Apartment Hunting and Teaching!

Family,

Well, another week has gone by without me hardly realizing it.  This week has consisted of more house searching, the temple, and a brand new elder in our house.  Its been a good one!

This past week, I had the chance to go to the temple! (por fin!) The Cochabamba Temple is a good sized temple too.  Bigger than the Atlanta and Lima temple, that is.  It was a temple trip for the whole mission, so I was able to see all of my missionary buddies from the mtc and in other areas.  My camera is broken, but I will try to borrow my comps card to send some temple pictures!

This past week, we received a new Elder in our house.  His name is Elder Supayabe, and he from Santa Cruz.  When he came into the house for the first time, we all noticed tht he only have one tiny suitcase with him.  After getting to know him a little better, we all found out that his family is not very wealthy. at all.  They paid 100 bolivianos for his whole mission, because thats all they could give.  Thats only about 14 us dollars.  After talking to the other elders, we found out he's only got 4 white shirts, 2 pairs of pants, and one pair of shoes. yikes.  We are all in the process of putting together a bunch of stuff for him though.  My companion is giving him another pair of shoes, and I thankfully kept some of the shirts I brought in the package.  He also didn't have a suit jacket, and missionaries always have to wear the jacket to church.  When I asked him, he said he didn't have one, but was going to buy one soon.  So remember the pants I have that ripped?  Those were the pants to my other suit, and I wasn't going to use the jacket until I fixed the pants again or bought new ones.  I ended up just giving him the jacket though.  He's a great missionary though, and is so appreciative for everything he's got.

The members hardly ever have any references for us.  There has been one reference given to us from the ward since I got here... 2 months ago.  So anyways, I have figured out a way to teach more people!  Since we are currently looking for a house, we have to knock doors anyways.  We find houses that have a sign saying 'cuartos en alquiler', and knock.  For missionaries here, its very hard to find an apartment because we have to find one that has a private bathroom.  This means that most doors we knock to find a house, we can't live in.  Thats when we just talk to them.  About anything and everything, then lead into who we are, missionaries, and eventually teach them the first lesson, and take out an appointment.  This has actually worked really well!  I think one of the reasons is because many of the people with rooms for rent are family people.  Moms and dads trying to rent out the extra space in their house or building.  We usually relate our message to families, and then ask when we can return again.  This has lead us to 3 great new investigators that love having us over.

Elder Potts

So this is how they wrap up their babies in Bolivia. As tight as they possibly can.  They think it gets rid of the 'chulista slouch' that everyone gets here when they get old. And they think it makes you taller hahaha

Investigators, Rodents, and a Sheep!

Family,

This past week, I hit the 3 month mark! I still feel like I left the states liek last week, so time really is flying by.  One bit of sad news: My camera is busted. It got slammed in the door of a Trufi, and no longer works.  So I will have to wait until I can get a new one to send any pictures.

One random side note, this morning on the trufi ride up to Quillaquollo, a guy got on and sat in front of me holding a baby lamb! It was all black, and about the size of Puppy! It kept making the typical BAAA sound, and everyone on the trufi was laughing. I wish I could own one haha. There are so many animals here!

We are currently in the proccess of finding a new apartment.  One of the mission rules is each elder has to live in their own area.  Since the ward has 4 elders, the other elders live in our area in our same apartment.  Because of this, they are in the process of finding an apartment, and so are we.  I think we have found one, but it is not certain yet.  This is just a bit of whats going on with our week.

The missionary work has been very tough this week.  We have many investigators, but none of them want to commit to anything, won't read, and have not come to church.  This is one of the toughest things for me because we can't just do it for them.  Yes, we can read with them, and we can visit them before church to see if they will come, but we can't do it for them.  No matter what, they still have their agency, and if they don't really want it in their hearts, it won't happen.  Hopefully with time, we will be able to figure out how to help them, so they can make it to baptism.  Right now, we are doing our best but not having much success with them.  Occasionally I think about the other areas of the world, and realize that the people here are very soft hearted overall, and very willing to listen to what we have to say. And for this, I feel blessed to be here.

