Elder Tyler Bell at a park in Riberalta.

November 24, 2014

Elder Tyler Joseph Bell

Misión Bolivia Santa Cruz Norte

Calle Cochabamba Numero 170 Esquina Saavedra

Torres Cainco Bloque Emresarial

Piso 5 Oficina 3

Casilla de correo: 3873

Santa Cruz, Bolivia

I haven't received any letters yet but
it takes about 6 to 8 weeks to get here.

I will be able to send pictures next week because there are a
bunch of new missionaries in Riberalta and a few of them have adapters
that I can borrow. Transfers were Thursday and Elder >>>>> moved to
Santa Cruz. My new companion is Elder >>>>. He is from Santa Cruz, has
9 siblings, and literally only studied and worked antes de su mision.
I asked him like 10 times about fun stuff in Santa Cruz or what he
liked to do and each time he said that he didn't know because he never
did anything for fun. That's pretty typical here. Life is usually just
work and collegio.

The other thing that I'm super grateful for is that
our family does fun things together. I now understand why families are
so different here. It seems they're only together to eat and sleep and never
have recreational activities or play games. It sounds horrible!
With my new companion we work super hard every day and I love it!!!

We
teach all day and after every day I feel super good. I'm learning a
lot from my companion, especially about the Bible. We are really good
friends. Everything is a lot more enjoyable when you're serving with
someone that you're really close to. The only bad part is that he
really loves to talk. I don't get very many chances to say things and
our lessons are an hour and half usually. Which is a problem. We need
our lessons to be around 40 minutes on average. We're going to work on
it.
None of our investigators attended church again yesterday. At first I
was kind of discouraged because all of our hard work didn't show any
results, but then I realized that I was working as hard as I could and
they have the agency to accept the gospel or not.
All of the new missionaries are greengos. I went from being the only
white guy to a common aspect of our zone. We are now the only zone to
be half greengos. Three of them are fresh out of the CCM. I'm really
excited to meet them today!
I also felt a huge difference when I focus on just loving the
investigator. During one of our lessons the spirit of love was super
strong. We just talked with him about his life for about 40 minutes
before the lesson and he really opened up. He went from being really
quiet and didn't enjoy the lessons to talking most of the time and
always asking us when we can return. It was amazing! Also I realized
that nobody here does family history work. I asked the president of
the Rama (Branch) about it and we are now setting up a family history
system for the ward and calling 3 people to help people with the work.
I'm really excited to get this started!
For servicio esta semana we did carpeting. I was kind of confused
because every one has dirt floors and nobody has carpet. Then we started
and I realized what it really is. It's basically whacking the ground
with machetes to destroy the grass and level the ground.
There was also this really annoying parrot in one of our lessons. I
just thought it was annoying because it spoke better Spanish than I
did and kept laughing like it was mocking me!
Love you MTTCT!!!
Elder Bell

Carol Bell <carolbbell@gmail.com>	Nov 24 (6 days ago)
to Tyler

I love the parrot story. I hope he gets baptized!
Thanks for all the news. Tag your it.

Tyler Bell	Nov 24 (6 days ago)

One more thing. We have 2 other missionaries living with us right now
because there house is getting painted and every night from 9:30 to 10
is a party. It's super fun getting to know the other missionaries and
hearing about there native countries! Last night we also bowled with
coconuts and 2 liter bottles that we slightly filled with water. Love
you!!!
Tag!!!

