Elder Samuel Holdstock

  Hola hola a todos! This week we celebrated mothers day here in Bolivia. Mothers day is a way bigger deal and no one works, and no wants to talk to you which was an awesome day. It consisted of just walking around trying to make any kind of conversation. One guy asked if we even believe in mothers in our church. Nice one, I think he might have won that encounter  But this week was good! Our teaching pool has decreased and decreased slowly over the last couple weeks. A big point of focus has been to rebuild the teaching pool. We've been spending a lot of time finding news which is kinda what we've always been doing. I used to tener miedo to knock someone's door or talk to someone on the street in Utah in a language I spoke fluently, but now I have seen a huge transformation with the help of my loving Heavenly Father and I am not nervous for any of that in a language I'm still learning. It comes from the power of the calling that missionaries have. Elder Christofferson w...

Hola hola a todos! How's everyone doing, this week has been awesome. Recently the weeks have been up and down. One week awesome and the next a little rough, but this week we were on the high. We invited 4 people to baptism this week and they all accepted and it was so cool. One is a 22 year old named Alan that wants to serve a mission and do everything. He's been investigating the church for months now and is just missing the baptism. Finally hell complete the step and start his process of preperation for his mission. The other 3 came from a family. We've seen so many cool things with this family. It's the family that we gave a blessing to a couple weeks back. They've been pregressing really well and have such great desires. The only thing that's been holding them back is the health of the Hermano Oscar. He's been in the hospital a while and finally this week he was released. We taught them the 5 steps of the gospel and shared a voice recording from their da...

Hola hola a todos This week has been a quick long week. A lot of it went sideways and not according to our plan, but it was according to God's plan so I'm keeping a smile on my face and getting to work. I think more than 60% of our appointments that we had had scheduled with people this week fell through for one reason or another. They were working, not home, traveling, or we simply got blocked by them. Many times I was a little frustrated like I was doing the things I was supposed to and just not seeing the success. But something really cool came out of it.  Three different occasions this week we'd confirmed a cita far away so we'd make the long walk to the house just to knock and find out either they don't actually live there and no one knows them, or they are too busy. It felt like a waste, but something I started doing was just saying a prayer and asking "now what?" I'm all the way out here, so let's find God's other children that are ready...

  Hola Hola a todos!! This last week has been full of miracles and incredible experiences. It's really crazy to see how as we focus on our obedience with exactness, the blessings are just pouring out on top of us. Last transfer we found a whole bunch of people that were progressing really well and then almost all of them hit a wall and it's been really hard to help them over the wall. Because of it we had been spe ding all our efforts and energy on trying to break down this wall, but this week we decided to let a lot of those people have some space as we found 10 new people that have promising potential. Two of these people came to us as someone had reached out for a blessing of health. Some elders a few areas over had a baptism Saturday and their dad had been in the hospital and kept asking the elders to help out. Well when they got home from the hospital they live din our area! An answer to prayers to help us find good people to teach. It was so cool to be able to use my prie...

  Hola hola a todos! I don't have a lot to write this week. We had Transfers on Friday and I got a new gringo companion! His name is Elder Diaz from Maryland and he's cool. We have the same amount of time here in Bolivia so we're going to be grinding the Spanish so that we can be a part of so much success in this great work! Something awesome before transfers happened with our family that lives in the house with the red door and red roof. I can't remember if I filled in some information on but basically that lady Virginia that we met and told us she wasn't a member ended up being a member. But! She has two nietos that live with her and we've been teaching them and they've loved it and are all ready to get baptized this Saturday. Their names are Nathaly and Johan. Nathaly just learned English by watching movies and reading books so sometimed we just talk to her in English while her little brother just sits there trying so hard to understand. It's so fun! ...