Hello all! March is finally here, February just flew by, so that's awesome! I have a feeling that time is gonna pick up, and the months will start flying by. We'll have to wait and see! Hope life is treating everyone well. It's been a pretty good week here in Tarija.
I guess the biggest news from this week is that we had a baptism this week! I can't remember if I explained this or not, but basically there is this kid in the ward who has been a member for years, but they lost his registration, so technically he wasn't a member haha. So thanks to the fact that someone was asleep on the job and didn't register him, we got to baptize him. So that just might be one of the easiest baptisms I will have the whole mission, cuz he was a really active member. All we had to do was interview him and then baptize him. And then I got to direct the baptismal service, and give the half-time show (the time in between the baptism and when they change into dry clothes). So it was a busy service for me. But Spanish is pretty easy now, I can basically give any message that I need to about the church, or give like a 30 minute lesson about almost any topic (which we sometimes have to do without warning in church), so that's nice. The frustration about the language is finally gone!
In other news, we did a ridiculous amount of service this week! I think in total it was 13 hours, crazy huh? One project we helped one of our less active members Mariela pour the cement for her roof. The houses here are basically built in a way that allows the people to easily add on to their house whenever they please, so that's what they did. Only this roof was three stories up! So we had to mix cement in a little rotating drum, dumb the cement into a bucket, which was then hoisted up to the roof by a pretty sketchy crane, then the workers up there dumped the cement and sent down the bucket for the refill, we did that for like four hours! And its not easy to mix the cement, you have to manually throw in buckets of water, sand, rocks, and powdered cement, so it was pretty tiring, but also pretty fun cuz we did the service with our whole zone.
Another project we did was basically built a small bridge for one of our members. Let me explain. She lives way out in the boonies of Tarija, and in order for her to go to or to leave her house she has to walk on this really skinny dirt path, about a foot wide, with a big pit on either side. So its not the safest thing in the world. So what we did was cut down a bunch of trees (not really trees, more like skinny poles the were growing nearby) and threw them into the pit until they were about level with the path. Then we had to haul in dirt to cover up the trees and create this new bridge/path. So most of my time was spent with the pick and the shovel, loading wheelbarrows of dirt. Thank goodness that I worked landscaping this summer, or I would die here! So basically it was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun cuz about 5 or 6 young men of the ward were there helping us.
I'm pretty sure that's it for this week, its been a little chilly here, but I'm sure that won't last long! We find out about transfers the night of March 24, so thats right around the corner. Its a little nerve racking, cuz this time I don't know what will happen. Last transfer it was a sure bet I was staying with Palacios here in Tarija to finish my training. But now I'll be done, so I can go anywhere, or stay and get a new comp, anything! So we'll see!
Hope everyone is happy and healthy! I miss you all of you and pray for you guys daily, I hope you can feel those prayers in your lives.
Talk to you next week!
I guess the biggest news from this week is that we had a baptism this week! I can't remember if I explained this or not, but basically there is this kid in the ward who has been a member for years, but they lost his registration, so technically he wasn't a member haha. So thanks to the fact that someone was asleep on the job and didn't register him, we got to baptize him. So that just might be one of the easiest baptisms I will have the whole mission, cuz he was a really active member. All we had to do was interview him and then baptize him. And then I got to direct the baptismal service, and give the half-time show (the time in between the baptism and when they change into dry clothes). So it was a busy service for me. But Spanish is pretty easy now, I can basically give any message that I need to about the church, or give like a 30 minute lesson about almost any topic (which we sometimes have to do without warning in church), so that's nice. The frustration about the language is finally gone!
In other news, we did a ridiculous amount of service this week! I think in total it was 13 hours, crazy huh? One project we helped one of our less active members Mariela pour the cement for her roof. The houses here are basically built in a way that allows the people to easily add on to their house whenever they please, so that's what they did. Only this roof was three stories up! So we had to mix cement in a little rotating drum, dumb the cement into a bucket, which was then hoisted up to the roof by a pretty sketchy crane, then the workers up there dumped the cement and sent down the bucket for the refill, we did that for like four hours! And its not easy to mix the cement, you have to manually throw in buckets of water, sand, rocks, and powdered cement, so it was pretty tiring, but also pretty fun cuz we did the service with our whole zone.
Another project we did was basically built a small bridge for one of our members. Let me explain. She lives way out in the boonies of Tarija, and in order for her to go to or to leave her house she has to walk on this really skinny dirt path, about a foot wide, with a big pit on either side. So its not the safest thing in the world. So what we did was cut down a bunch of trees (not really trees, more like skinny poles the were growing nearby) and threw them into the pit until they were about level with the path. Then we had to haul in dirt to cover up the trees and create this new bridge/path. So most of my time was spent with the pick and the shovel, loading wheelbarrows of dirt. Thank goodness that I worked landscaping this summer, or I would die here! So basically it was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun cuz about 5 or 6 young men of the ward were there helping us.
I'm pretty sure that's it for this week, its been a little chilly here, but I'm sure that won't last long! We find out about transfers the night of March 24, so thats right around the corner. Its a little nerve racking, cuz this time I don't know what will happen. Last transfer it was a sure bet I was staying with Palacios here in Tarija to finish my training. But now I'll be done, so I can go anywhere, or stay and get a new comp, anything! So we'll see!
Hope everyone is happy and healthy! I miss you all of you and pray for you guys daily, I hope you can feel those prayers in your lives.
Talk to you next week!
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| Elder Palacios, Carlos & Elder Sehestedt |
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| This is the service I talked about where we had to mix the cement and hoist it up to the roof. From left to right are Elder Moss and Stuardo, our zone leaders, and then Tenney, then me. |
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| This is from the project where we helped reconstruct the bridge to the lady's house. In the background are two of the young men in our ward who helped us with the project. Haha it was hot! |
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| Just a random pic from the area we were working in |
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