Tyler Bell	Nov 17 (13 days ago)
to me

Thanks mom!!!! Also, if you want to send in your next package, LDS
movies specifically made by the church like the movie about Joseph
Smith, The Testaments, On the Lords Errand, and the Restauracion that
would be great. For carnival in March we sit inside for three days
straight and I think I will need those to make it through! Also some
more pictures of the Fam. My relationship with my companion is better
than ever. It took some work but we made it through. He didn't really
want to talk to me at first but after about 20 questions about his
home he finally opened up and we've been good friends since.
Even more discouraging than problems with my companion however are
problems with the investigators. None of them attended church
yesterday and all of them promised too. We can't get any of them to
follow up on their commitments and they can't recognize the blessings
until they do. I guess all we can do is keeping loving them and having
faith that they will have a change of heart!
I was made into an English tutor for the natives in our zone that
don't know English and they have all been picking it up really fast. I'm
afraid some of them might start to know English more than I know
Spanish. I am also second counselor to the President de Rama and the
new gospel doctrine teacher for the branch. The hardest part is just
the Spanish. I also think that our Rama is starting to respect me
more. Before this week, they always just treated me as the white
missionary that didn't know Spanish. I talked a lot in one of our
meetings yesterday and now I think they're starting to realize that I
have good ideas that can help the Rama. So that's exciting.
Last Monday we went to a park named Esmeralda. It was super fun. They
had tennis, soccer, ping pong and a zip line into a lake. Sadly we
couldn't go on the zip line or in the lake but playing games with the
other missionaries is always a blast. I think the best part was just
being able to relax for a couple hours. We stayed for 4 hours but it’s
amazing how your desires change on your mission. After 3 hours, 2
missionaries were reading their Book of Mormons and the rest of us
wanted to go back and prepare to teach. Honestly the best part of
every day is sitting with an investigator and helping them learn and
progress with the spirit. I just wish we had more of it!! It also
rained for 2 days straight this week. I didn't think it was possible
to get more humid than it already was but I was wrong. With the rain,
pretty much everything is a little bit damp and nothing dries because
of how humid it was. Also there was actually cloud cover, apparently
that never happens in Riberalta. It almost always rains while it’s
still sunny. It dropped to about 60 degrees one night and everybody
besides me and my companion were wearing giant winter coats and were
freezing. I thought that was pretty funny!
One of our investigators made us hamburgers Saturday night. I've been
craving one really bad and I don't think I've ever tasted anything so
amazing. The hamburgers are different here, if you can ever find one.
The bread is covered with melted cheese and there's egg, beef, ham,
tomatoes and corn on the inside. It was super good.
We also had kind of a scary experience yesterday. A drunken guy
confronted us and told us to enter his house. I was ready to speedily
walk away but for some reason, my companion complied and entered the
house. He stood in the door way and talk about his life problems over
and over again. We tried to teach him at first, but he wouldn't listen
and it only made him mad so we ended up just sitting there. We were
stuck there for two hours until he kind of passed out on the ground.
After that we left pretty hastily.
Well that's pretty much everything for this week. Love you super super
super much!!! Can't wait to get your packages! Love you MTTCT!
Elder Bell

Tyler Bell	Nov 10

Thanks mom!!! The blog is great! For my scripture,
I think I'll stick with the one I originally chose, Enos 1: 8, 9, and 12.
Everything is going great here, well almost everything. We lost an
investigator this week because his pastor basically attacked the
church and told him that none of it was true and was an abomination.
He also said that the Book of Mormon was an invention made to deceive
by a really really intelligent educated man. We tried to tell him that
Joseph Smith didn't have an education and the only way he could know
if the church was true for himself is if he read and prayed but he
didn't really want to listen to us. This was kind of rough.
Honestly, the biggest troubles we are having here are that the people
don't really know what they believe or what their church believes.

We tell them things such as the celestial kingdom or that
families can be together forever and they respond by saying, "oh ya,
of course. That’s what we believe in.

 Also we didn't have any investigators assistir a la
Iglesias esta semana. It was kind of rough. But we did have the most
menos activo miembros tenemos todavia. I don't think that it helps
that church is at 8 in the morning. Nobody wants to wake up!
We also had a cool experience with one of our investigators.

He loves to read but has never owned a book and doesn't
remember or understand anything he reads which can be really difficult
at times. We gave him a book of Mormon this week and he was super
excited. It made me super happy. It's amazing all the things we have
in the U.S. and here most people have never even owned anything that
wasn't primarily for survival.
I changed companions for a day this week and Elder ___ came to work
with me in my area. We taught more lessons than I have in the past and
contacted more people. It was great because I was directing everything
we did.

 We also found a huge list of Menos activos and old
investigators that we can contact and so far it's been really helpful.
There is definitely a smart way to do missionary work!
We also had to stay in our casa for an hour extra one day this week
because there was a big fight right outside our window.

It was only high school kids that wanted to prove themselves but it was
still a pretty finasco with the police and all. Another big problem is
that almost none of the men here hold the priesthood because they
don't attend church enough. So almost none of them have
callings but we're working on it and things are progressing bit by bit.
That was pretty much my week. It's amazing how fast time flies by. I
didn't really believe it would go this fast before my mission but it
is definitely zooming by faster than ever before. I love you!!!!!
MTTCT!!!!!
Elder Bell