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!!!