Dec. 28th, No Subject

So this week we saw a lot of progression in one of the less active
families we are teaching and in the branch.

So first off with the family we are teaching. We have been teaching
the Gonzales family ever since I got to this area. They have always
been really nice with us and always accept us. Right now they have a
daughter that is serving in Colombia and they were able to talk with
them for Christmas. I think that whatever she told her family really
motivated them to start going to church again. They told us that there
goal is to go to the temple with their daughter when she gets back in
a year. We had a small lesson with them yesterday and the brother
asked us if we could fast with him this week. We are going to work
really hard with them to help them to go back to church and hopefully
this fast goes well with him this next week.

So yesterday we had a really good branch council too. So when we first
got here we would ask people to come with us for a visit or to visit
somebody specifically. It would almost always fall through. But now
the leaders are starting to complete with their asignments and are
starting to get excited about the work out here. We also have a family
that is also going through a lot of problems, the Chuquimia family.
One of them suggested that we could do a fast for them to help them.

It made me really happy to see the progession this past week. The work
out here in Riberalta is going well!

Elder Britt

To explain a little about the pictures.

The first one I finally got to hold a monkey. It was really hard to
get it but I finally got its trust and could hold it.

The second is one of my favorite members, Mario. He always takes us
places in his moto. We just have to find another mototaxi and he takes
us places. Thats how we get around out here.

The third is were we sang for Christmas eve. All of the zone sang.

And the last few are some animals of the members here. They liked to
climb up on my back and should and in one of the pictures one started
biting my ear. They are really cool!

Dec. 21st, Christmas

So time has passed by really quickly this week. On Tuesday my comp had
to travel to a city in Bolivia called Trinidad. He had to go do
some paper work of his passport and so that left me in a trio with the
other 2 elders from my branch. It was nice because I was able to visit
with some of the members from the other area. But I couldn't work in my
area for about 3 days.

This week was full of activities in the branch and district. We
had 2 talent shows, one for the branch and one for the district. We
had to perform something in the two of them. In both of them, we sang a
hymn and in the district talent show we did a short skit. Both
of them went pretty well and some of our less actives went.

We have been working a lot with the Ribas family. We are trying
really hard to reactivate the wife and set a baptism date for the
husband. They both like learning about the gospel but they just need to
go to church every week. We are working a lot with the branch
president here. We have been visiting a lot of the less actives with
him and the people we usually visit with him go to church the next
week. We have also been having meetings every Tuesday night, its almost
like a second branch meeting. As missionaries, we help the leaders know
what they need to do, how to visit other members and help them with
the questions they have. Right now the leaders are having a little bit
of problems so we have decided to help the leaders and that will help
us strengthen the branch and that will allow us to help more less
actives and new investigators.

This week should be really good. Some of the members have already
invited us over to do things with them for Christmas. It always amazes
me to see how little some of the members have and how much they are
willing to give us. The members here are amazing.

That's about all that happened this week!

Elder Britt

Dec. 14th, Mini CCM

So last week a huge storm came through and knocked out all of the
internet in Riberalta so we weren't able to write. I was able to talk
to my mom for only 5 minutes. The internet just barely got fixed today
so I can finally write!

But this week was really good for us in Riberalta! The biggest thing
we did was an activity for everybody in the district and we did a mini
MTC. We invited everybody from 16-24 to go and we tried to help them
get excited to go on the mission. My comp and I taught a class on
personal studies and we taught them a lot about the mission. They even
did some practice contacts and they contact really well! At the end of
the activity we did a small skit. It was pretty much a day as a
missionary but we tried to make it funny. Everybody chose me in my
zone to be an old guy as if he was remembering his mission. It was a
pretty fun activity and hopefully we will see more missionaries going
out from our district.

We also had an activity for saturday, where each orginization was
going to prepare a dance from Riberalta and was going to show it in
the activity. But somehow word got around that it was canceled and
nobody went. So we are going to try and do that activity again this
friday.

We have been doing a lot of finding and we will keep doing that
because almost everybody has left Riberalta. They all went to
something called la safra and it's where they go and collect almonds. I
think almost all of the almonds in the world come from Riberalta
becuase literally almost every person here works in some way or
another with almonds. So we have lost a lot of the people we were
visiting because of that. they won't be getting back until March.

Love you guys,
Elder Britt

Dec. 7th, No Letter

We did not receive a letter from Elder Britt today.  Late in the afternoon, we received a phone call from him and was able to speak for five minutes.  There was a huge storm that came through the day before and knocked out the Internet.  He was not able to write.  He said everything is going well and he's doing fine.  It was so great to hear his voice!  We are looking forward to talking with him again on Christmas.

Nov. 30th, Washing Motos!

So this week was really good for us. We were able to start visiting
with some new less activies and part member families we found. Some of
them even went to church yesterday. Hopefully we will be able to see
some more progess with them this week!

The big thing that we did this week was we had a big service project.
We were washing everybodies motos for free. I was in charge of yelling
at the people that we were washing free. It was actually pretty fun. I
lost my voice by the end of it. I was yelling for about 2 hours. But
thanks to the service we got a total of 50 refrences for all of
Riberalta and 6 refrences for our area. We havent had time to contact
them this week but we are going to do it this week. We also have
gotten some good refrences this past week with people who are really
interested in the gospel so we are going to make sure to contact all
of these people this week.

But this week we planned to do an activity. On saturday, each
organization is going to prepare a dance from bolivia. I have to dance
in the activity. We are going to do a dance called El Torito. Pretty
much, theres one person dressed up as a bull and everybody else dances
around the bull and whips it lightly. Knowing the branch Im in, they
are probably going to choose me to be the bull, so that should be fun.

Right now there are a lot of less actives we are teaching that are
going through a ton of problems, we are doing our best to help them.
They are problems that a normal person would never have to go through.
I really hope that I will be capable to help them with my comp.

But thats about all that has happened this week!

Love you guys,
Elder Britt