Day 10 with no electricity!

Hello Family, 

Well I have a lot to tell you guys but I don’t know where to start, this might be a very random letter. 

We are on DAY 10 without electricity, and honestly I am not very happy about it. We keep trying to get it fixed but something else comes up, like a wedding or the electrician goes on vacation, or gets lost or something like that. We called another one to come today and he also got lost so hopefully he comes tomorrow so that we can finally have some electricity again. I just feel like i am camping all the time, we are just doing everything by flashlight so that’s pretty fun. 

Another random story that happened this week, so we went into a house and right as we walked in one of the dogs bit my companion. Not very hard, but you could see the teeth marks on his leg. And then we were waiting for them to bring chairs and I decided to sit on the stairs while waiting for them to come and I felt something warm on my back. At first I thought it was just the sun but then I realized that the other dog was behind me peeing on my back, that was not a fun experience. The first time a dog has peed on me. I don’t think those dogs wanted us to be there. We didn’t feel very welcomed by them, but the family was super cool and they listened to us so that was good,. I kind of don’t want to go back because I am afraid of the dogs and what they are going to do to us. But I guess we just got to keep enduring haha

We just had lots of challenges this week. One day we were about to go out and work and we found out that we were locked in the house. We just recently made copies of the keys and we had the copied one. What we didn't know is that it only opened the door from the outside and not the inside if that makes sense. So coming into the house is fine but to unlock the door from the inside is impossible. So to unlock the door we would have to go and do it from the outside. And since no one was home and we dead bolted the door, the only option was to jump the wall and open the door from the outside so thats what I did. I had to jump the wall and open the door. I think lots of people thought we were robbing the house or something but we were able to escape and get out to teach.

This week in general was pretty hard, there were lots of people who just really didn't want to talk us. We were trying really hard to share the gospel with everyone but sometimes they just really don't want to listen. Yesterday for example was just really tough. We had appointments the whole day and all of them fell through so we tried to talk to people in the street but they were not interested and all of our backup plans were falling through. We were left with like no options, we tried to call some references but the numbers were wrong or turned off and I was just getting really disappointed. I really didn't know what to do so my companion said we will just go visit some members and see if we can help with anything. We went to one and they weren't home so it came to both of our minds to go look for a less active that lived close that we hadn't been able to find for a really long time. And to our luck the whole family was there. Only the mom and sister are members and the rest of the family aren't. We were able to share a message with them and invite them back to church and they said that they are going to come. I was really happy to meet them and I know that the Lord guided us there.

I really wish I could just send a video home of my week to show everything that happens. So much I wish I could tell and so little time. 

Love you lots, thanks for the pictures I really enjoyed them.

Lots of Love 

Elder Grigor 

"We had some fun at Burger King, its like the only North American Restaurant here" 

Elder Grigor finding a piece of home. We all call his older sister Ashley "Ash" for short. 

 Escaping from our house

Climbing over the wall 

He made it. Now to go open the door to let his companion out too

Eating dinner 

Day 10 with no electricity. Still doing everything by flashlight.

It's a hard life without light

July 21,2014

Hello Family,

Well another week more and another week less. This week also just seemed to fly by, I have no idea why but the weeks just keep getting shorter and shorter. Before the mission everyone always told me that the second half of the mission goes by way faster than the first and that is definitely feeling true, which is weird because time hasn’t changed at all. Maybe just because I’m just used to everything now. It’s a weird feeling.

But anyways I shall share a little from my week. It was a pretty good one, one thing that happened though was that our electricity went out in the house on Saturday morning. So we couldn’t use our iron or take a hot shower or do many of the things that we needed to do. After trying to figure out what went wrong we just went to the other elders house to take a shower and get ready there. They told us that they were going to fix it on Saturday but they didn’t do anything. So on Saturday night we had no light so we did everything with our flashlights. Then Sunday came and we just had to shower in our pensionistas house and do everything there because it was way closer. We still don’t have light or electricity in our house, apparently they are going to fix it today so I’m praying for that. It’s a hard life without light.

That little made me think a little about how Jesus Christ is the life and the light of the world. It is impossible to do anything without him, well maybe not impossible but really hard!!!! Everything is so much easier when we have light to guide us in our lives. It’s hard to function in everyday life if we don’t have his light, and I guess that could be applied to daily scripture study and prayer. When we don’t do it maybe we have just enough light to get by and to do the necessary things like using a flashlight. But when we have a meaningful study and are fervently praying it’s like the electricity coming on and the whole room is enlightened and we can function with much more ease. It’s funny how such a little experience like that can cause us to think in such a different way. If our electricity would not have gone out then maybe I wouldn’t have thought about that. But I know that the spirit teaches us thorough many different ways, some more strange than others.

There are so many experiences like this that happen in the mission but sometimes we just don’t realize them. I think now I am trying to look for the best in all that comes. Instead of complaining or whining I try to find what I can learn and how I can be better which is something I didn’t really do before, but now I am able to understand just a little bit better.

I really am having a great time here in the mission, I love my companion and everything that I am learning. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, love you guys lots, hope you have a great week, (happy early b-day mom, love you lots).

