Oct. 26th, No Subject

This week was really good.

So for this week I was in a trio a lot. My comp got his transfer on
Monday, which came really early, and my new comp didn't get here until
Friday. It was pretty hard to find flights this week. But I wasn't able
to focus too much in my area because I had to go and help the other
elders in their area.

My comp now is Elder Fernandez. Hes from Ecuador. Now i have had a
total of 12 companions in the mission. I've only had my comps for 1
transfer and then they go or I leave. Its pretty rough. But my new
comp is really cool. Hopefully we will be together longer than one
transfer.

So this week we had a lot of good things happen. We had a really good
activity on Thursday and a decent amount of people went. But on
Saturday we had a night of Majadito, which is a plate from Bolivia.
Its pretty much just rice, chicken, egg, fried banana, and sometime
olives and raisins. Its actually pretty good. But a lot of people went
and had a good time. We are going to try and have a lot more
activities because when there are activities in a branch, the people
come to church. When a branch doesn't have activities, the people don't
come to church on Sunday. So we need to keep planning activities and
try and be creative with them.

But on Sunday there was a conference between Bolivia and Peru. Elder
Anderson talked from Utah in Spanish. I will admit his Spanish sounded
very gringo haha. But he speaks Spanish really well. It was a good
conference and a lot of people from the church liked it. I think they
are going to start doing conferences like that every 6 months or every
year.

So we have a baptism planned this Saturday. La Hermana Noelia Garcia
is going to get baptized. Hopefully everything will go alright. She
said that she wanted me to baptize he so that will be exciting too.

I'm glad that I got my new comp out and this week we will be able to
work hard in my area.

Love you all,
Elder Britt

Also, my camera got a virus so I cant send pictures this week...

Oct. 19th, No Subject

This week was a pretty good week. We were extremely busy. The biggest
thing that happened was a child died in one of the less active
families we are teaching, the Maniguari family. It was really sudden
that this kid died. He was only one. It was extremely sad for me to
see the eyes of this mother. I will never forget how sad she was. We
are trying very hard to help her feel better and to teach the entire
family the plan of salvation.

Then in church I had a pretty hard experience. Right now we are
teaching Jimmy and it turns out hes pretty much a "Preacher" for
another church. He went to church a lot yesterday and they jsut talked
about temples. Inbetween meetings I explained a little about temples
and he just straight up told me, I dont believe in temples, the bible
says we just need to pray in our room to God and thats all I need to
do to get closer to God. I find it intresting though that he went to
church and Ill have to see if he progresses. At the end of the meeting
he pulled me into a room and asked me some personal advice. He told me
the night before had drunk beer and that in 2 hours he had to give a
talk in his church about avoiding sins. It was a really weird
experience for me to try and concil him. In the end he liked what I
said and was going to apply it. He is living with some less actives
right now and is helping them a lot with some problems they are
having, which is good for us.

Our other investigators havent really progressed too much this past
week. Mainly we couldnt find them and teach them. Hopefully this week
we will be able to find them. Also transfer are tomorrow night. I
think that Ill stay here though. I find it crazy that Ive already been
in Riberalta for a transfer.

Thats about all.
Elder Britt

Oct. 12th, No Subject

So this week was really good. We put 2 more baptism dates so now we
have 3 people who are preparing for baptism. The first is Jasir. He
pretty much came to us prepared. He has a friend in the church,
Joselo. He has gone to church many time with Joselo and went to the
general conference with him. He already believes that the Book of
Mormon is true, the church is true, Joseph Smith was a prophet, and
that Thomas S. Monson is a prophet today. We just have to get him a
little more prepared and he will be ready. We put his date for October
31st. Our other is Angel Ribas. He is 25 and his wife is a member less
active. They have 2 kids with Down Syndrome. He really want to learn
more and know if the book of Mormon is true. He told us he would get
baptized November 7th if he felt like he was ready so we just have to
teach him. He believes in the book of Mormon. So he is progressing
really well. The last is Noelia Gonazles. She is 12 and her family is
a little less active. She usually comes to church by herself and is a
really good.

We have had a lot of good contacts this week too. We have found a new
investigator, Jimmy, who is very interesting. He is really looking for
the truth. He talks with a lot of pastors and doesn't know what church
is true. I think he has some problems with Joseph Smith and with the
Book of Mormon but we will convert him! We have found a lot of other
good investigators who we think will progress.

There's a lot of good things happening in our area.

That's about all for this week.

Elder Britt

Oct. 5th, Conference!

So this week was really good. We were able to watch all of the session of the general confrence and half of the priesthood session. I watched the Saturday session in spanish and the Sunday session in english. All of the session were really great and I loved each one of them. I learned a lot of each talk. I especially liked the talk from President Eyring and the talk that talked about "ponderizing" the scriptures. The thing that was weird was they would quote a scripture and I knew where almost all the scriptures were at. I could never have done that before the mission.

