Sketchy Internet

hello!

So sorry the internet has been crazy today! Usually we go to this mercado that has lots of computers, but today it was closed. So then we went to this other street with internet cafes but today the police decided to come and shut them down for being illegal haha. Of all the days to have the police come. Well now we are at another internet cafe, and hopefully we don’t get kicked out! But it’s going very slow so sorry. And mom, sorry my letter was short, but i don’t think it has to do with the fact that i can write friends. We were given more time to write!

So a few things: are you guys sending malories letters via dearelder? Cause I’m not getting them... also congrats trevor on everything this week! Wow so cool! I’m so proud of you and happy for you! i love that you guys did a dance. That’s so my type of thing to do and i love it haha. Also hna choque has been a member all her life, also hna huenchur, who says thanks! She is so excited to go to byu. She talks really great english.

Ok so this week no fotos. Sorry but this internet is kind of sketchy and i don’t want to mess up my camera. Can that happen? Can you mess up your camera from a computer? I don’t even know.

But anyways so this week i was at the dermatologist and clinic a lot. I’m growing some kind of bacteria on my face. haha. It started out small, but it keeps growing and is now on different parts of my face! But it’s all just part of the mission experience here in bolivia. It’s getting a lot better now and has started going away so no fear. at least i didn’t get bit in the face by a dog like Hna Morris (sorry mom of hna morris for writing that she was in the clinic the other week... didn’t mean to freak you out!). We are all recovering nicely though and all is well. Yes i have ongaurd :)

so we are having some awesome success here in paraiso. We are teaching about 10 FAMILIES right now and it is just so fantastic! We are working our little tails off. Also this week Beismar will be getting baptized. He´s almost 18 and he´s been living with his aunt and uncle who are members. We taught him lots all week, but he just wasn’t feeling as secure as he wanted. But we prayed and prayed and prayed. and saturday night, he had a dream about us! In the dream, hna huenchur told him that he missed his opportunity, and now he can’t be baptized. He said that in his dream I kept saying "no its ok" but hna huenchur was like no its passed the time! And well somehow this was the answer he was looking for and he is very excited for his baptism! He’s got tons of friends in the ward. So yeah that’s great.

Gabriela Fernandez i think is going to have to wait an extra week to get baptized because they have missed church these last two weeks. The dad is in the hospital right now and we are hoping that with his health failing he will have greater desire to come back to church.

We brought a mom to church yesterday. Her name is Cynthia. She was born catholic, raised jehova witness, and went to an evangelica church when she was 20ish. Now she is a single mom with two daughters. She came to church, and then we visited her in the afternoon. We explained a lot about joseph smith and the restauracion and after she was like, "well thank you but i think i am just going to go back to the evangelica church and be really active". But unfortunately she was talking to two missionaries who are sick of not having baptisms. We didn’t leave it at that. I am so tired of losing my brothers and sisters. hna huenchur feels the same and well hermana choque she is just going to have to come with us in these things. We bore powerful testimony, committed her to pray about the church, and set a baptism date. We are talking to so many families these days which is challenging, but we are working so hard and praying so much. They might have to send me home in pieces in 7 months (only 7 months!!!!!! aaaaah!!!!) because all my blood sweat and tears (and skin from my face haha) are here in paraiso.

Oh btw the mission will be splitting this week. So i might be in mission santa cruz norte or i might still be in santa cruz mission. Paraiso is in the north mission so if im still in paraiso next week, that will be my new mission. 

Anyways love the mission. It’s the best thing ever for my life. Also I’m obsessed with mormon.org these days. I feel like im supposed to bring it to bolivia even though i don’t know much about it haha. But like sometimes i can’t sleep at night because I’m just thinking of so many ideas and things these days. Its great but it’s hard.

Ok sorry mom its short again this week. But i have to write good letters to president these days too. haha.

I love you all so much and i love reading about you all. Thanks for everything!

love, hermanana elisa black

CAMBIOS!

hello hello!!

