Bolivia.

Sed agradecidos!

Elder Buma

11/23/15

Hello everyone! haha so it`s just been another great week in Bolivia.

So last tuesday i got to have an exchange with Elder Willes. haha Elder Willes is from draper and we actually both went to Jordan for a semester before he transfered to alt and we both got to Bolivia at the same time. it was super fun to work with him for a day. We shared stories from the mission. How our testimonies have grown, it was super funny to talk about the beginning of the mission too. Oh to remember those wonderful days as a greenie. I had a lot to learn haha.

Anyways on wednesday we had a multizone conference in santa cruz. It was awesome! the president talked to us how we can better our teaching abilities and it was just great! Keep it simple, keep it powerful. It was super cool when he said speak to them like you`re never going to see them again. Then he started giving a lesson about the atonement and how the end of the gospel is the person. after all the progress reports, activities, and lessons. the end is to get to the person. it was super powerful. I also got to see some buddies like elder cochran which was cool but not as cool as the lessons.

On thursday My comp had migrations. so we had to go to santa cruz to pick up his passport. We had to get up at 4 to get there on time but whatever. I got to see some more of my buddies. like elder taylor. he`s the mission secretary now and we also got here to bolivia together. We just laughed our heads off about the beginning of the mission. the food, the language, stuff like that. haha just reminded me that if we go through a trial we`ll laugh our heads off about it later hahaha!

later that night for noche de hermanamiento we played simon says and reverse charades. it was super funny doing simon says with everyone cause they got so into it. And now whenever people get too loud i can just say SIMON DICE SILENCIO! and everyone gets super quiet. Thank you simon.

On saturday we were just about to have missionary corelation in the chapel when a guy on his bike came into the chapel. his bike was decked out in colombian flags and stuff and apparently he`s been biking for over a year trying to bike 50,000 kilometers! wow! he was pretty beat though. he didn`t have a dime and he needed a place to stay. so we talked to him a bit, had to call the mission president to ask if we should give him money which the branch president ended up doing, and then he was on his merry way. It was kind of sad though. He told us that he`s lost everything. he got divorced, he lost his faith (he used to be a pastor) and now all he wants is to bike 50,000 kilometers. He`s kind of crazy. But i certainly hope he can find the church again and listen to the missionaries more.

Right after corelation on saturday we were on our way to a cita when a guy stops his scooter and starts to talk to us in enlish, his name is mauricio. super weird guy. he actually lived in the states, dated a mormon girl, and would go to our church in the states drunk. he also talked to us about how an alien almost killed him and a bunch of weird stuff. weird. anyways the next day in church guess who came. MAURICIO! what in the world! it was super funny though on saturday night he also told us about how he likes to have relations with girls a lot and guess what theme it was for that week in gospel principles? the law of chastity! haha i laughed so hard on the inside but on the outside I was serious cause it`s a pretty serious theme. Mauricio lives in the area of the other elders but we`ll see if we can get some progress there haha.

alright last thing real quick! so we were in a family home evening last night and we were in the middle of a lesson about putting on the armor of god when their little two year old son peed himself standing up. ask me if he had a diaper... no he did not... but they didn`t even think it was a big deal! The hermana rivero changed his pants real quick, didn`t even clean the floor and then said alright you were saying elders? so we just kept on with the lesson with pee on the floor when two minutes later he peed himself again! on top of his mom`s feet! and they still didn`t think it was a big deal! I felt like i was in a zoo haha. I love that family with all my heart and they`re actually pretty much fully active again in the church which is super cool haha. love them.

love all you guys!

Elder BUma

11/16/15

Sorry! I`m pretty much out of time! we`ll see what i can remember!

So a missionary from barranquilla colombia got back like a week and a half ago and he`s been able to accompany us a few times. He teaches really well and it`s really great to have his support. Also, with him we`ve been able to teach a lot more cause we can`t enter houses here if there isn`t a guy older than 18 in the house or if no one is accompanying us. So we`ve been able to teach more people with him. We`ve actually found several people like Maria Pinto who used to take the lessons and attend church but never got baptized. She`s super nice and listens really well. haha she actually told us that she understands a lot better now because the last missionaries (latinos) would speak really fast and she wouldn`t understand anything but we speak slower so she`s been able to understand more. That was pretty cool. Go Gringo spanish! haha.

With my comp we`ve been trying to talk to literally everyone about the gospel this week. like if an appointment fails we`ll just start talking to everyone. My comp doesn`t really like it. He always tells me that he hates talking to new people. I`m not the biggest fan of getting rejected either but we`ve been able to find a lot more people to teach.

Fernanda`s still coming to church. Her date is set for the 12th of december so we`re pretty excited about that. Transfers are the 2nd so we`re not sure if we`ll even be here for it but it`s not even our baptism. it`s the lord`s. what`s important is that we keep working.

Just another week in paradise. I can`t really remember anthing else haha sorry! Talk to you next week!

Elder Buma

11/2/15

Hello everybody!

I hope everyone has had a great week and I`d like to give a shout out to all of you but I don`t have much time... sorry. haha

So as many of you know that I am not like the hairless mole rat from Kim possible. I`m more like the ape from King Kong... I got hair. Anyways for the past year I’ve heard Bolivians comment on my hair and stuff like that. Last week I had had enough. I sat down and decided it was all coming off. So I shaved it off. But then they just started making fun of me even more saying that when it comes back in it`s gonna be even uglier! Ugh! can`t win. So now I`m using all my spare time with tweezers taking these hairs out from the root so they don`t grow back so ugly... not fun hahhah! Oh dear. So the lesson here is that I should get laser hair removal when I get home obviously. can you spot me a few hundred dollars, mommy?

This week we taught a less active member family to make no bake cookies. It was super funny cause we told them that we needed sugar and stuff, but when we brought the peanut butter and stuff like that, they had no idea what it was so it was fun teaching them about cocoa powder and peanut butter, haha. so i gifted them all the cocoa and peanut butter that we had and also our measuring spoons haha. Anyways, while the cookies hardened we watched the restoration with their cousin who`s an investigator (his name is jesus junior... okay...) and talked about the restoration. Really cool lesson. They`re cousin understood really well and it seems like there`s a lot of potential there.

So we met a guy who lived in the states a couple weeks ago named Gary. He`s pretty rich and loves talking to us... just as long as it has to do with the US and not with religion. He asked us the other day if we`ve ever been clubbing and when we said no he flipped out. HOW CAN YOU NEVER HAVE GONE CLUBBING! he said. It was interesting seeing that point of view. A scripture came to my mind. Alma 41:10. Wickedness never was happiness. After that talk with him me and my comp were talking a lot about how going to clubs, doing drugs, or whatever really never will bring happiness. Following the gospel brings happiness.

Sorry, out of time! Love you!

Elder Buma