Still growing...

¡Buenos Días a todos! [Good day to all!]

So while I´m thinking about it still......... Salt Lake called our branch president to congratulate him on how well the branch was growing. They said that they´ve been really surprised with the growth that we´ve seen here and wanted to ask him what we´ve been doing to get people to come to church because it´s been years since they´ve seen numbers like that here. So he explained everything that we´ve been doing as a branch and they asked who the missionaries were here haha! Yup. No big deal. Just some international calls from church
headquarters to ask who the awesome missionaries are in some random small town in Bolivia haha. We were pretty excited about that. (Oh ya, I didn´t know how many people were in church last week but I found out
later that it was 76. No. Really. I´m not lying. 76 people. It raised again. Or the number grew or however you´d say that.) yesterday was less people, like 50 or so because  everyone here is sick because it was really really cold on Saturday and Sunday again. Just 2 days it was cold, but the changes in temperature are sudden and drastic, so everyone gets sick and doesn´t leave their houses for anything.

In other news, it was a very interesting week. Elder L had an ear infection the entire week. Tuesday was normal, but yes, all the drunk Brazilians had their parties and we only had like 3 or 4 lessons in every area in the zone, and then on Wednesday the doctor said that we had to stay indoors because his infection was going to be worse in the sun and with all of the dirt in the air. We were supposed to stay at home on Thursday, but decided to go and work anyways, and Friday as well. And on Friday after lunch we went to the house because we had to pick up a few ties for some recent converts that were going to pass the sacrament yesterday and so we were going to give them some ties that we bought the other day for 1 Boliviano each. Yes. 1 Boliviano. That´s like 14 cents or something like that. Increíble. But when we got to the house.............wait for it............ we got robbed again..........No just joking. No one has been in our house haha. (Sorry Mom..... couldn´t pass up the joke.) But the floor of our kitchen was risen. Or up. Or bloated. Or it was higher than it was supposed to be. Lo siento. [Sorry] Bear with me here I can´t speak English. But that happened over a period of 1 hour so we were kinda freaking out because who knows what was going on. So after mucho tiempo [a lot of time], we found the owner of the house to talk to her and she was really concerned but said that it was probably just the local prisoners from the jail digging tunnels to escape haha (we live close to the prison). So it was either that or the army of armadillos that live in our yard
(well actually we haven´t seen the army yet but there´s evidence and know they exist). And yes, armadillos in the jungle, go figure. And yes, I did eat armadillo the other day too and crocodile and it was very good. But, back to the story. So in the end it was just because it was so incredibly hot and humid and not the huge army ants from the jungle like they originally told us it was. So that was Friday.

Saturday, we went back to the doctor. He removed tons of dirt from Elder L´s ear and the membrane of his ear drum was also inflamed, so we had to stay in the house for 2 days. Well, my entire district was getting sick this week, including one Elder from Tennesse (Elder N) that had a puchichi. It´s some micro bacterial thing that enters into infected cuts or something like that and there´s a lot of puss and blood usually. Well he was inside so I went with his Argentinian companion, Elder S, and we work in both areas, his and mine, for the 2 days. It was really fun, but really hard and kinda weird. But yup. If you find yourself wondering what I´m up to during the week, who knows, maybe this week I´ll be in the Amazon fighting off the wild monkeys haha. But ya, por lo menos [at least], it was a nice change to things.

The address for packages is basically the same but with the change in the mission name and the floor (piso) is different and office number. The mission offices are in the same building as the south mission so the rest should be the same.

Eliza and Jacob. Permits. What is the world coming to? Bueno suerte [Good luck] haha. And sorry to hear about Becki. I´ll be praying for her everyday.

Hasta la próxima [Until the next],
Amor a todos [Love to all],
Elder Groneman