So crazy week! On MONDAY we had CAMBIOS! I am still a sister mission leader and hermana morris as well. But now we are separated and both training! I am also in a trio. I am still in Paraiso,  but I’m with Hermana Huenchur (she entered the mission with me)and Hermana Choque! (yes the same last name as the hermana who was my trainer). Wow crazy! I love them both so much. Hermana Huenchur is the hermana who is super jealous of trevor for getting to go to japan, she also is planning on studying animation at byu after the mission, and is from Chili, loves Regina Specktor like me, and well is just a hoot! Hermana choque is from La Paz, Bolivia. Well actually, so you know how la paz is the highest city in the world? Well actually there is little villages in the mountains of la paz (which are a lot higher than the city la paz) and that’s where she is from. She is like how i thought all the people of bolivia would be- her parents even wear the typical clothes and everything! Anyways she came to the mission basically with nothing and we are helping her get everything. She has three weeks in the mission, so I’m not raising her exactly from the mission womb, but close to. ha. The pictures are of us on her birthday which was thursday! i got the birthday package you sent me on her birthday which was awesome because we got to celebrate together! Anyways it was great.

So it is complicated right now, because Paraiso was split into two parts, for two sets of missionaries, but now we are combined because we are a trio. It’s been complicated, but we are doing pretty good.  Unfortunately this week was a tough one for the family Vasconcelos. We finally got to talk to the wife again, but it was because they had other family over when we passed by. We had what we thought was a good lesson with everyone, even though many people were anti mormon. We passed by though saturday (two days later) and found out that the parents have been fighting over the last two days. Hermano Vasconselos didn’t come to church on sunday, and we are worried about them. I have only prayed as hard as i pray for them i think 3 other times in my life. I am exhausted from praying for them and don’t know what to do. sigh. We have a great ward mission leader that is going to help us out a lot though.

Speaking of ward mission leaders, that’s so awesome about dad’s new calling! Dad this work is awesome! I am so glad we are turning into a mission family. We are a strong family- now we can help others be the same!!!!

So unfortunately the fernandez family didn’t make it to church either. It was a little bit of a tough sunday. But Beimar came to church, and he will be getting baptized on June 8! He is in the area of Hermana Huenchur, but Hermana Michel and i actually taught him and his cousin first. I knew I’d be part of his conversion so i thought it was weird that he didn’t live in my area, but now look! God puts you where he needs you. I shared Trevor’s experience with the book of mormon  with Beimar and his cousin this week because they are 17 and 18. I hope you don’t mind trev! It was just perfect though. Anyways we are excited for Beimar.

Well this is all I’ve got time for this week sorry! Oh but moms phrase of "power, strong, moooove along!" has been one that has helped me this week. So thanks mom. Today is Mothers day in Bolivia, so happy mother’s day again!

Seriously love you all so much!!!! Thanks Patrice for your email, and all my grandparents for birthday letters, as well as other family! I seriously have such a powerful wonderful family and am more and more grateful everyday!

love, hermana Elisa Black

Council of Zone Leaders

Hello hello!

This week was interesting. On monday we played futbol. i can tell the elders didn’t really want us to play with them. But i really like playing- it’s when i get to relieve a lot of stress. We don’t have room to do much exercising where we live right now. But I’m still really good at futbol if anyone wants to know haha. 

Tuesday was the council or whatever of zone leaders. Basically our duty is to do exchanges. President will call us when he wants us to do an exchange with an hermana that is struggling or new, etc. also any zone leader that has hermanas can call and request an exchange now for an hermana and we will be notified. We can also be called to observe hermanas weekly planning or observe their area book and give advice. Stuff like that. It’s pretty chill. It was just fun to go to the meeting. At lunch we got to eat with president and hermana calderon. i asked him what’s the first thing he is going to do when he gets home from his mission. He said "eat!" he has planned to eat something different every hour on his first day. Hermana calderon said she is going to throw away every phone she has and then sleep for a week without a single person interrupting. They are seriously incredible and I’m going to miss them.
Wednesday we visited the familia Vasconcelos. We explained to the Dad and two of the kids what baptism does. He has been baptized in another church, but he didn’t know that baptism is meant to clean you of all your sins. Anyways everything just clicked with him and he asked if he could be baptized that night! Well, he is really excited right now, but we put a baptism date for the 15th of June because we are hoping his wife and 12 year old daughter will get baptized at the same time. But right now they don’t want to listen to us... his 7 year old daughter though asked, "can i get baptized on September 10th?" (they learned at church that you have to be 8 to be baptized). Her birthday is September 9th and she has her baptism planned out. So cute! we just really hope his wife will come back. Arnaldo (her husband) says that she keeps having bad dreams about her dad now so she thinks it means we are bad. So we are praying hard for her!