We do have one progressing investigator.  He is a 9 year old who we are teaching, and man is it different teaching a kid than it is teaching teenagers or adults.  The problem with kids is they have the attention span of a rodent.  We can hardly get though one topic of a lesson before he is spazzing out again and running all over the house. Because of this, each lesson takes more time, and more visits, but he is retaining the information, and wants to be baptized.  He likes it when we come over though also, and shows us all of his toys and stuff.  His baptism will be this month, probably more toward the end of the month.  Us teaching him also means we can visit the family often, which is good because they are just starting to come back to church again after a 10 year hiatus!

There is one family of less actives that we have visited also every week since I have been in the area, but would never come to church.  About 2 weeks ago, one of the daughters of the family, who is 20 years old, move back with the family from La Paz. She was studying there, but is finished for the semester.  The daughter is very active, and wants to serve a mission.  This is a huge blessing for the family.  The first week she was here, she brought her older sister, who has been less active for the better part of a year.  This last Sunday, her older sister came again, and also her younger brother.  Slowly but surely, they are beginning to come back to church.  We visit them every saturday in the evening and invite them to church.  Now, not everyone has come back to church, but the daughter, Maria, is very good about fetching all the members of the family when we come to visit them, to share a quick message and invite them to church the next day.  With time, I think they will all return to church again.  The spirit is always strong when we visit them, and even the family members who havent been to church in months end up a bit emotional.  

Hopefully by next week we will have found a new place to live, so we can spend more time on the work here.  I hope everyone has a good week! And if you haven't emailed me in a while I'd love to hear from you!

Èlder Potts

Exchanges and Baptisms! (Fotos)

Exchanges and Baptisms!

Family,

Sorry for not sending a family letter last week.  It wasn't too exciting, especially because I was sick for about 3 days. But everything is good now, and it has been a great week!

If you guys haven't heard, last night at a missionary conference, they announced that all missions throughout the world will be able to use Facebook, and other blogs to spread the gospel! We will all be training the members of the ward how to use it also!  I am not sure when it will hit my mission, but all the members of the ward believe its going to be very soon.

So this past Wednesday, I had exchanges, or intercambios, with one of the Zone Leaders. He is an American from Arizona, and is a great worker.  This day was especially good for the both of us. We were in my area, which I know pretty well, and we got a lot done.  One thing that is frustrating for me is being trained, and being the junior companion.  I normally don't have a say in where we go, or what we do. But this day was different.  My normal companion does not like to knock doors.  This is understandable because we live in a primarily Adventist area, but I still feel that it can be very helpful for finding people to teach.  So when I went out with the ZL, this is exactly what we did.  The very first door I knocked, a younger lady answered the door.  We introduced ourselves and she actually seemed interested in what we had to say.  After a few minutes of talking, she told us she had spoken to the missionaries more than 5 years ago in another city in Bolivia, but lost contact.  SHe has 2 small kids, and invited us back without question.  We have two appointments with her next week.  My normal companion may not have had success with knocking doors, but I have now, and this lady is already a great investigator.  We also found one other investigator that day, and she invited us back to her house to meet with her again.  

On Saturday, we had another baptism.  This was the first baptism that I performed the ordinance for, and it was a great experience.  The person I baptised is a member of the Ramos family, the ones who have been inactive for 10 years.  Her name is Astrid, and she is already very active in the ward, and comes to every activity.  

This baptism has not only been a blessing for her, but for her entire family.  Between the english class, a sports night, the baptism, confirmation, and church, the family has now attended every activity for the past 2 weeks!  It started a few weeks ago, around the time that I started the English class.  First, it was the oldest son, Jonathan.  He told me he wanted to learn english, so I started the class.  He has attended every single one of them.  He later told me that he really loves to play basketball, so we incorperated "basket" into our sports night, which only consisted of futsal before.  He attended that activity, and even got the dad to come, since he also loves basketball.   Astrid also attended.  On the day of the baptism, the whole family came early to help set everything up.  Every member, from the parents to the 4 kids, came and helped us prepare for the baptism.  Even on Sunday, the family was there a few minutes early, for the confirmation of Astrid.  I was expecting them to only stay for sacrament, but they star¡yed all 3 hours.  We asked all of the members who knew them (which aren't that many, since it's been so long since they came to church) to talk to them and fellowship them during the meetings.  They did, and I really think they enjoyed their time at church.  One of the younger members of the family, who is 9, also told us that he would like to be baptised too.  Hopefully this whole process will get the family in the habit of attending church regularly again! 

