Guess who finished her first transfer! Hermana Hall, that´s who!

Monday we went to Central Santa Cruz to send Christmas packages to our
family! And... It was crazy. Allow me to explain. The addresses here
aren´t very exact, and that´s why if you want to send me a letter, you
have to send it to the mission home. And the only place I can send
letters from is Central Santa Cruz... So chances are, it´s going to be
mostly emails from me my whole mission...

But Central Santa Cruz is beautiful! Well... all of Santa Cruz is
beautiful, of course. But Central Santa Cruz has this huge plaza with
a big cathedral and they have Christmas lights up and just... so
pretty.

THEN CAMBIOS (transfers) HAPPENED.

Cambios work like this: Every night at 9 o´clock we have planning for
a half-hour. During this time we aren´t allowed to call other
missionaries, because they´re also planning. After that half-hour we
often receive calls from our sister leaders, our district leaders call
us in order for us to report our numbers, etc...

The week of cambios on Tuesday night we get a call from our district
leader to tell us where we´re going and then on Wednesday in the
morning, if you changed your area, you leave!

Anyway, most stressful planning ever as we´re waiting for 9:30 and
staring at the phone, praying we both stay and can have Christmas
together....

BUT we stayed together! Hermana Mejia is going to finish training me
and we´re going to have Christmas together! After we found out we were
staying together we pretty much just hugged and yelled "NAVIDAD!" like
20 times.

We´re not excited or anything.

Also, funny story... On Saturday we were eating with our pensionista
(Hermana Yulie) and she told me "I gave you a little piece of meat,
you´ll have to let me know if you like it."
Me: "Ooh, what is it?
Hermana Yulie: "Meat."

Later....

Yulie: "Do you like the meat?"
Me: "Yeah, it´s really good!"
Yulie´s Mother-in-law: "It´s tongue."
Yulie: "It´s ´meat.´"

Cool.

The rest of the week wasn´t anything crazy. Getting excited for
Navidad, working with Visiting Teachers and Relief Society, telling
people about the Plan of Salvation in Spanish... Ya know. Living in
Bolivia and whatnot.

I love you all and I hope your week is fantastic!

Mom! :)

About decorations/transfers.... "Cambios" (transfers) are on
Wednesday. My training is for two transfers... But it really isn´t
unheard of for you to get transferred and to have another missionary
finish training you. I´m afraid to say anything is likely or unlikely,
but I´m really hoping to stay.

 My pensionista is awesome, Mom.
The other day we were talking to her about her siblings and she said
she hadn´t seen them in a while... and then she said "Eh. It doesn´t
matter. My family is my sons and the missionaries." She´s so cute.
She´s not really a touchy-feely person, and she really calls it like
she sees it... but this week she told me and Hermana Mejia that she
didn´t want us to get transferred. It was really cute. She´s been a
pensionista for the missionaries for like 18 years or so. I love her.

Please, send decorations! I can´t find anything that I want to
decorate with! Please send tinsel for the apartment! And white hot
chocolate mix! I will die, I´ll be so happy, Mom.

Hey, I bought Christmas Piano Guys this week!  Me and Hermana Mejia
both LOVE Christmas. We´re constantly
singing Christmas songs, we have what we´re going to do on Christmas
planned already, how we´re going to start decorating.... If I get
transferred and I can´t spend Christmas with my cute trainer, that
will be so hard. I struck gold with her, I really did.

This week on Wednesday me and Hermana Mejia had two conferences with
President Willard. The first was for new missionaries and their
trainers for three hours, then us and one other companionship got to
eat with President and his wife (chicken cordon bleu, what up), then
another conference for the Hermanas here in Santa Cruz. We talked a
lot about gratitude and how we need to cultivate an attitude of
gratitude. Being positive can kind of be something you have to force
until it´s a habit, but it´s a habit that will bless you SO much.

We have real running water! Hot water! It really isn´t so bad here. Just
laundry by hand is all. Today it´s rainy, which means we´re going to
have to find time during the week to do it.

My apartment has a tiny bathroom with a toilet, a tiny sink, a
curtain, and a shower faucet thingy. It´s very small, it has our room
which has our beds, or suitcases, and our dressers. There´s a patio
and then another room with our study and our kitchen. Don´t take your
microwave for granted! We live above our landlord lady, who I´m pretty
sure is rich by Bolivia standards. She runs a restaurant at night
outside. She´s so stinking nice.

