Elder Jacob Potts: Cochabamba, Bolivia: Spreading the Word

It's been a full week of events and new ideas here in Cliza, and it's making my companion and I super excited for the weeks to come! Things are progressing here greatly!

Here a bit of a cool story: Wednesday night of this week, at about 9 oclock, we went to go visit one more person before we turned in for the night. About a block before we got to the investigators house, we saw smoke coming from a different house, but just assumed it was from an oven, since there was only a tiny bit. So we kept walking, and knocked the door of the investigator... as he answered the door, we turned back, and there was a cloud of smoke so big nothing was visible! The house was burning down! We rushed over to the house, asking the number for Bomberos, or the fire department.. Cliza is so small, there is no fire department. So everyone ran down a few blocks to a small river with buckets to put it out, us included. What makes it worse is the house also has a furniture store in it. So everything was flammable, sofas, beds, closets, chairs, all made of wood and cotton. The fire suprisingly got put out relatively quickly and nobody was hurt from it.

The family I told you about last week, Family Vasquez, lost their Dad last night. All our efforts are going towards them now. All of the kids are under 18, and there are 4 of them. We are working hard with the ward, and have scheduled for the ward members to bring them food every night of the week. They also owe the hospital a large payment for the hospital stay, but we are still working on a solution for that. Evelin, who is 16, told us last night the only reason she is at peace is because of prayer. Also telling us she never prayed before we started teaching her. They are all being comforted, by the ward and the Lord, although this is probably the hardest time of their lives.

Last week in a conference, President Dyer told us we should always invite our investigators to kneel and pray with us. To the point of even saying it would be a sin not to pray on your knees with them. I initially took this as some strong counsil, but decided to put it into practice. Ivan, who is one of our investigators with a baptismal date for 2 weeks in the future, lacks the permission from his mom, who is very catholic. We also visit her, and teach her too. After asking permission for his baptism, and inviting her to baptism too, we ended with a prayer, and asked them to kneel with us. That alone brought the spirit so strongly! I know his mom felt it also, and she said she would talk with Ivan before giving the permission. We are still waiting for the word though.

I'm starting up an English class again here, and because of the people I know, it's going to be big. We have an open shop right on the square to teach, thanks to our pensionista, and I recently met someone who works for the television in my little Pueblo, Cliza. He said if we make a commercial, we can play it for one month for 20 bolivianos. So we might be making a commercial for it and everything! This could be big for the church. I know not everyone will get baptized, but everyone will know about the church. I'm really excited for it all.