Monday, September 8, 2014

All´s well in the Bolivian Amazon

muy buenos días!

So no, I´m not district leader either, which is just fine with me, but I was kinda actually hoping that I would be again because I liked being district leader more than zone leader. I feel like I was able to help out my district more on a personal level than I could as zone leader. They both have good things that I liked from each of them.
 
So we´re just gonna answer lots of questions today.
 
So my zone is pretty small. There´s 12 of us here in Cobija, and unlike Guayara, there´s 4 sister missionaries here. There still aren´t any sisters in Guayara because it´s just ghetto. Cobija is more modernized and a lot bigger than I ever expected it to be. Yes, it was part of the La Paz mission before the split, so there were only Latino missionaries here for years (there´s no gringos in the La Paz mission). Cobija is a district with 3 branches, like Guayara, but I feel like the church is a little bit more established here than it is there. Elder P** and I are in the Aeropuerto branch. There´s 2 companionships in every branch so there´s another companionship here in Aeropuerto too. Our area is the area crossing the Avenida Pando going towards the other main street, la avenida 9 de febrero. So on the side of la Avenida Pando that has the other main road, 9 de febrero, everything is ours on that side of the Pando until no man´s land. There´s also a small town nearby, Porvenir, which has a family group set up with about 40 to 50 active members every week. There aren´t any missionaries there anymore because of bad experiences and the members hate the missionaries, but it´s in our area and we´ll be going over there every once in awhile to see how the branch is doing. It´s about 45 minutes away in taxi or motorcycle. Yes, we do ride lots of motos here.

The people here are very smart and very friendly. Everyone always has some type of juice that they´ve made so they always give us some whenever we´re in their house. I remember Guayara being a little bit hotter than it is here, not a lot, but yes even hotter than it already is here, but I think that´s just because there´s no wind there at all and here there´s always a slight breeze. Not anything like the wind that wants to throw you back 10 feet in Santa Cruz, but just a slight breeze that at least cools you off a little bit. But yes, the death hills of Cobija remind me of San Francisco, just with dirt roads haha. Lots of red dirt here and lots of parrots again. I´ll try and send some pictures today, but for some reason the computers here don´t like my camera. I think this internet place has wifi though.... I´ll try to send something.
 
But ya, this week was good. We´re finding lots of new people to teach and we found this one guy this week that we feel really good about. He´s had some really interesting experiences with missionaries when he was living in La Paz and ever since then he hasn´t talked to the missionaries, but now that he´s back in Cobija after 10 years, he´s got some interesting family stuff goin on and wants our help. We had the best lesson with him the other day and seriously, the Spirit is just great and really guided us to be able to help him out. It was definitely a different lesson that I´ve never had before, but when in doubt, turn to the Spirit and everything will work out. In the end, he accepted a baptismal invitation for October 11th. It was a very tentative answer from him, but he started trying to explain how good he felt inside when we just happened to find him in his house looking for his brother and then Elder P** is just awesome and told him straight up that that was the Spirit and in the end, he told us to come back this week Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Haha I like setting the week´s appointments ahead of time too, but I´ve never had an investigator do that without us first mentioning it haha!
 
But yes, all´s well in the Bolivian Amazon. Hot, humid, sun, it actually rained this week which was nice, and yes, we´re going to this ice cream place this week. Maybe it´ll help me not lose too much weight haha.
 
Love you all. Glad Parker´s doing ok. Careful with the fleas, I´m getting eaten by mosquitos again and giant ants.
 
Besits, (as they´d say in Cochabamba)
Elder Groneman

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