Also this day we went to the offices for a couple of things, one being i needed a new water bottle, because the day before when i drank out of it water would shoot out a little of one side. One of the secretarios asked, whats wrong with your waterbottle? So i was like let me show you. i started drinking, and i guess to prove my point i must have squeezed too hard and well it kind of exploded all over the office. haha so embarrassing. 

Thursday i woke up to my birthday! And also the coldest day i have ever had in bolivia! I was sooo grateful for the tights from tia Monica! It gets COLD here folks! Anyways no one wanted to open their doors because they were frozen. but when we got back at night, i found that hna morris, huenchur, and Armas had all made a surprise birthday dinner for me, with all i could eat guacamole! awww it was the best thing ever! So thats the picture i am sending this week. i wanted to take more pictures but then my camera died. haha. but anyways it was fun.

Hma Black and her Birthday Guacamole!

Friday we went to the clinic because hna morris is in a lot of pain every time after she eats something no matter what it is. We are now teaching this cute cute cute japonese family, that are the relatives of Elder China, who i gave notes to  give to michaela and malorie. (yeah their last name is china and they are from japan haha). Anyways they are adorable and we had an awesome first lesson so hopefully they will progress!!!! I’ve noticed that when families have a missionary out, it really blesses them. Elder china has only been out three weeks, but his family is starting to get active, and other relatives are now listening to the missionaries! That’s so great.

Saturday was pretty normal... we helped one of the daughters of our piensonista give a book of mormon to her boyfriend. One of the biggest themes this week is that members really need to invite the people they love to visit the church. For example, Arnaldo Vasconcelos told us that like all his wife´s family is mormons practically, and no one has ever invited them to church! We keep hearing this a lot from people. if everyone in the church would just invite one person they love to know the church, we could spread the good news extremely fast. It’s good news, the happiest news on earth, why is it so hard to let people we love know about it?

Sunday Arnaldo came to church again with Abby (the seven year old) and Savier (5 years old. i think thats how you say his name). anyways we also talked with them again i just can’t remember what day, and Arnaldo is already planning on going on a mission with his wife (so we are REALLLY trying to get to her) and Abby also is preparing to go on a mission. she is sad she has to wait until she is 19! Also more and more members of the Fernandez family are coming to chruch- one of her oldest daughters came with her kids, and realized her son is 11 and not baptized! The Fernandez family is huge, and we are doing our best to help them come back. Unfortunately the Dad took a bad turn again. But we aren’t giving up on him!

So basically that was this week. It was a hard week, but we are so happy and excited and hopeful for the Vasconcelos and Fernandez families. We have prayed so hard and long for families (from our first day as companions the last time!) so we are doing our best to help them now.

Thanks so much for all the birthday cards and packages (that hilariously cute frog from uncle gary and aunt susan is definitely on my pillow everyday now). I really enjoyed everything!!!

much love,

hermana black

After Mother's Day

hello hello and hello!

how fun was it to talk yesterday! One hour goes by so very fast. i really enjoyed talking to you guys though, keep being amazing! 

The photos today are one of me, hermana morris, and hermana armas. The other one is of me with this thing hermana morris and i bought because we were hungry one night. Its chicken and fries, with a drink as the part you hold! It’s like the ultimate fast food. You could just walk and eat, or put it in your car and it’s like the easiest thing ever! We thought we were all about fast in america, but the Cambas (people from Santa Cruz) sometimes beat us on making life easy. hahaha. 

Anyways... so monday playing wallyball was fun again. but hermana morris and i were kind of walking around with a little black rain cloud over our heads because rumors were going around that the reason why we were together was because we couldn’t handle being trainers and other rumors about how we´ve been flirting with elders and things like that. So we were feeling blackcloudish with all these rumors, and it’s hard to have the spirit when you feel blackcloudish. So, we decided to call President. Well he was like No! Everything is fine! You girls are doing great! PLEASE don’t feel bad! And he told us that he´d call us into his office soon to explain what’s going on. So that really helped us feel a lot better. i really needed to hear that. So then we went on working like usual.

