Cupesí

So ya sorry about the picture, didn´t have time to download it from my camera. But I was going to send it today along with a bunch of others that are really cool, but oh well, I brought the wrong cord with me haha! You´ll all just have to wait another week haha! But don´t worry, I´m going to send them, because they´re the coolest pictures I´ve had my entire mission. Or at least in my opinion they are.

¡But Buen Día!

Hope your week was great! So yes, they´re all kind of suburbs of Santa Cruz, but all of my areas are really close together because I´ve been in the same zone the whole time haha! Normally that doesn´t happen, but it´s all with a purpose right? Cupesí is closer to my first area in La Merced. We have borders with them and we´re just farther east and a little bit north I think. Yes, we have an actual chapel, and it´s really big because it was built to be a future stake center, so yes we have a piano too! And it´s electric, but still, it counts. 

There´s not a ton of members here, but there´s still a lot. We have two companionships because our area is really big and room for the 4 of us in the house that we rent here. The mission is struggling to keep up on getting houses for all of the new missionaries that keep coming, so instead of expanding farther out right now, they´re putting 2 companionships in the wards whose boundaries are really big. We´re getting another 50-something missionaries on Thursday, so who knows what´s going to happen with that.

Bueno, my sickness, nada más [nothing more]. It left really fast and don´t have any more problems. I didn´t have any parasites or anything, but ya, for a week I was really hurting, but they never found anything. Oh well. Viva Bolivia.

Yes, Eliza I got your letters on Thursday, a nice surprise because we usually get letters on Monday, but ya, that was nice to get. I´ll be sending one back soon I hope. And it sounds like everyone´s excited to get out of school! Weird to think that school´s already ending for everyone! Here they´re in the middle of the school year haha (febrero a diciembre).

I really can´t explain how much I love this new area. We found several families that are really interested, (and married!), so we´ll see how that goes. Sometimes it´s really hard to have lessons here because if something falls through, it´s like 30-45 minutes to walk to the other area where we have more people to teach. And when we´re contacting houses, it´s like 5 minutes in between every house, so we actually got chewed out on Wednesday for not working hard enough, something that was actually really hard to hear someone tell you that you´re not working, but whoever made the division for us in this area is really dumb because there´s not very many houses haha. I´m really good friends with the mission secretary (he´s from my group), and we were talking the other day during the last conference with Presidente Calderón, and I mentioned that I was in Cupesí, but the part where there aren´t any houses (his first area was in Cupesí so he knows what I´m talking about). The first thing he said when he heard I was over there: (what the heck were they thinking when they split that?! It´s at least an hour to walk to your area everyday! They are so stupid!) Yup, it takes us 20 minutes to walk to our house every night, and that´s from the part of our area that´s closest to the chapel haha. If we´re teaching a lesson in any other part, it´s at least a half hour or more, but I think that´s why I love it so much. .....and we got lost again the other day. We literally walked into an area that doesn´t have any people at all, because supposedly the pathway that we were following led to the road that we had to cross to visit a new family, but nope. It was a beautiful area at least haha.

And so yes, we had our last conference with Presidente y Hermana Calderón. It was very very good, and kinda sad actually. It was also the last time that I´m going to see some of the missionaries here because 2 of the 4 zones that were there with us are in the other mission, so we won´t be seeing each other after the split. That´ll be kinda weird. (And yes, mom, I finally got a picture with the president and his wife haha).

But yup, that´s basically it, feelin' like I´m not even in Santa Cruz because there´s no life in my area, but there´s still some people, and people that are prepared to hear the gospel. Lovin' every second of every day.

¡Tenga una buena última semana de colegio! [Have a good last week of school!]

Mucho amor,

Elder Groneman