But we were able to work this week normally. I finally got over all of my sicknesses. We are still trying to find a lot of investigators. When we got to the area there was only 1 investigator who was 12. But now we are at about 10 investigators who we are teaching regularly.

Things are going really well here in Riberalta. Weve entered the rainy season here. At least it wont be so hot here!

Elder Britt

Sept. 28th, Dengue and Kidney Stones

So this week was a pretty boring week. My comp and I both got sick this week. On Monday we were going to leave to work after p-day and my comp told me he felt pretty sick and hurt. So we went to the hospital and they told him he had kidney stones. They told him he had to rest until Thursday. So on Tuesday I went on exchanges with my district leader so that we could go to some of our visit we had planned. But on Wednesday I stayed in the house with my comp. Thursday we went out and worked normally. We had a good activity that night and a lot of members went. We had some new investigators go. We played a game and then I shared a message about putting on the armor of God.

But that night I started feeling really sick and then went to the hospital on Friday. They did a blood exam and told me that I had dengue. Its a horrible sickness that's from mosquitoes. Pretty much I just layed in bed Friday until Sunday looking at the wall because I couldn't move. Dengue just makes your entire body hurt and you don't really want to move. My arms just felt so heavy that I couldn't lift them.  I went to church on Sunday but it was hard to be there for 3 hours with it. I'm still a little sick with it. Only my arms and chest hurt now so Ill be able to work tonight!

It was a pretty boring week to just be in the house. I really hope that we will be able to work hard this week. I had a lot of time to study though which was nice.

Elder Britt

Sept. 21st, Calor!

This week has been going really well. We have had some really good new investigators. We opened this area and there was only 1 investigator in the entire area. But this area we were able to visit with 3 new families we found and we have planned this week to visit with another 3. We can tell that there are some people we have found that will progress really well. One of them is the Justiniano family. They were really glad that we could find them and the wife told us after our second visit with them that she was really grateful we found them.

Also yesterday at church a new person came up to us and told us he wanted to get baptized. He said he met with the missionaries once a while ago and he wants us to go visit him. We are going to visit him on Tuesday and we are going to see how it goes.

But our area seems like it is just less active. When we contact street literally every other house is less actives. It seems like missionaries get here and just baptized everybody, they were active for awhile and then just became less active. The work here really is just reactivating people.

The work here is going really well. We are going to rescue some people.

Jacob 4:10 - "Wherefore, brethren, seek not to counsel the Lord, but to take counsel from his hand." I found this in my person study this morning and I liked it a lot. It made me think a lot.

Elder Britt

At about 5 here people start burning their trash and leaves so everyday when we leave after dinner, its just extremely smokey.

Sept. 14th, Transferred, Opening Area, Finishing Training

So I got a crazy transfer. I'm in a city called Riber alta. THIS PLACE IS CRAZY. I love it a ton though. I've really enjoyed this place since Friday. It was really hard saying goodbye to my last area. My zone leaders told me I was going to get transferred on Tuesday and that my flight was going to leave Thursday morning. I had an entire day to say good bye to all of the people there. It was really sad and I'm going to miss them a lot. My flight took about 2 hours to go from the city to Riber Alta. Its really far from the city. This place is like a different world. There is soooo much red dirt every where. Every day when I get to the house my shoes are covered in red dirt and also my shirt is just filthy. All the elders placks out here are red from all the dirt. That's probably what going to happen to my plack. Ill send a picture of it when it gets to that point. My comp is elder Huallpa. Hes from Peru. I'm finishing the training of him. Hes already been out 1 transfer but training last for 2 so I'm doing the last transfer for him. I'm also opening an area out here. There is pretty much nothing in our area book. There is only 1 investigator and about 6 less actives in the book. There really only is one less active but another elder showed us a lot of other less actives that weren't in the area book. So far we know about 20. All we do is pretty much visit less actives but I'm going to start looking for some investigators. Oh its also SUPER HOT out here. I do not stop sweating. I also could only bring one suitcase so I had to leave some of my stuff in the city in the assistant's house. I'm pretty sure that suitcase is going to get destroyed with mold when I get back to the city. There is so much mold in Bolivia. I brought all of my crappy stuff out here to get destroyed.

So far we have been teaching a lot of less actives. That's pretty much the work out here. A lot of the people say that they will go to church and they are going no matter what but then don't come. We try and pass by all of them but they just don't go. We found one less active called Richard Heredia. He is a really good guy. We are going to get him to go out on the mission. Hes 22 and we had a really good lesson with him. We had a member come with us for that lesson and at the end of the lesson he asked if he could come with us to the lessons. He already wants to help visit other people.

We also found the Pinto family. We have already visited with them 2 times in the 3 days that I've worked here. They're very worried about their kids. They have started to have a lot of problems with the word of wisdom. We are going to visit with their kids on Saturday to help them out.

I really love it out here in Riber Alta. There's so much work to do out here and so many people to help. Its great being out here. I've only been here for a little time so we haven't done too much but we have already gotten the confidence of a lot of people. Its going to be a good transfer out here.

Elder Britt