Buenas Dias desde Bolivia

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 Hola hola todos!!


I hope everyone is doing so well today! I finally have both a phone and some time to write an email today. 

I have been here in Bolivia for just over 2 weeks now and I love it! It's so green and pretty and the people are so nice. There are also two types of Bolivian -- the ones that love Americans and are always trying to practice their English with us, and the others that think they don't need Americans so we get told at least twice a week while walking in the streets that we need to go home. But I love it!

Bolivia has not have American missionaries for a minute and the first American came to Bolivia only like 6 months ago and since then more have slowly been coming. When I arrived, I came with 22 other Gringos and we almost tripled the American missionary population. It's so fun because since my companion is also from Utah, it's a really easy way to get to talk to people.

One awesome experience I want to share happened earlier this week. We have a friend name Roger that has family that have been members and has been taught everything and has a testimony, but just is not baptized. He knew that he would get baptized eventually and has turned down the invitation 4 other times because he wanted to have a grand ol' spiritual experience like he had the first time he ever met the missionaries. Well we tried to visit him two weeks ago and with all the other things we had going that day we didn't have time to walk to him so we were just going to take a Trufi which is like a bus thingy haha, but every single one was full. We were a little disappointed we wouldn't make it out there that day. Fast forward a week and we tried again, but this time I got a prompting to share my grandpa's conversion story with him. The only problem was I have it in English, and I don't speak good enough Spanish to be able to translate. I asked my companion if he could translate it and he did! Long story short my companion translated the story and I bore testimony at the end and spoke the clearest Spanish I have ever spoken probably. The spirit was so strong there and he was almost in tears. After I invited him to be baptized and my companion said we could just set a date as a goal, and he said no which confused us a little, but then he said he doesn't want to wait. He's ready and wants to be baptized right now.

It was so cool! And that has helped to grow my testimony that this is God's work that missionaries like me all around the world are a part of. Too many times when we don't have a good plan or lessons fall through and stuff like that, I have seen later why it happened the way it did. We didn't know why any of the Trufis were full the first time we went to meet Roger, but later we learned it's because we weren't ready for him. The spirit is incredible! Live your life in a way that you can always have it with you.

I love you all!
Con cariño
Elder Holdstock

I have all my pictured on my camera with no way to attach them, I'll work on that 

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