Amazon — Amazoff

This describes the area!

Visiting the Incachaca (Inca Bridge)

An abandoned power plant

What large bats!

Me and my comp have to watch extremely cheesy videos cause I am being trained so to help us through it we would pause it and imitate their faces lol I thought this one was pretty legit

We went to the absolute most beautiful place today for P day, but before I tell you how amazing it was I will tell about the other stuff. (Which is also pretty cool)

So our baptismal date was actually this Saturday lol sorry I will send pics next week, we have two for sure on Saturday. Also we have another! We were chillin' at a members house, sipping some herba mate and his friend came over and we were talking to him and we actually thought he was just less active cause we've seen him at church but not every week, and he's actually not a member, so we talked to him and he had all the lessons from previous missionaries, wanted to get baptized, but didn't have time? I don't know haha but we just asked when he wanted to get baptized and he said Christmas Eve which will be awesome, so yeah the other Elders did all the work which is always nice. 

Thanksgiving was awesome! I cleaned our nasty bathroom haha they don't celebrate it here.

K so I was sort've selfishly hoping more of my mission was all nice and green and tropical (which is probably why I am serving here lol) but at least we can go to the forest for P day, pretty much the other side of the mountain is the edge of the Amazon rain forest, i think. So my side is brown and full of sewers and the other side is green on green on green and super beautiful. The grass literally is greener on the other side of the hill, also there's no grass on this side. As we drove there it slowly transitioned from brown to normal to green to thick, luscious (think that's a word) green. I took like 150 pics haha I will probably send more cool ones tomo but pretty much you drive up the canyon and from there you hike down and follow the river which is way cool cause there's a ton of waterfalls, and the river flows through like this little slot canyon it's awesome, the pics don't do justice at all, not even close. Also the weather was perfect, I'm in love haha. There was also an abandoned power plant, full of bats, including me which explains the one pic. So yeah, super cool rainforest. Oh also there was a basketball court on the side of the road on the way up, I could ball there for dayzzz, surrounded by all the green. I didn't get a pic cause we just passed it, and played soccer at the top cause there's not many white people here lol, even soccer was fun with such a cool view.

So yeah that's it for the week! Thanks for the emails, love you all!

Elder G

Battle with the Behe-MOTH!

The moth creature — next to a quarter

Moses reincarnated

Sorry it's long again, it is sort've interesting though I promise!

Highlights of the week:

• Another baptism! Super cool guy, named I. — we showed up for the appointment and he was waiting, with his pamphlet and BoM open, and later on we invited him and he's like, of course! Lost track of how many we have, but one of the baptismal dates is this Saturday so I will be sending pics.
• Went on splits with the district leader Elder Daveys who is from America! English has never been so good lol, we stayed up all night talking, since we both speak English we were bros within 10 minutes. He actually lived in Draper like 5 min from me and I never knew him! Super cool guy.

Everyone wants to learn English (we are starting classes soon hopefully :) and always ask how to say things in English, and occasionally we'll have some fun haha. The day before splits when we knew Elder Daveys would be there the next day, me and my comp taught this girl a "greeting" in English, and we were like yeah you can totally practice it on Elder Daveys tomorrow! (it was Wednesday and every Thursday night we get to play bball and soccer with everyone.) So me, her and Elder Daveys are just chillin', it took some coaxing for her to practice her new English greeting, but finally she turns to Elder Daveys, with a serious, focused, thinking face and is just like, "Hey, umm, I'm single, and I want you." Great moment haha, we told her eventually what it actually means.

The other day we were walking down the street and these two dudes come out from some "building" and are like "Elders! Come in! We have been waiting for you!" Which for a split second scared the crap out of me cause they've been waiting? I thought we were gonna get like abducted or something, but then I was like naw we're missionaries of the real church, we're safe. Plus they were literally 5 ft and like 100 lbs., so I was like yeah we can take them spiritually and physically, and I thought they just wanted to bible bash so I was so down. I went over and shook the guy's hand (Who actually looked just like Ghandi, weirdly enough) and he kinda pulled me in, and no joke everyone in the room looked just like they had time warped straight from 600 B.C., especially the guy at the pulpit who looked just like Moses. He is the guy on the cover of the program/flyer above. Definitely a weird spirit there — you get used to such a good spirit at church and you take it for granted so when you go somewhere else you're like what the heck. They sang weird songs and we told them we had to leave after like 10 min. My comp was telling me the dude that runs the church is actually Peruvian, and there's  a good amount of followers, the guy literally thinks he is a reincarnation of Moses and sacrifices animals in the middle of the street, calling on people to repent, so definitely sort of a cult haha. Which shows people are definitely desperate for religion!

