Un-BOLIVIA-ble Adventures: My Faith is Like A Little Seed, It´s Really Rather Small

Email from Monday, December 15, 2014

FAMILIA Y AMIGOS!

It´s almost Christmas! How loco is that?! It´s a bajillion degrees here but I can tell it´s Christmas by the fact that everyone is missing our appointments to go shopping. It´s frustrating! But the cool thing here is that since it´s summer time, everyone´s on summer break...for Christmas! Doesn´t that sound so crazy to us Americans who get like maybe 2 weeks for winter break? But anyway, quick shout out to Breanna Scott for never emailing me ever but I still love her anyway and she was in like 3 of my dreams this week and also to Ruth and Becky for the cutest dang advent calendar! I love it and we sing the songs every day for our comp study! Also to the Prasad family! I´ve been thinking about them a lot this week so I´m just sending them well wishes and hope everything is going awesome for them!

This week, I learned a very important lesson that will probably help me for the rest of my life. You can have a discouraging day without getting discouraged. Yep, it seems simple enough but think about it. How often do things go wrong and we just think "ugh, that´s it. I give up or I can´t fix this¨or something like that. But those thoughts are wrong! We can have a discouraging day or even a discouraging week or month and remain enthusiastic and happy about what we are doing. It´s all up to us! So this week, when no one was home and no one on the street wanted to talk to us, I decided to be positive. I decide the success of my mission! We all decide the success of our life! Yes, it´s tough but the Lord knows. He will help us and guide us and strengthen us!

Fun things that happened this week,

-having a woman think I was a menonite because my skirt "es muy largo, no?" (this is funny because the menonites here are like the frumpiest dressed people ever aka I look frumpy to this woman and Hna. Lyon couldn´t stop laughing. I was wearing my fave skirt too...:( oh well!)

-the sunday school teacher answering the phone while she was teaching to simply say "¡estoy in la capilla! ¡no me hables!"

-a woman that we´re teaching invited us for lunch but we have a pensionista so I tried to refuse but she was insistent so we agreed to go but I had a bad feeling about eating someone´s random food because we have a pensionista for a reason, ya know?? But Hna Lyon was so sure it would be fine......so we show up and there´s no food! she forgot! So she just gives us this melon juice until her daughter reminds her and she was like "HERMANAS! LO SIENTO! Esta bien porque yo tengo chivo" and I was like "uhhh...que es chivo" and Hna Lyon just whispers "goat." but we didn´t have any other option except starving so yep. I ate goat. It wasn´t too bad. I also might have eaten llama meat in an empañada also but I´m not sure, if it was llama it was amazingly delicious. It tasted just like shredded beef. But yeah, not sure what it was.

-our sacrament cloth in our capilla is bedazzled. no joke, someone embroidered the name of the church on it with sequins, it is totally FAB (read as tacky)

-last week we went to heaven aka Vacafria which is the best ice cream of all time and it´s such a nice place, way nicer and tastier than coldstone believe it or not (half of my area is super nice and modern and then the other half is very third world but it´s all mixed up)

-I met a monkey! We contacted a woman whose cousin has a pet monkey and he brought him out and I got a sweet picture with him, he was precious! se llama Martin

I´m learning, growing, sweating, and loving every day. It´s true about how important our study time is each day in determining how our day will turn out. My advice to you all is STUDY THE SCRIPTURES EVERY DAY and study until you feel a change in your heart. Sometimes that happens in the first minute or in the last but it happens every day when we prayerfully study. I promise that.

Hope all is well, I can´t believe that next week, we´ll be figuring out a time to SKYPE! Ah! Insane! I love you all!

Con mucho amor,

Hermana Gauger

If you feel so inclined..........

I would love snack size stuff that I can take with me when I´m out proselyting for 7 hours a day with no dinner. Like fruit snacks, little packs of oreos or ritz or something, and HICHEWS! Hna Lyon got me obsessed. And pass-along cards in espanol would be nice too. Like, any food is good food, I love snacks. Thanks fam-bam! You da best. Also could you share this on my blog because I know Ryan wanted to send something so please announce my desires. Thank youu!

Packages can be sent to this address:

Sister Jennifer Ann Gauger
Bolivia Santa Cruz Mission
C/ Saavedra esq. Cochabamba
Torres Cainco, Blq Empresarial, Piso 9
Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz
Bolivia