The rest of the week went well. We didn’t have quite as many lessons as we were hoping for, but being who we are we still walked and didn’t ever stop! I couldn’t be more grateful for the ability of Hermana Morris to always keep going and never be lazy. EVER. She´s amazing and incredible and basically i know how to be a missionary thanks to her.

Anyways we had an awesome lesson with the Fernandez family this week. (the family of little Gabriela). We did the lesson family home evening style. We thought that like all their kids were going to come but it ended up being only the mom, dad, and the two youngest kids. well i felt like we should pull out my tree lesson. It went over incredibly. The dad just started bawling and said that he really wants to go back to church, he´s just so embarrassed by what he´s been doing with his life. He said he wants to start over like an investigator though, and take all the lessons with his daughter now. We are so excited for this family to come back! We are going to move her baptism date until june though, so we can really get this family going strong first and so that she wont just get baptized and go inactive. But anyways the tree lesson is like my favorite thing ever. I definitely can tell that i have more and more creativity in my mission, and i know it’s because I’m listening more and more to the spirit and learning more and more how the spirit talks to me. It’s so great.

Well we were really sad about the family Vasconcelos this week, the Brazilian family. We had a lesson on wednesday and the mom didn’t even come down to talk to us. The dad said something along the lines of "we don’t go to church so we just like that you guys come to bless our house". We really pushed prayer and going to church and did our best, but we felt a little sad leaving, and that maybe we would move our focus to other people this week. BUT! The dad and two of his kids with two of their cousins came to church! ah! we are so happy! Also, right next to this internet cafe, there’s a photo shoot place, and who should be taking their pictures this morning, but the family Vasconcelos! So we have an appointment with them tonight, and we are praying so hard for them. I just know they are going to make it. Maybe not in my time frame, but i am going to do what i can to help them understand how happy they can be!!

And of course my biggest news of the week is that Hermana Morris and I are the first Hermana Zone leaders in the mission! So that’s the real reason we are together again. It’s amazing to see how I’ve been prepared for this calling. All this week ivé been reading in Alma 48-50ish and learning so much about how to be a leader like God wants, and the differences between good and bad leaders. Like all of this has just been jumping off the page of the book of mormon at me and it’s been a confirmation to me that God has called me to this position. so pray for me! ;)

anyways it’s been a great week. I am loving the mission. Thanks monica also for the birthday package! The sweater is beautiful! Thanks family and friends for so much support, for your letters and packages. I do try to write back to everyone that writes me- i hope you get my letters! if not, please know i think about you all and pray for you all!

with lots of love,

hermana black

ah!!! family aqui in south america!! woot!

hello hello!!

Ah i am so excited for malorie to be here THIS WEEK!! Holy cow nuts!!!
I am just giddy. The ccm in Peru is SO much better than Provo! In my
humble opinion. wow! I can’t help but think mom how much of a blessing
getting stuck in a bunch of airports is. She hopefully won’t be so lost
and shocked and confused in the airport in Peru! Oh the peru airport.
so many of my favorite experiences happened in Peru. Seems like
yesterday.  Ok enough of that. Ah i am just so excited! Is she flying
out with other missionaries? Oh But mom what is malories direction for
the ccm and mission? Also because malorie will be in the ccm in Peru,
theres a boy in my ward that will be joining her the week Michaela
goes in (is she going to ccm in peru too?). So I’m going to send him
with a letter to you mal, so look for Elder Chino! Too cool. Also i
think I’ve figured out the best way to send our weekly reports to
each other. Mal and I can email each other, but there just isn’t a lot
of time! This might be too complicated, but could you mom or dad send
our letters to each other via dearelder? Especially when she is in the
ccm she just won’t be able to read anything i email. Is that too
complicated? Let me know. Also, all the bishops and leaders are on
fire after having Elder Bednar here. My bishop wants to make a ward
directory. Is there any way you could email me pages of the ward
directory we have in provo? Sorry i know this is lots and this week is
already crazy enough! As far as hangers go: yes bring hangers- the
thinner the better :) also thanks so very much for the dinero!! I’m
going to have to go buy some warm clothes now. I don’t really know when
it will hit- June July and august are the coldest months but may is
supposed to be pretty cold this year too based on the amount of rain
and cold days we´ve been having (which really haven’t been much yet but
i guess more than usual). Also sorry no pictures. I have a lot of good
ones but again i have a computer without the ability to send pics.

