Week 13

Hey guys, 

So yeah I suck. I didn't mean to leave you guys hanging like that last week. I didn't even think about that. We eventually did get into the piso and back to zamora. We did miss a lesson but we rescheduled and had it wednesday. This has been a pretty weird week. A lot has happened, but at the same time I feel like it's all the same. I think it's just cause we're really busy, but I'll try think about the highlights cause I'm sure it doesn't all sound the same to you guys. 

Last week I mentioned prayer circles and igloos. That wasn't a joke. We have some investigators with some pretty whack ideas. I don't remember if I told you guys about our hippy investigators or not. It's the same guy that took us on a tour of the castle. We have a lesson with him and his 2 friends every 2 or 3 days for the last 2 weeks and they're actually progressing really well. They're artists, and one of them actually made me a really cool sculpture. We always meet in the second floor of the art shop, which is really cool. So in our first lesson with them we asked if we could say an opening prayer and they were cool with it, so I prayed, and then it got weird. As soon as I finished the guy next to me started praying, then when he was done the next guy started. So when it was elder Jagers turn he tried to explain how we normally do it for a second and then he was just like "eh, why not" and just went with the whole prayer circle thing. Luckily we don't do that anymore. Afterwards they invited to hike up to Lake Sanabria with them to do the prayer circle ritual thing with them in an igloo. Apparently they all get naked and do a prayer circle and they're "Reborn again". Idk, it's weird. But as we have been teaching them we keep finding that we have a lot in common. They were telling us about this energy that is in all of us, and how when we do good things or talk about God the energy is stronger. 

We have a name for that, it's called the holy ghost. They also told us about these other worlds we would live in after we die. Like other worlds God created and if we're good in this life we can become gods. So tonight we're starting with the plan of salvation. I think that whole thing is pretty cool. People here are definitely prepared. 

We have lots of new investigators this week. In fact, every week our mission sends an email with all of the stats from the week and a message from President pack. And this week and last week we made up 10% of the mission with how many new investigators we found. We found some creative ways to talk to people. The first one is a survey with the tablets. We have 4 questions that we ask people, like "do you believe in god" or "do you think you can receive answers to your prayers" and it's going well. We automatically have a conversation about the gospel. Its easy. We have 2 new investigators from that. The other thing we do is a selfie competition. We just take Selfies with people on the street that we don't know. We just ask them to hold the BOM and take a selfie, then we add them on facebook and we can tag them in the post. The goal is to make more friends here in Zamora on Facebook, but this way the BOM is already in their hands-how easy is that. So we have 4 new investigators from that. The only thing is they're all girls between 18 and 25. This is what I was talking about when I said I got kissed twice last week. It's tricky not to make it sound like you're 1flirting when it's a foreign language. 

Good news with the language though, I speak spanish. It's not perfect, but I can say what I want to say. I still need A LOT more vocab but I can communicate just fine. Yesterday we had our first video lesson over skype. Super cool. There is so much potential for the technology. This week we had more lessons than elder jager has ever had in his mission. I think 16 or 17. 

I'm out of time, but now that I look back on it, this week was pretty interesting.

Talk to you next week,

Josh

From our Hangout conversation this morning:

Last night I had some Bolivian dish that was basically just boiled meat with the salad from pausas on top. But the meat was just pig parts, bones, whole ears, snouts, all kinds of stuff. I liked it though. The tapas were amazing. I tried all kinds of stuff. I also had rabbit and chicken hearts this week.