"Highlights" of the week

I was washing dishes, minding my own business, when the moth from Hell infiltrated our house. The devil himself tried to sabotage the Elders' apartment. I heard and felt its massive wings beating down on me and freaked out. I thought it was a bat or something and I wasn't about to get some gnarly, unidentified infection from Bolivia so I ran into our room, briefed Elder Rivera on the mission, and hiding behind the corner, armed with bathroom cleaner (In squirt mode for the distance snipe) and fly killer spray, we jumped out and just went crazy! haha we got it all over the kitchen, it took like the whole bottle of both to kill this thing. We couldn't have just simply shoo'd it out cause A) we were way too scared, B) it was personal now we had to kill it, and C) it was quite the trophy.

Thats pretty much it for the week! Lots of appointments and investigators, so not too much tracting thankfully. Thanks for all your emails!

Elder G

Living in Bol-LIV-ia

Cochabamba temple, super beautiful

If you zoom in on the pic of the mountain you can see the Christus, pointing towards the Temple

The Sipe Sipe ward, at the temple 

My comp snagged a pic of our next baptism! We invited her and her date is Dec 3

Traveling in style

I found death mountain from Zelda and the Ocarina of time

Birthday party, don't remember his name but the food/cake was great!

I left on my mission 2 months ago today, time to get trunky :D This was a suuuuper crazy week, lots happened, and there were some things I missed last week. We still have a ton of investigators, and one more with a baptismal date! Right before the lesson my comp was like oh you're gonna invite to be baptized and I was like ok. It was our third lesson with her, her name is M. she's an older lady, super nice and humble. We talked about baptism, and then read a good scripture about it, and then had a member with us who bore her testimony about when she was baptized, then I asked her! I felt the Spirit super strong, I hadn't really been feeling it much, day to day, either cause I don't know much Spanish or I'm not recognizing it or whatever but I really felt it, and said it perfectly and she said yes! December 3rd. That makes 5 or 6 I think with a date.

Other Highlights of the week:

• Went on splits with the zone leader. I was super nervous cause for whatever reason I thought he was way strict. Also he doesn't know any english, and he was gonna find out how bad my Spanish was lol. It went way good though, he's way chill, thought my Spanish was pretty good, and learned a lot about each other in just one day, it was a way good experience, he taught me some other good ways of contacting.
• Got to buy peanut butter
• Played wallyball today, which is volleyball in a giant raquetball court, way fun cause you can spike it off walls, also fun when you're tall and the competition is 3 ft shorter.
• Someone's birthday party yesterday, so we all loaded up in a member's van and went to his house, super good food except for these nasty beans but we were outside and they have like 4 dogs so that was also clutch
• On a clear night, you can see the stars soooooo well! Cause you're in the mountains and there is no light pollution

More "Highlights" of the week

• So I pay someone to do my laundry and I gave her my clothes 4 days ago cause she usually does it in about a day, but she hasn't yet! So I have been wearing the same clothes for 4 days now and am beginning to smell amazing.
• Forgot to mention our shower is a bucket of water with a bowl to pour water over your head lol
• People here do not care too much about privacy lol, we were talking to this lady at the beginning of a lesson, about to teach, and her little daughter brought her baby to her, and she started breastfeeding him, 5 ft in front of us, not really trying to hide anything, and then proceeded to do so pretty much the whole entire lesson, reallly interesting...

That's pretty much everything! I tried to make it short but oh well, hopefully it's somewhat interesting, thanks for all your emails! Love you all,

Elder Sweñson

Getting to Know Bolivia!

Forearm day washing clothes

One of our awesome investigators, J., with a baptismal date! And her adorable daughter—so many people ask for pictures with me

P., who also is awesome

This is our ward mission leader's adorable grandson — they wanted a picture of the shortest and the tallest

Making bread on day of the dead

Sipe Sipes only bit of history, and it's covered in grafitti with litter everywhere — it's called Campanario Historico De la Indepencia

​The only green here is on farms so here's like the only green area of Sipe Sipe

​

A lot of people speak Quechua which is nothing like Spanish, it's way different. When the Cholitas speak it (Cholitas are indian ladies that wear very distinctive clothes and they are everywhere) it sounds very different. I had a woman go off on me in Quechua cause I accidentally sat on part of her skirt in a very crowded van. There's also crazy drivers, it's a miracle there aren't more accidents. It's scary to watch when you are in the car because there's so many close calls. 

