Sorry the letter is late...but I got to see the jungle today! - Sept 24, 2018

I didn't get her letter until 6 our time (which is 9pm her time.)  I had given up hearing from her so I was happy to see her smiling face in the pictures!

So! Not a ton of time to write this week because today we went to the selva! (jungle) 

Tuesday: We had a few appointments and TRIED to finalize the contract for the apartment, but they were being kind of difficult and didn´t want to accept the one that the church has pre-made, so we couldn´t finalize today.

Wednesday: We contacted, and had an appointment with an investigator named Hugo. He is 30, a mechanic, and has a lot of really good questions. Sometimes too good haha, but he really is fun to teach. He is one of our only progressing investigators right now, which is awesome, but we are having a hard time getting him to commit to come to church, because he has a young daughter that he only gets to see on the weekends. Any advice?

Thursday: Today was Hermana Alvarado´s 23rd birthday, so I made no bake cookies for her and scrambled eggs with toast for breakfast. (yes, we ate those cookies for breakfast haha) I asked her about how she is getting along with her companion because they had a bit of a rough start.  This was her reply...  Things are a lot better with my comp. I think before I just didn´t understand her that well, but now I know that if she speaks in a certain way (that to me is pretty offensive) it doesn´t mean that I did something wrong, she is probably frustrated about something or super stressed. I understand her as a person a lot better now and we are actually good friends. (I think know that i´ve gotten to know her she is my favorite comp that i´ve had so far.) We also had a mini celebration for her birthday at lunch, and then we contacted all evening, until 9 when we went to get pizza for dinner (because we have half an hour for dinner every night, so we were using it to the best of our ability for my comp!) 

Friday: In the morning we FINALLY finalized things with the apartment contract! Then we did weekly planning and contacted in the afternoon. Contacting here in Cocha is a lot more difficult than in Sucre, so we haven´t been getting new investigators even though we´ve been contacting a lot.

Saturday: WE MOVED IN!! And the apartment is really pretty, and it has beautiful views. You can see the temple and the Christus from our windows! And we spent all day moving and unpacking every thing. We were exhausted at the end of the day.

Sunday: We had church, but my comp wasn´t feeling well so we left early and went home so she could rest. We left in the afternoon to go search for some references, and we weren´t super successful, but at least we were working. :)

Monday: Whoohooooo we went to the jungle! We had to meet up as a zone at 4:45 am so that we could drive for 3 hours to a place called Villa Tunari. It is SUPER beautiful, but it is also SUPER humid and SUPER hot. But I loved it, The coolest part was that we got to go to a lookout point where a bunch of wild monkeys came and hung out with us! They were super used to humans, so they came up to us, grabbed our water bottles (especially if they had powerade) and sat in our laps. It was SO COOL! This was one of the things that I know you would have loved Dad and Emma! What the heck, EVERYONE would have enjoyed it because it was so awesome. The only bad part was that at one point there was a monkey above my head in the trees and it POOPED ON ME!!!!! hahahaha it was actually hilarious, but super gross in the moment. I´m sending pictures, so don´t worry, you´ll get a little piece of the jungle too! We received permission from Presidente Montoya to email late today, so here we are :)

Lots of love, heat and humidity from Bolivia!

Hermana Rowe

I Wanna Feel the Sun... have BBQ's... - Sept 17, 2018

You´re welcome to all the siblings and cousins who understood that reference. I seriously have been missing BBQ sauce this week, not sure why. And i´ve felt PLENTY of sun this week. But i guess that´s my new reality in Cochabamba :)

Tuesday: We had district meeting and i received my beloved package! I seriously have been enjoying it so much. Even my little mini English hymnal smelled like home! I also got Hermana Piguave´s guitarra from her old comp, so until she comes to Cochabamba i´ll be using her guitar to practice. It´s been kinda fun playing around on it in the morning when my comp is in the shower, or in the evening before bed. 

