I absolutely love my new area that I am in. Not only because they feed me well (hehe), but the Lord has really blessed me to come here with a wonderful companion, but He has really prepared me to leave Chilimarca to come here and to work...to meet new people and to edifiy His church in various parts of Bolivia.
A little about my new companion. Her name is Hermana Callata and she is from Peru. She is my third companion from Peru and 7th companion I had (including the CCM). She is amazing. I had never met someone who was recently baptized (3 years ago) and have such a strong testimony. She is 20 years old and has been out here for 3 months now. She is a spiritual giant.
Getting to know a new area takes a lot of patience but it really is an adventure. All the names of the streets here are like in Quechua....and so I finally understand how difficult it can be to memorize the names of the places in Hawaii...wailele, waipahu, waikiki, hahaha I learn so much about culture. One of the things that I love about this area is that the FOOD IS AMAZING. Our pensionista is a professional cake maker....we eat cake almost everyday. I LOVE IT. And recently it was her daughter´s and one of the elders birthday. The cake is huge. Its a brownies and icecream cake. And so we will be eating it for this entire week. I AM SO HAPPY here. My companion already laughs how I can eat so much and I would always tell her like the first thing I think about in the morning is what we will be eating for lunch and when we are eating lunch I would be thinking what we will be eating for dinner. I have changed, but when it comes to hunger habits, I am still the same old Marisa. One of the members asked me today how do I eat so much and stay so skinny. hehehehehehe.
I have to share a strange experience I had this week. As it is cultural, its normal to breastfeed in public and in many cases, during lessons they will be doing it. But something else happened that I didn´t quite understand why it happened. We were reading the BOM with one of our investigators and a cholita and her daughter came up to her saying something about her eyes hurting. So our investigator said something about milk healing eyes...and so she squirted milk out of herself (I have to speak properly and so I won´t be so descriptive in this email) and into the kid´s eyes. The kid was screaming......I had no idea why she did it right there and then....it was so random. The funny thing was that after that we continued reading the BOM like nothing happened.
I love the Women General Conference we had. I had to watch it in Spanish but all the songs were in English. I felt the spirit so strong and literally know that the Lord loves me. That was something I needed to remember. He loves me and He has placed me here for a purpose to do the things according to God´s will. Another thing that I constantly think about is that this was NEVER my will. It is His. I love that. It makes me forget of myself and selfish desires.
Being here made me really appreciate for the things I had learned in my past area. Here the people aren´t as poor. They are much more normal or rich, but they are really good people. Its a flat area. There are no hills...and lots of cake. I am gonna get fat. But I should enjoy myself right?? Hahaha. My companion and I already keep saying that we want to be together here until Christmas. We want to spend Christmas here together. We have our own little house apart of the house of the 70ty in Bolivia. Its pretty sweet! I love it because living with other sisters is hard. Now we can focus on our companionship and enjoy our time together. We made spam, eggs, and rice for breakfast this morning. Its delicious!We have many investigators that are progressing here. That makes me happy. My companion and I had to pick up 15 people to go to church yesterday. It was a rush, but as satan is working hard to make this work hard, one three of them stayed the 3 hours of church. But 15 people.......wow. It was amazing. I had never felt so worried about having to make them feel comfortable in church and even getting there..that I couldn´t sleep that night before sunday. I kept waking up thinking about them. But really it looks like we will be having a baptism soon. :) There is a 12 year old that we are teaching that fasted with us. It was incredible. He fasted with us and he can understand the BOM perfectly when we read it to him. He prays on his knees and all. It made me miss Jesse!
I am really looking forward to General Conference this weekend. To hear the messages that they have for us. I really can testify that the Lord loves us and has special messages prepared for us to hear and to answer our life questions. I constantly think about how blessed I am to be here and to have a family that is happy and eternal. I look forward to hear all about your general conference experiences.
I love you all and be safe.
Hermana Santeco
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