Ok ok moving on. So on monday we had an awesome FHE with a family of
different levels of inactivity and membership. It’s this really awesome
family- a grandma with 3 sons i think and their kids and other
assortment of cousins. It’s the family of Elder Chino that malorie is
going to meet. He is the only one super active, but there are others
that come some times. Anyways we explained part of the family a
proclamation to the world to them. We used our white board to draw a
tree. We asked what "fruits" do you want in your family? We drew
fruits of unity, love, and happiness, etc. then we said well how do we
get those fruits? Then we drew on the roots what things we need to do
to get those fruits: things like going to church, family prayer, etc.
It was incredible! It’s so simple. But one of the dads was like "whoa
the gospel makes sense now!" oh i cannot even begin to describe how
great that is to hear that! Our hearts were full when we walked home
that night.

Tuesday....door knocking... i actually love door knocking. I had to
tell myself i love it for a couple of weeks at the beginning of my
mission, but now I really do.

Wednesday- we tried singing in a park together. We were in the middle
of the third line of a beautiful duet of all creatures of our god and
king when some man came up and was like "stop singing. i need money to
go somewhere. Give me money to go on the bus". We were like we don’t
have money but he started getting really pushy so we ran away. haha.
We are trying hard to figure out what to do with our talents we’ve been
blessed with. That wasn’t the right choice but at least we are trying
right? haha

Thursday - using our "lista de accion" (dunno what this is in english)
we found a family that has a 9 year old daughter that isn’t baptized.
So we visited this family. It’s a family a lot like the family of Laura
that Hermana Morris and i taught. It’s a family of 8 kids, this 9 year
old is the youngest. All are super inactive except one daughter who
lives in another part of santa cruz. We are going to try hard to
activate them and baptize Gabriela :)

Friday- we felt like we should visit Edith again (we sang I believe in
Christ to her and she couldn’t stop crying last week). She let us in,
and we talked lots to her. We were really excited- she´s actually very
humble, she just puts on a face like she is tough but we just have to
be a little persistent and she lets us in. We were having a great
lesson and then we asked her to be baptized. Well she told us that she
actually went to the River Jordan in Israel (Israel right? well
where ever) and was baptized. So she isn’t quite as enthusiastic about
our humble fonts. But we will see. Every time we sing with her the
spirit is so strong. That’s why she keeps listening to us.

Saturday- 3 hours with elder bednar!!! Wow. I can really tell that I’ve
matured spiritually because when Elder Christopherson came to the ccm,
i was like "cool an apostle!" but this saturday with Elder Bednar I
was just full of joy! The 3 hours were like 20 minutes. I wish i could
write everything I want to here, but I’m almost out of time! One of my
favorite things he said though was, if you don’t get the blessings you
think you should get, will you keep doing what’s right? Will you keep
being obedient today? This week? Your mission? Your whole life? Does
your faith depend on the results YOU think YOU should get? Ah love it.
It reminded me of your discipleship meter dad :)

Anyways Carlos was interviewed sunday and will be baptized this
saturday. He is a great kid. In the first lessons he was super serious
and i was kind of scared of him haha. But now he is happy and laughs
and is actually really funny. His life has changed and it’s a beautiful
thing to witness.

Well hopefully we get in a couple of houses for a second time this
week. We  are pretty good at getting into houses for a first lesson,
but no one is ever home for the second visit! But we will get there. I
have so much energy to go go go and help the Lord with this work!
(Even though we have now killed two mice in our house. and when I say
we I mean my companion haha).