We serve in just one ward. In fact, us and a pair of elders serve in
our ward. Nope. No baptisms. There are a lot of less-active members
here in our ward and so we´re working with them a lot. We´re working
hard with our area. Hopefully this month we´ll have a baptism though!

My days are as follows:
6:30 - Get up, exercise
7:00 - Shower, get ready, breakfast
8:00 - Personal study
9:00 - Comp. Study
10:00 - 12 Weeks, which is a training program with my companion
11:00 - Language study
1:00 - Lunch
2:00 - 9:00 - Teaching, proselyting.....

I don´t know how to explain how my days are exactly. I wish I could
explain better. Maybe it´ll be easier when we can Skype! I can already
feel that an hour isn´t going to be enough.

Hermana Hall, Hermana Mejia and their pensionista

 

Kaitee didn't get a chance to write a blog post so I am sharing parts of her letter to us instead. 

 Ah! I love reading your email every week! It makes me so happy to hear how everyone is doing.

 I´m developing a love for latin music, Mom. Tell Dustin that sometimes I´m walking in the street or in the grocery store thing they have here and a song will come on that Dustin showed me when he got back from his mission... We are for sure going to have some latin pop jams when I come home. He doesn´t have a choice.

 HAPPY THANKSGIVING! :) I will be chilling in Bolivia thinking about turkeys and football... While I eat rice and boney chicken. Don´t take boneless chicken breasts for granted, Mom.

This week one of  my favorite families had their baby! It´s a cute little baby boy. It was really sad, the dad was in Tarija for business, but he was going to be back in time for the birth... Something happened, and he wound up coming back either a few hours later, or the next day (I couldn´t tell. I am a white girl). Poor guy was so ticked about it. He was like "You can just see the difference between these men and men in the church. Family is just so much more important to men in the church." It was cool to hear about his experience. But he left all of his bags in Tarija, the only things he brought back were two coin purses that say "Tarija, Bolivia" ... For the sister missionaries. These people are so good, Mom. So good.

 And on Thursday we celebrated 50 years that the church has been in Bolivia! There was this huge festival thing with folk dancing native to here and everything... It started out with the missionaries singing some hymns... And then when we walked off the stage, we grabbed our
 bags and walked out the door. We had a curfew to make. The life of a missionary, Mom. I will see folk dancing one day. In the future.

 CHRISTMAS IS COMING. I´ll be missing white hot chocolate, snow, and christmas songs... in English. Good thing we watched White Christmas before I left. ;) It´s funny, I´m like "It´s snowy where I´m from during Christmas..." and the people are always shocked. It makes me
 laugh.

 Can you believe I´m going on 3 months as a missionary? That´s 1/6 done! What?? How? Where did the time go? I´m going to be home before I know it.

 I love your thoughts of the week. They´re always exactly what I need! Thank you so much for always being so sweet to me. And tell Dad thank you too! And then smack my brothers on the back of their heads for not writing their little sister.

Okay, gonna try to keep it short this week because I want to email
more people...

On Tuesday, Hermana Mejia and I got to go to this thing where a couple
other sister missionaries taught us how to use Ancestry.com and stuff
to help our investigators do family history. And I logged into my
little thing, because it´s just connected with your church account,
and we have like 9 generations back on both sides of the family... And
I didn´t know. And it was so cool to see pictures and everything that
was on this site! Geneology is cool!

And then, on Thursday, I had a really cool experience where we were in
a lesson with a less-active member. Her husband is an RM and wants to
go back to church but she REALLY doesn´t want to. And so we were
teaching her and Hermana Mejia extended the commitment to go to
church. And she talked a lot, but she was speaking really quietly and
I couldn´t understand anything she said. And I just got a prompting to
share D&C 6:20-21 where it talks about being rejected for His sake and
sharing an experience where God answered my prayers with this
scripture. And I was like "Okay, I don´t know what´s going on, but I´m
just going to go for it." Anyway, so with no background context or
anything, I share this experience. And Hermana Mejia is just quiet for
a second afterwards and asks her how the story made her feel... and
then she kept talking quietly and I didn´t understand.
Turns out, she was talking about how in the church when she was
active, there was some drama with the relief society and stuff... And
my story was perfectly relevant and everything.
It was so cool to see that the Spirit knows the truth of all things,
and when I don´t know what´s going on, he really will guide me to know
what to say.

