This week has been fun, but
extremely hard teaching-wise. We haven´t taught that much, but at least
the people we´re teaching are really cool and actually care about the
Gospel. The one guy that lived in La Paz for 10 years didn´t come to
church yesterday...... we´re going over later today so we´ll find out
why, but he´s got some awesome Gospel questions and he´s thinking a lot
about baptism. What did surprise us was that this one single mom came to
church with her 3 daughters yesterday! There´s this really awesome
member family that live pretty far away over the river and getting close
to the woods that have known her for awhile now. She´s a very sad
person I guess you could say and the sun doesn´t exactly shine down on
her house everyday (but that just might be from the tons of rain we got
this week). Basically she and her family are struggling.... a lot. But
we´ve had a good couple lessons with her and her friends that live close
by and then she surprised us by coming to church after telling us that
she wasn´t going to be able to make it. And she also told us that she´s
feeling a lot better now that she´s praying and she reads the pamphlets
and stuff that we leave with her. Yes! The Gospel just makes us happy!
Why doesn´t everyone just see that?! Try it out! It actually works!
Other
than all that, I ended up going to Porvenir too with Elder S**, our
zone leader that I know really well because we were in the offices
together. Actually we were comps for his first 3 weeks as assistant
because he´s from Montero and had family members that lived in the area
of the Assistants. Long story shorter, we´re good friends. So ya, on
Saturday we took several hours and went the 45ish minute drive in
motorcycle to Porvenir. We were actually in the trailer type thing on
the back of the motorcycle of this awesome member that lives around the
corner from our house (his wife is our pension too). We put this bench
thing in the back in the trailer thing and it was actually pretty funny
looking and got some weird looks, but it was just great and made the
trip a lot better. So yes, the road between Cobija and Porvenir is a lot
like the road between Guayara and Riberalta. Tons of jungle. But here
there´s hills everywhere too which makes everything look 10 times
cooler. We met several members in Porvenir and in this other little town
too that´s called 6 de agosto, which is about 15 or 20 minutes farther
than Porvenir. In 6 de agosto we got to this one guy´s jungle hut and he
wasn´t there, but then 10 seconds later this guy comes walking straight
outside the thick jungle that surrounds his house with this huge trunk
on his back, throws down the trunk, throws his machete down and comes
over to meet us. He was really cool. This Bolivian mountain man guy that
just lives in the outskirts and spends his time in the jungle all day.
His house is pretty awesome too. The animals that live in the Bolivian
Amazon are really really loud and make the weirdest noises. There were
tons of weird birds there, which we can hear once in awhile here in
Cobija, but they usually stay away from the people here so you don´t see
them that much. His house and his neighbor´s house are some of the
coolest places I´ve seen here. (His neighbor is a member too and lives
about 5 minutes away from the main road on this little hiking trail that
we just went in on the moto). So ya, even though we haven´t been able
to teach much, we went to this dump place that´s like 45 minutes outside
the city but in another direction, going past several little villages
where they have problems with jaguars, and Porvenir and 6 de agosto. I
went to Porvenir with Elder S** this week because he was actually
there when they closed it. They closed it because there just weren´t new
people to teach and the work just kinda died out..... But Elder
P** and I are going back, hopefully this week, because they need
lots of help over there. Lots of members are going inactive and it´s
looking pretty sad right now. Maybe we can´t baptize anyone over there,
but at least we can help the members on a little and strengthen their
little family group. We found out yesterday that there were only about
10 people at church yesterday....... It´s like Mamoré all over again.
But yup, lovin Cobija. Wouldn´t want to be anywhere else.......... not even Chile uh hem. [Mecham's brother is in Chile.]
Love you all. May we all remember that the Gospel is happiness!
Tenha um bon dia! [Portuguese for "Have a nice day"]
Elder Groneman
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