Well here’s me sending lots of love to provo and peru!!!

love, Hermna BLack

gr computer :(

hello fam!

so this computer can attach pictures. its just that i cant write and upload at the same time so not going to send any today sorry. i sent some pics in the mail though, along with a letter to the families of Welch, Wagstaff, and Young because i dont have their addresses. hopefully all that makes it home. also im happy that all is well for mal! Is michaela going to peru? because i want to send her a card too through this kid in my ward who will be entering the ccm soon with them.

thanks so much for the birthday money! also im pretty sure i just recieved a bday package from the woods in orem and marivel- thank you thank you! also congrats on graduating this week SUU friends, and also felizidades to Michelle and Brian on getting married this week! wow. :)

also no i dont need more drops. i got an empty envelope from afton last week :( i dunno where the letter is. also Maria Torrez, if you remember her from when i was in Centenario wth hmna Morris, got baptized!!! yay! also my bishop here says hello. he says i look like one of the wives of a past mission president here in santa cruz. Prezident Cranny or someting like that.

ok so summery of this week: Hna Michel y Hermana Black worked so hard monday through wednesday that they had super high logros and blew everyones minds. then they were both sick on thrusday but didnt want to admit it. sothey kept working. and working. both telling the other to call hermana calderon and say that they are sick. well finally hermana black woke up sunday morning and could barely get out of bed. so she called hermana calderon. haha. im super fine now. we just slept all sunday. my companion is doing really bad though, we went to the clinic this morning. we get the results after we are done here at the internet.

ok but also high lights this week: baptism of Carlos!!!! it was so great. his friend baptized him. they have only been friends for two months, becuase thats how long carlos has been going to church. but they are inseperable now. its like marivel and i- its like we were planned to know each other since the preexistence, to help build each other up spiritually here on earth. now they are both preparing to go on missions! anyways it was a great day. Hna Michel and iwere both crying (whether that was the spirit or because we were sick i dunno haha)

ok so yeah seriously good week. we are teaching right now a family from Russia and another from Brazil. Um yes, 100% Russian! too cool. Anyways its so exciting to be teaching FAMILIES. The russian family isnt quite as into it yet. But the family from Brazil (ok so only the dad is from Brazil) is progressing. The night after we met the mom of the brazil family, she had a dream where her dad (who has been dead for 4 years) said that he is in hell waiting to be helped. we were definitely inspired to teach plan de salvacion first (usually its restauracion first) and she just bawled when we told her that her dad can still make it to the celestial kingdom with her family. the only thing is that they didnt make it to church yesturday... so thats were it gets hard. theyve got to keep commitments. but we are praying and working hard for them!

so sunday we only went for sacrament meeting for the confirmation of Carlos. The only other investigators that came were Gabriela Fermandez- that little nine year old with her 13 year old brother who is a member. He brought his sister, along with two little friends they have that are age 9 and 10. it was so cute- we led them like little ducklings to primary. Unfortunately we left after that. Its going to be super hard to activate this family i think... but maybe with the valience of thier kids they wll be lead back into the fold. its just so hard to baptize kids without parents that will be active.

anyways this was my week this week. I really liked reading in Alma 34:38 where it takes about that we should live every day in "Action of Gratitud" (ok thats translating into inglish i dunno if thats exactly what it says). but i really just like that it talks about that our gratitud for the lord should lead us  to action. if we are thankful, what are we doing about it? anways love that.

well sorry i dont have pictures to send yet again. i cant wait till i can show you some of the movies that i have though- ive got a good one of my companion killing a mouse in our house with a broom. she´s hard core.

i love you all so much and really hope that all is well. I love this church. I love utah. I love santa cruz. I love my family. I love my life. (i feel like that little boy Dash on the movie incredibles that is just so happy with this family that he just says "i love our family" and lays back on the car seat) haha.

ok well thats all for this week. Have a great week!

love, Hermana Black

Elder Bednar is coming...

hello hello!

Well this was an interesting week. It was fun, and we worked a lot,
but we aren’t seeing many fruits of our labors lately.