Anyway... The church is true, the book is blue... Bolivia is crazy,
but pretty dang cool, honestly. Just... Way cool.

I love you all! Have a great week!!

My spanish is coming slowly, but surely. People tell me it´s good....
Apparently I say "um" a lot... Like... a lot, a lot. It´s wicked
frustrating sometimes, but I really am blessed... I can communicate
what I need to.

Hermana Mejia and I get along really well. We joke around that she´s
the latina version of me, and I´m the gringa version of her... We´re
similar in many ways. I think sometimes she forgets that I´m new, but
I´m learning so much from her. She´s such a good trainer, she really
is.

Keepin´ it short today because I want to email a lot of people this
week. I suck at emailing. My poor family. I love you, I promise.

Wednesday we had a huge conference of like 3 or 4 zones that took 6
hours. Halfway through, President Willard called up an Elder and said
"Elder Green (I don´t remember what Elder it was) is going to give my
talk now. Using the spirit." And then he sat down. And the Elder had
to give a talk. In Spanish.

Later he did the same thing with his wife, Sister Willard and guess
who they called up. That´s right, Hermana Hall. With two weeks in the
field.

BEING A MISSIONARY IS AN ADVENTURE.

Anyway, so I gave my talk and it went okay. I love President and
Sister Willard. They are seriously so legit.

Then, on Thursday, we visited the Villaruel and Martinez family. They
live together, and are both less-active. Carmen Villaruel and Laura
Martinez are sisters. Carmen is a single mom of 3 girls, Yedali, who
is 16, Debani, who is 13, and Sayuri, who is 10. The oldest two are
pretty rebellious, particularly Debani. Laura is 8 months pregnant and
I don´t know how she does it. It´s bloody hot here. And she still is
always doing everything for herself... She still washes her own
laundry, her house is always pefectly clean... She´s a rockstar. And
she has a 3 year old, and her husband as well.

Anyway. This family is like my favorite group of people in the world.
And one day we came over and only Carmen´s 3 girls were home... So we
worked on Personal Progress with them and just started talking. Disney
princesses came up and.... I asked about Anastasia. Because I really
love Anastasia. And Sayuri, bless her heart, found a copy of it and
was like "This?" and my inner 10-year-old came out and I got way too
excited.

Fast forward. We´re talking with Laura and teaching her and
whatever.... And Debani and Yedali come in. And Yedali comes in, says
hi to my comp., says hi to me, and puts a piece of paper in my lap. I
get home, I open it, and there´s a drawing of Olaf that Sayuri traced,
a little drawing of Anastasia and Demitri that she drew and colored,
and a huge poster sized drawing of Anastasia that Yedali sketched.

Yedali is like WICKED talented. And I love her. With all of my
corazon. Seriously, their drawings made me so happy. The Villaruel
girls for realsies have my heart.

And then I had to give a talk on Sunday. Aaaand long story made very
short... My Spanish could use some help.

And that is what is new with Hermana Hall.

And I love you guys.

A lot.

Okay.

Bye.

Happy Halloween!!

Okay, so Halloween isn´t a thing here. I mean, it is.... But not
really. I´d tell you how exactly it´s different, but to be honest, I
am not sure. It´s smaller here, candy isn´t really a thing... I saw
four trick-or-treaters in a little group... and my pensionista gave me
some candy that said Halloween on it. That´s Halloween here, haha.

The biggest thing that´s happened this week is that our apartment is
freaking overrun with these nasty bugs called "grillos" They`re HUGE
and they jump like nobody´s business. We´re getting really good at
killing them though. It´s an adventure. Oh, Bolivia.

I also saw American Football on TV for like five seconds. It was a
Broncos Patriots game and the score was 17-13 Patriots, I think. I
didn´t think American Football is a thing here, but it was on, so
maybe it´s a bigger thing than I thought.

.... I guess this week was pretty boring. But after this, me and
Hermana Mejia are making empanadas! Empanadas are the best thing that
has ever happened to me, probably. They`re just like a tortilla bready
thingy with cheese in the middle but... I don´t know. I think they put
crack in it.

Uhhhh.... Yeah. That`s all. Just learning how to be a missionary,
trying to pick up on the Spanish, figuring Santa Cruz out. I love it
here. I really do. It`s such a beautiful city.

And I love being a missionary! Every time I´m in a lesson, attempting
to testify in Spanish, I´m like... Dang. This church is so true... It
really is.