Wednesday: Today we met with a less active youth and her inactive mom. The mom is inactive and doesn´t want to ever go back to church because of some unforgivable thing another member did to her mom or something like that. We had the opportunity to talk about the atonement with her, and the spirit was really strong in the lesson. One of the things I´ve realized recently is that too many people let other people affect their testimonies. It is SO important that we base our testimonies in CHRIST and His gospel. If we go to church just for the people that are there, we are not truly converted to the gospel. It is essential that the reason we go to church is that we want to partake of the sacrament, to renew the covenants we´ve made with God, and to become more Christlike through taking the sacrament. This week when you are getting ready for church, I hope you think about the ordinance of the sacrament that you are getting ready to take, because if you prepare worthily to take the sacrament, and sincerely repent, once you take the sacrament you are clean. Clean. Pure. It´s like you´ve just been baptized. I know that if you´ll go to church this week, preparing yourself beforehand,you´ll get SO much more out of sacrament meeting, and all of the meetings for that matter. 

Thursday: Mostly we just contacted and looked for apartments today. really not much more to tell about today :)

Friday: More searching for apartments, and we ended up getting 2 new investigators today, which was great! they are awesome, but something i´ve discovered this week about Cochabambinos is that they REALLY like to talk. Not necessarily about themselves, but they are talkers, and sometimes it´s SUPER hard to get the to focus in on what we are teaching them, even if they´re really interested. And the quiet ones talk about a normal amount. It´s definitely been something to get used to. Oh yeah, we also had interviews with Presidente Montoya. Oh! and earlier in the week a member told us about an apartment, we went, and it was awesome! so today we brought Presidente and Hermana Montoya to see it, and they both like it!! So we´re hoping that all works out this week.

Saturday: We did weekly planning (yeah, i know it was a little late this week) And we had an FHE with a less active family in the ward. We learned how to make pizza, EVERYTHING from scratch. Super fun evening with them. :)

Sunday: Today was awesome because we had 3 new investigators that i´d love to explain about but i´m out of time!!

Monday: Today we went to the cancha for the first time. It was pretty cool, bigger than the markets in sucre but not crazy different :)

That´s all i´ve got for ya! We´ll talk next week!

Con mucho amor y cariño,

Hermanita Rowe

Pics:

Yeah sorry i´m just gonna put them here this week and not explain them ;D

Welcome to my house...not - Sept 10, 2018

soooo i didn't leave myself like anytime to write this week, so it'll be pretty brief. No, we did not find a house this week ;(

Tuesday: We had district meeting, went to lunch, and looked for an apartment slash contacted. We met a lady named Janeth (who is now an investigator) that is really a very spiritual lady. She wants to be obedient to the commandments of God which is so cool. She owns a tienda (store), and when she doesn't have customers she listens to christian radio. She was working every Sunday in her tienda, but the other day she heard that Sunday is the day that we should give to the lord, so she decided to stop working Sundays. Really, she is super awesome. We're exited to start teaching her :)

Wednesday: We walked around and looked for apartments. (And contacted, of course) That seriously was all we did. The whole day. Every single night this week I've been SO ready for bed when we get home. SO ready.

Thursday: We did weekly planning in the morning... and looked for apartments. We got to talk with Janeth again, and we met her daughter Gabriela who is also really interested in what we have to say. She is also a new investigator from this week. :)

Friday: We looked for apartments and contacted all day long :)

Saturday: We had a family home evening tonight which was good to get to know another family from the ward. We also contacted and looked for apartments all day (are you seeing a theme here? because i have haha)

Sunday: We had church and ward council. After lunch we visited less active youth with some members of the ward, and we got a lot of appointments which was good. :)

Monday: We cleaned the house, did laundry and went bowling. We went with a bunch of other missionaries to eat pizza afterwards. Then we bought all our groceries, changed clothes, and came to this internet cafe. We have a family home evening tonight with some ward members so that should be good. :)

It's been a little rough this week, but we made it through. I'm hoping we can have a little more success in finding new people to teach and an apartment. :)

Lot of good ol' bolivian love,

Hermana Rowe