Fotos

The First Members of Bolivia are in my Ward!

Family,

I have had a very good week in my mission, but it feels like I just wrote you all yesterday.  The mission flies by!

The first thing of this week is that the mission boundaries are changing for me.  They are creating a new mission, Santa Cruz North, and so the Santa Cruz mission is taking part of our area.  The cool part too, down near Argentina! So I will never get to go there. How sad. This also means a few of the guys from my group are being absorbed into the other mission.

I have also started an English class here in Bolivia.  I started it originally because of one inactive member.  He is from the Ramos family, the one who has been inactive for 10 years.  He hasn't attended sacrament meeting yet, but is starting to come to the activities.  Anyway, there are so many people here who want to learn English. They did a study here that showed that if you are fluent in English, then you will make on average 4 times more money per year.  So many of the members come to this class.  Most of them being adults, which is interesting.  Even though I can't speak the language perfectly, I can speak English, and this is what they all want to learn.

The best part of this week was meeting some of the first members in Bolivia.  Back in 1981, the first 4 missionaries of the church entered the country.  3 of them were American, and there was one who was a Latino, but lived in the US.  There is an elderly couple in the ward who were baptised by these missionaries!  They even have an old record, with 2 songs on it from the missionaries, and other pictures of them.  I will send pictures of these in the other thread. So this couple lives in a place called Motecato, which is in our area, but very very far up towards the mountains.  It takes about 30 minutes in a trufi, and then another 20 minutes or so of walking on a small dirt path to get to their house.  They are great members though, and love having the missionaries come!

I miss all you guys.  Have a good week!

Elder Potts

Power Outages, Baptisms, Dog Attacks, and More Ripped Pants

Family,

This week has been good, but a very long one also. A ton of things have happened, but I have enjoyed every single day of it.

I'll start off with some of the bad news:  We lost power last Monday when I got home from Pday.  At first it was the whole street, but everyones came back on that day except ours.  A reminder that we live in a town full of Adventists, and the dueño, or the land lord lady does not like uis for some reason.  Anyways, we have been promised it would be turned back on every single day, but its been 7 days, and still no light.  The secritaties are apparently working with the office of the building though.  The biggest problem this causes is no electricity means no heat for the showers.  Also, may I remind you that it is winter, and coming up on the middle of winter.  It is miserable, but they seem pretty certain that today it will be turned back on.

The next bit of bad/funny news is... I have ripped my pants.. again.  The same pair of unlucky pants that I had just sewed up.  So last wednesday or so, I was walking from Almuerzo to our next appointment, and there were dogs.  Dogs eating a bowl of old food.  Apparently they felt threatened by us walking, and came after us.  As I scrabmbled for a rock, I stumbled and the pants blew out in the crotch again.  The dog got me in the ankle, but it didn't break the skin, luckily.  It did rip through the ankle of my pant also though.  On the way back from the appointment, I did get my revenge though.  We walked back the same way, and I hit him with a rock from about 20 yards away.  Yay!  I was able to have my pants sewed up again too.  This time exta strong in that area.

Now for some good news:  We have our first baptism on Saturday! It was the older guy, our investigator named Victor.  He is about 73 years old and loves reading the Book of Mormon.  He already seems like a strong member of the church and bore his testimony on enduring to the end yesterday, which makes me feel good since it means he will probably stay active his whole life.

So last week I spoke in sacrament on Faith.  I was very nervous for this, and was supposed to fill about 10 minutes.  I was not told I was speaking until the announced my name over the pulpit.  So I scrambled and put something together.  When I got up there, I was very nervous. I was trying to relate faith to a muscle, but instead of using the word 'musculo' I said 'musculino'.  So basically what I said was you have to excersize your masculinity in order to keep a testimony.  I didn't even realize this until I sat down. At least it was over by that point!

Love all you guys! Email me if you have time!

Elder Potts