Elder Edholm -- week 24

This last week was cool, on Christmas Eve we ate dinner with the Venezuelans and ate their traditional food for Christmas, which was super good, it was this tamale with pork, with this coleslaw with apples, bread with ham, and some chicken. I'll send the picture next week. 

On Christmas we ate breakfast burrito sandwich type things as a district at the church, called home, relaxed at the house and blew up my blow up chair (the gift my family sent me). Then went to a music activity that our branch put on that night, which me and my comp sang in. After the activity, me and my companion went to the bathroom, and while we were in there a guy comes in and says he needs us to sing another song for the young single adults who were also having an activity in the church. So we sang two songs that night. 

Then on Saturday we had a baptism! David Fransisco Alcoba Copa! And I was able to baptize him! My first time I actually got to do the baptism! Went to church Sunday, then left at 2 to go up to Santa Cruz to do immigration stuff. So I left at 2, got in Tarija a little after 5, flew at 6:45 from there to La Paz, then from La Paz at 9 to Santa Cruz, and then got to the house of the elders I am staying with at 11 at night. Then went to Interpol this morning at 8 and have to do more immigration things tomorrow, then fly to Tarija, stay the night there, then drive to Bermejo Wednesday morning. A little overwhelming. That is all this week!

Elder Edholm -- week 23

This week was interesting, we still have been having trouble finding new people to teach, so we decided to contact basically all the houses in the bigger part of our area that has more money, so we contacted 80 or more houses, and only found 3 people that would let us share a little message with them. There are a lot of people that are in Tarija for the holidays though, so that didn't help. But we had out christmas conference so that was really awesome! President Stanford talked about how even though we are away from our family we are giving the best gift that we can to our savior, that is sharing His gospel! Our investigator that has been in La Paz for the last three weeks gets back on the 26 and should be baptized on the 28!! Super excited for that!

One of our investigators is the director of this 'coliseum' in our area in Bermejo, and it has wood floors! So we played fusol and basketball there today. I was talking to him about it and he said that there are only 12 wood floor courts in all of Bolivia, and when he started there were only 3! One in Cochabamba, one in Santa Cruz, and one in Bermejo!

Pictures of Bermejo:

Elder Edholm -- week 22

So this week went better than last week, WE GOT AIR CONDITIONING!!!!! So that was awesome, not dying at night anymore. Other good things, after district counsel on Tuesday, one of the elders suggested that we should do a fast so that we could have more success with finding new investigators, so we started right after. That day we found 2 really good investigators named Idelbrandon and Mathias, and we found 7 in total this last week! Also we might have a baptism this Saturday, so that is exciting also. My convert, Gabby, has a little brother that is 9 and we are teaching him and he likes reading in the Book of Mormon! That is about it for this week.

End of Middle School wrestling and basketball

Last Saturday was the end of Lucy's middle school basketball season and Peter's middle school wrestling season. They both had a lot of fun and did well. Lucy had two games on Saturday, they lost the first to Powell and won the second against Cody. Lucy didn't play basketball last year and really enjoyed playing this year.  She's #14 in the green.

Peter finished his 6th grade wrestling season with 12 wins and 4 losses. At the conference meet in Thermopolis on Saturday he came in first in his weight class! 

Elder Edholm -- week 21

This week went by really fast, and some not fun things happened this week, first with one of our investigators, Gianina, She had a date back in November but her husband told her not to get baptized, so she didn't. And now her husband is not sleeping in their house and so she wants to figure things out with her husband first. And we had an investigator named Elio, and he was really awesome, but then he said that he didn't want to change because he liked drinking and other things. But a good thing is that David is going to get baptized on the 28 of december! He is super solid, we teach him in this park, and he is always 15 minutes early to the lesson. He is going to La Paz until the 26, so that is why his date is so farther away. We also bought christmas lights for our house! we have one outside on our railing type thing, and one inside our room taped around the walls! Super cool. We also found a guy who works for the police that really wants to learn named Ruben Yucra, but he doesn't know his schedule and usually gets back late at night, so we are going to find something out! Something cool, went to a waterfall this week named El Toro, was super cool, I think there will be some pictures attached. Also my goal to finish the Book of Mormon in spanish before christmas was harder than I thought, going to get close though! Spanish is coming along, I spoke in church yesterday, talked about the best gift we can give on Christmas and I said that it is our heart. I remember in Seminary a picture we had on the wall that had a guy giving a heart to Christ while saying, "It is all I have", and Jesus Christ says back, "It is all I want". So I shared that! hope you all have an awesome week and have a willing heart to serve people this week!
Elder Edholm

Picture overload!

Nice selfie

One of the many paths that he walks down

Guess what this is?  Mold. It just grows on the streets. 

Andy found a sweet ride!

Bermejo River

The bottom level are stores and the people who work in the stores live above the stores.

Preparation Day (P-Day) trip today:

P-Day adventure/trip to El Toro Waterfall. That bridge is a bit sketchy.

Caterpillar

Seriously scary bridge. Andy said it reminded him of the bridge in the first Shrek movie.

Meet their little friends!

Elder Edholm -- week 20

So this last week I got super sick, I ate a strawberry smoothie from the investigator that lives below us, and I got a bacterial infection, and I have to say, I got manhandled by it. I was throwing up all Tuesday morning. And then on Wednesday we had zone conference, so we drove the 3 hours up to Tarija, and stayed the night there with missionaries, still felt super sick. Had Zone Conference on Thursday with one of the Seventy, Elder Held. He was super cool, talked about being a missionary all of the time, not just at appointments, and that we should contact people everywhere we meet. Being a MTC, a misionero de tiempo completo. I should have gotten a picture with him, but I didn't. We had Saice after, but I still didn't feel good, so I just ate rice. Drove home, took some pictures of the drive. Feeling a lot better now. 


We are having a little trouble with getting people to accept a date, we have two investigators that are ready for baptism, but they don't want to commit. So that is a little frustrating, but it's okay we are working through it! It poured really hard, but I didn't get any good pictures. Got soaked, made it a little cooler now! That's about it!

So good to see and talk with him each week!

Companion, Elder Hansen

Bolivia scenery:

RAIN

Pday activity!

This is Saice that he couldn't eat because he was still feeling ill