Gotta Keep Trecken... (Sept 16)

Hello Querida familia y amigos,

How’s it goin? Things are still just trecken along here in the good ol´Santa Cruz. I think sometimes God sends you on your mission to the country where you should have been born in. I LOVE bolivia so very much. But anyways...

So wow lots of stuff this week! Madie, i hope you have a super happy awesome 16th birthday! You should be receiving something in the mail from me soon I hope. Also so great that Annalisa is home! And that Holly got her call- i laughed a little- it seems like the perfect mission for her! Also Tiana has a baby? Too weird! Also I got an awesome package with the shirt, peanut butter, pictures, and balloons! So great! Now i just need to some how finda balloon pump haha . But the pictures are super adorable, I feel like my family just keeps getting more and more attractive every time i see a picture!

Ok so how happy am I about everything that happened at Trevor´s farewell? Trev you are awesome and i am so proud of you! You are seriously so amazing and you are going to become such a spiritual giant on your mission! Seriously watch out Japan, "here comes Elder Black"! (that last part was sung by me to the tune of men in black.) Ah! Also Mitchell! What a tender moment. Seriously what an amazing and inspiring family I have. Trevor, it´s going to be hard, but you are going to love it. I remember all the people in the mtc that had to be there for a long time. You´re there for 12 weeks right? Anyways they were always really cool. Really sick of being there after 10 weeks, but great examples and helpers to all the new people. Anyways you´re just going to have so many opportunities to be an example you don’t even know! But anyways enjoy. Say hello to the orange soda tree for me. And here´s to a great mission! Also mom, what´s his address in the mtc and/or field? I wanna write my bro.  

ok so moving on to bolivia... Coni (pancake family) came to church again this week. We are hoping to work everything out so that she can get baptised on the 28th but we still don’t have an exact fecha which is hard. Things are just complicated with her family. But we will get there. Other than that we dont have any investigators. We are actually struggling a lot with this in the zone right now- except for the other sisters in our ward who have 4 baptisms ready for this Saturday. So our zone leaders read this cool story about eagles on Monday. Did you know, that eagles can live to 70 years old? But they can only do this if they go through a renovacion when they are 40 years old. What they have to do is fly to a high mountain with a flat wall. Then they have to break their beak off which is super painful. Then they have to wait for it to grow back, and then break their nails off, wait for them to grow back and then scratch their feathers off. It’s a really painful process that takes about 150 days. If they do this, they live for another 30 years. If they don’t, they die. We talked about how sometimes there are moments in the mission (and life) like this. When things aren’t all hunky dory we have two options: to keep working hard, or get trunky. (a little less extreme than the eagles). The results though one day will be super different based upon what we choose to do. We decided as a zone that we are going to keep working, and learn what it is that God wants us to learn during this time of renovacion. Renovation? I hope that’s the word in english haha. Anyways so we are working hard during this renovation time, and we are trying to be patient waiting for miracles. Marivel sent me this "jar of inspiration" that i open every monday, and the inspiration that i happened to open this week was a quote from the fairy god mother on cinderella that said, "even miracles take a little time". couldn’t have been more perfect inspiration for this week :).

I was definitely at the end of my rope this last week, but its usually when you´re at the end of your rope that you learn to use the rope God has. (im betting my money that its a lot, lot longer than mine is.) So here´s to a good week. We are going to have baptisms soon. But if not, the church is still true, God still lives, and this still is His true work. We’ve got some great activities that we are putting into action this week. One is that we are going to put out these little flyers on everyone´s doors that say, "why are mormons so happy? visit mormon.org" that one of the nice members in our ward printed out. I have great hope that this will bring about good results. Our area is super rich, so like there is always lots of missionaries from other churches knocking on the same doors. So we are going to try to enter by another means, which God has provided. Pray that we get some references!

Well that´s really all I’ve got to say today. Thanks so much for your letters! Seriously lately I’ve been feeling like maybe all our hard work is helping our families and friends back home more than anyone out here, but that’s also extremely important for us. But we also know that one day we will be able to see all the differences we made in other peoples’ lives. WE just gotta keep trecken. Which is what we are going to do.

Anyways thanks for all your prayers and support! Have great bday madie, and an awesome first week of your mission trev! love, hermana elisa black