We teach a lot of kids, because we'll show up for an appointment and their mom will send them out to tell us that she is busy so we'll just be like, can we teach you? And they're like yeah. Two of our investigators are 11 and 12 year old girls, super cute. They have baptismal dates at the end of the month! We have 5 or 6 people getting baptized I am pumped. Our goal is to turn our rama into a barrio (our branch into a ward.) And we need to either reactivate or convert 30 people. Also, no one can say Swenson — haha I guess its hard if you are a native Spanish speaker — they always squint their eyes and are like eehssswensuhnn? And we have basketball scheduled with some ward members right now and we are way late so I will update more next week! 

Love you all,

Elder Swenson

Jesus and Coca-Cola

Two things Bolivians love are Jesus and Coke—which is why I got this pic! Along with pics of me and Elder Rivera and some random pics of Cochabamba.

Transportation is by truffes, these buses that have set routes. It's actually nice because there are a trillion of them so you just walk out to anywhere on the street, wait 30 seconds, and one will stop and pick you up, only for 2 bolivianos, the only bad thing is they are tinnnnnnnnnnny, even for a Bolivian they are small. I am gonna have scolioses by the end of my mission, cramming into those things but it's all good! Wouldn't trade it for anything :D​

So much has happened this past week, so this is gonna be a crazy email with a bunch of random stuff, and I don't have much time so hopefully you can follow it lol. Also the stupid keyboard is covered in plastic so I type like half as fast. So we flew for a day and a half and I missed a night of sleep, my first all nighter and it sucked. We hung out at the mission home and Wednesday we got our comps and our area! My area is Sipe Sipe, its like 30ish miles east of Cochabamba, in the suburbs. It is suuuuuuper ghetto. Houses made out of dirt, on top of each other, eroding walls, just kinda what you would expect from a poor third world country. Stray dogs and kids everywhere haha. The people are awesome though, the ward mission leader and his family are like my new family, keeping me sane.They are super nice and friendly and funny; I am like their new 7' white son. He even learned some english phrases to help me. It's him and his wife and their kids and some nieces living with them, they are awesome. 

Also the members here are the best, so nice and friendly I love them so much. Last night we had a family night type thing at one of their houses and played all these games, it was reallly fun. One of the games was you have to say this stupid phrase to the person next to you, and they pass it around the circle, but you have to say it with a certain emotion, and you can't laugh. It sounds dumb but it's hilarious haha you try and make people laugh and you cant, idk if my explanation made sense but yeah I love the members. Also every day our pensionista makes an amazing lunch, and a ton of it and I can barely finish it. We get to play basketball Thursday nights, and soccer too. No joke the other day we were walking down the street and a man came out of his house, and asked if he could play basketball with us lol, we told him come to the church Thursday night! We have a ton of investigators, it's way easy to get a return appointment cause people are so chill, we're like, "When is best?" and they're just like "Whenever you want to come over you are welcome to." 

So thank heavens we have a lot of teaching appointments, I like that way better than knocking doors. It's interesting cause like in Utah, a 4 yr old kid knows the plan of salvation, and here, no one knows it so you are actually teaching! It's fun, I still don't know much Spanish though. I can understand ok, but I am pretty slow when I speak. We have been working a ton, and have only had to knock on 5 doors haha that's how many appointments we have. When they answer I say "Hi we're missionaries" and they say something I don't understand, then my companion says something along the lines of, "vñasdflvasñfgiasñlqioznozuyh xyegbdfkscbn eñdflkpfeñepofjpeicjñapeofjññapeafef la iglesia de Jesucristo zmqixmowjecnowemcpwerifjwpc,pwcmo" And 3 minutes later, we have a return appointment. We dish out pamphlets like candy here, and then after the first lesson we give a book of mormon. My comp. is Elder Rivera from Peru, he is way cool, I am his last companion. It sucks not being able to speak english, it gets you kind of down cause there is literally no one to actually talk to, cause no one speaks english. Friday we had a zone meeting and there were a few american elders and holy cow you have no idea how great it felt to speak some english, and just talk, it helped me a lot. Also today we hung out with our zone, which is awesome we're already pretty close, I can talk to anyone as long as it is in english lol. Also, I legit am asked, by every single person I meet, without doubt, "Cuanto mide" Or how much do you measure? The average Bolivian makes it to about the bottom of my shoulder.  So that's about a tenth of what has happened this week lol, I will update next week, and hopefully have more time so my email makes sense, thanks for all the emails, love you all!

Elder Swenson