But anyways a couple of things: i haven’t been able to send Trevor’s
birthday card yet! sorry Trev. Hopefully I’ll get that in the mail next
week and you’ll get it in May sometime. I did try. Also I got a package
from Sylvia and Bryans family! Thanks so much! My companion and i love
it! :) Also, i don’t think i have an exact release date, especially
because we have army kids coming in almost weekly so transfers are
weird right now (oh by the way if you are a misionero age 18, or
misionara under age 21, you are considered part of the Army of
God/Helaman). But my foto is up under the month of January, so i am
planned to go home then. But we will have new presidents by the end of
the year so who knows? So yeah that’s that. My guess for Trevor:
Russia, Rhode Island. OH OH also, the son of our pensionista served
with Paul my cousin in Honduras! Cool huh? They weren’t ever companions
but Paul was his first zone leader.

Ok. So time is moving super duper fast. When people say that once
you’re half way your mission goes by fast, i was like yeah that makes
sense. But i wasn’t expecting to basically blink and be in April! And
the MIDDLE of April! Holy cow im still in march! haha. But yeah it’s
kinda awesome and scary at the same time.

Monday was fun- we played Wally Ball. It is so much more fun with
latinos, because they use their feet. haha. We had a lot of fun.

Tuesday we had a one hour reunion with the President. Him and his wife
were just in salt lake for a week! Anyways it was an awesome
conference all about if you want more faith, be obedient! We never
have to question if the apostles are obedient. Obedience brings faith.
Also I’m learning a lot more about the importance of being self
motivated in the mission. No one makes me learn spanish. No one
teaches me how to teach. No one is teaching me how to be a trainer.
You’ve just got to start doing stuff yourself. Sometimes i don’t like
this- I’d rather have someone tell me how to do things, so that i do
things ´right´. But when we take the initiative, we are learning about
how to be more like God, because no one tells him what to do.anyways
it was an awesome conference and i am super motivated!

Wednesday my companion tried to get a starfruit out of a tree and it
fell and hit her in the face haha. That’s all i remember for wednesday
oops haha.

Thursday we couldn’t do much- my companions leg was doing really bad.

Friday we had some problems with the area with the other hermanas that
are serving here. We were confused and everyone was kind of mad at
each other. But on sunday we realized that our ward mission leader has
been starting subtle things between us. So now we are really united as
misioneras, and need a new ward mission leader. haha thats the long
story short.

Saturday we had an awesome lesson with Carlos about a lot of the big
commandments. it all worked out so perfectly: I felt strongly that we
should make his friend in the ward come to the lesson (normally we
just invite a sister because we can’t teach hombres alone.). We ended up
getting a couple of friends in the lesson because we did the lesson
right after a baptism. Well it was perfect- they would all give their
own testimony and experiences about every commandment and it helped
Carlos not only understand the importance, but see that this is what
his friends and peers live and love. It’s so important to be a friend
to people who are investigating the church! Unfortunately though we
wont be having his baptism this week, but next week. it’s because....
Elder Bednar will be coming to our church building this weekend! So...
that’s kind of important. We´ve been getting everything ready. It’s
amazing the excitement here. To have an apostle walk the streets where
i walk every day is amazing. To have him see what i see here every day
is like... i dunno. But its cool and im excited.

Sunday our only investigator was Carlos. I dunno what happened with
our Miracle lady Beti who thought we were jehovas witnessess. We are
going to visit her today. Oh and the lady we sang to and wanted us to
teach her family- well her pastor said we were lairs or something like
that so i guess that’s not going to happen. So this week we worked hard
with out much fruits...yet. We are doing good though. We are getting
better and better at teaching together. I seriously cannot believe how
fast time is moving now!

Mal- I’m so excited for you to join the field! I’ve been trying to think
of some advice to give. The best thing i can think of, is just take it
one day at a time. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in thinking "I
can’t do this for another 15 months!" or 10 months, or whatever it is.
But every time I think, ok can I just do it today? The answer is
always yes. And then i always ask, can i do my BEST just for today?
And incredibly, the answer is always yes. The mission is awesome. Don’t
waste a moment, but enjoy it too. Don’t get stressed. If you start get
stressed, stop and do something different. Take a moment to get on the
right page again. That’s part of doing your best: knowing your limits
and how to improve little by little not chunk by chunk. 2 nephi 30:28
(I think that’s what it is- line upon line) is one of my favorites. :)

Anyways this is an amazing time to be members of the church. I love
you all so much!

love,
hermana black