Snow In Cochabamba

In AN email dated July 27, 2009, Justin wrote, " Hi! It's raining. It's the first time that it has really rained on me in my mission. Feels like home during the wintertime. We woke up this morning and all the hills in Cochabamba are covereddd in snow. It looks like Utah right now or something. Weird. All of our appointments yesterday weren't there. That was a bummer. We got a little wet because of it. No I lied, we taught 2 people. They are the cousins of some members. They talked with the missionaries about 5 years ago but told us that they weren't able to convince them and that we wouldn't be able to either. We told them that we weren't even going to try to convince them, only explain to them and invite them to pray and find out for themselves. It is such a difference when you teach by the spirit, it all comes out sensible and clearly. By the end they were both kind of quiet and knew that it was all true. So we'll see what happens. We had 1 person church yesterday! It's an improvement from last week. Jorge Foronda. He's 19 and really wants to get baptized but the problem is that he's studying in college every night, works during the day, and Saturdays and Sundays had to go to a high school thing because he never graduated and is working to finish. But he says he will be done by the end of the year. He wasn't supposed to be able to come yesterday but by some miracle he came. Made me happy to see him. (Yea! He is being blessed for his hard work, diligence and obedience!)

Things are still going well with my companion and I. We dropped a ton of our investigators in the past couple of days, sick of trying so hard to get people to listen to us. If they don't want to listen, we won't visit and we'll find people that do. I liked what mom sent me in that letter that quote from Sister Thomas from Elder Ballard. Makes sense. (Here is what Elder Ballard said to a group of missionaries he spoke to in England: The Lord is truly prepared people to hear the gospel and directs the missionaries to them. It is as Elder Ballard stated while he was here, there is no time now to teach those who are just not interested. He told the missionaries not to waste their time trying to persuade people to come to the gospel, but to deliver their message and if it wasn't accepted to find those the Lord had prepared to hear it. Elder Ballard made the statement that we no longer have the luxury of time and can only teach those who really want to hear.) And so now comes the hard part, finding new people. I don't understand why it's been hard for us lately. If all of our appointments that we take out were there, we'd have a lot more but the problem is they never are. We have to figure something out to fix that.

We planned a mission night activity thing. We were going to have a video, message, games and stuff. Our ward never has activities so we figured we'd do one to give them and stuff. Nobody came. Our bishop came up with a new plan he wants to do. Basically he wants a member to be with us at all times. If not two. It could work. Each member has to give up a half day to go with us and do everything, knock on doors, teach, the works. The young men also want to do a day in the life of a missionary type thing, so every Friday to Saturday they are going to send two with us and they are going to sleep at the house and everything for 24 hours. Should be cool. My companion and I will be able to split up as well and get twice as much done. We finished the month with only 1 baptism (July). It's not bad, but it's not that great either. Hopefully August goes better.

On Friday, we had to go to the offices for something and ended up being there all morning. My companion ended up having to go with the finance secretary to the bank and I was left here doing a few things. Well lunch time came and the church travel lady was there so they all went to lunch at this Brazilian buffet where they come to cut the meat off the stick things at the table and they had to take me because my companion wasn't there. So I got to eat at this way nice restaurant buffet called Buffalos. Soooo good. Steak things, pastas, everything. It cost about 60 a person, or less than 10 dollars but for here that's expensive. But the best part is I didn't have to pay because my companion is cousins with the finance secretary and he took care of it for us. We had good luck that day." Good food is a big highlight in Justin's life right now. He will be in hog heaven when he gets home!