Elder Grigor

Elder Grigor drinking herbal tea and eating popcorn 

Having hot chocolate with a family that just got baptized 

No electricity in our apartment 

Making the best of having no light 

It snowed up in the mountains. Something Elder Grigor has missed seeing.

Elder Grigor in Bolivia

I was really missing home this week

July 14th, 2014 

Hola

Well I don’t really know where to start, this week was kind of tough for me, I was missing home a lot for a couple of days, well mostly these last couple of day with the wedding and everything but at least I was there in cutout form so thats better than nothing, those pictures came out super great, that cutout is awesome. I was really surprised how good it actually came out, I like that picture too better than the one that I took. 

Well this week has made me more trunky than probably ever before seeing all of the family together and having fun at the stampede and all having fun together. But I know that I am needed here a lot more than I am needed there. So I just need to get to work and no offence but try to forget about you guys. I am really happy here though, although this week wasn't the best I am loving mission life. 

So I didn’t really take pictures this week but they are turning out normal so I don’t think that I am going to buy a new camera, The picture this week are when we put 9 people into a taxi, you can’t really see all of them but it is a normal sized car and there are 10 people in total with the taxi driver. That was today after we went and played ultimate frisbee and soccer for like 2 hours this morning. I try to spend most of my day playing soccer. After this we are going to meet up at the stake centre and play some more soccer. I really love it, I could play all day if they gave me the option, I’m not even that good but I just love running around and kicking the ball around. I now understand why Uncle Jorge loves watching soccer so much, it’s addicting. If we were allowed I would have watched every game of the world cup. We just saw it passing by in the street and when we heard everyone scream. Yesterday for the final there was absolutely no one in the street, everyone was in their house watching the soccer game. 

This week we were really trying to teach with members and we saw some great results. First we are teaching the sister of Zuleme who is a recent convert and now her sister is coming to church and wants to be baptized. I think it’s the fastest I have ever taught anyone on my whole mission. We finished almost all the lessons in these two weeks and she has a baptismal date for this august. Now we will just be preparing her and making sure she has a strong testimony. Then we are teaching another guy who was a referral of a member and we’ve been able to teach all the lessons with him and he’s also super excited about this gospel and to be baptized. He is 20 years old and was asking us about the mission and then the member asked if he wanted to serve a mission and he said he was thinking about it (this was the second lesson). I am really thankful for the help of the members and all of the support that they give us. Without the members it really would be a lot harder to be here in the mission. Members make all the difference. 

I also got to give a talk in sacrament meeting this Sunday. They called us on Saturday and we had no time to plan so what I did is used that family history story that grandma send me about Elder Fisher when he was on his mission and they found the loaf of bread on the side of the road. Everyone loved it and all asked me about it after the meeting. I am really grateful for the faithful members of the church that were able to strengthen their families back then and how they keep doing it. Their faith and perseverance really helps me through the hard times. 

Me and my comp are getting along great, he goes home in 4 weeks so we still got a little bit of time to keep having fun together. Everything is going great, thanks for the email and the love. Y’all are the best

Elder Grigor

Cole, "Elder Grigor" and Lauren 

Our life size cut out of Elder Grigor with his siblings on Lauren's wedding day 

Elder Grigor in the taxi with 9 people

On his way to play soccer 

Elder Grigor is great at taking selfies. 

I know the spirit guided us.

July 7th, 2014 

Hola familia!!

Where to start.... We had a pretty good week this week, we finally got to meet the new mission president. We had a "consejo de lideres" on wednesday, I think that means like leadership council or something like that. But it was pretty cool, we learned a lot. He said for 5 days he was learning from the 12 apostles and the first presidency about how to be a mission president. I’m excited to get to know him better and learn from him, he is really nice and has a great knowledge of the gospel. I didn’t get to talk to him too much but this friday we have interviews with him and then I think we have a zone conference the week after so we’ll get to know him just a little better over these next couple of weeks so I’m really excited for that.

The week honestly just flew by. I don’t know how it went by so fast but it was great, I had so many awesome testimony strengthening experiences so I will share a couple. I was on an exchange with Elder J. and we weren't having much success so we decided to start heading over to an appointment but said we were just going to street contact in a park to try and find some new investigators. He said " yeah so I’ll follow you”. I just kind of laughed and then looked at all the people there and saw a mother with her kid on the teeter totter so we went over and decided to talk to her and as we were walking over she said: “hi elders”.  That kind of shocked me and I asked her if she had talked to the missionaries before and she said no but that almost her whole family are members and that her nephew just recently came back from the mission in chile.  She goes to church all the time with her sister but in another ward. We started to teach her a little and got into the restoration and she basically knew the whole lesson. It was quite an awesome experience because that never had happened to me before, she was one of the most prepared people I have ever met. When we set up an appointment she asked if she could bring a friend too and we said of course!!! The only bad part is that she lives in the area of Elder J. and not me :( but I'm just happy that we were able to find her and that she will be able to hear our message. So that makes me happy :)

Then just yesterday we were leaving from lunch with the members and we decided to go a different way than normal and as we were walking there was a lady waving. I thought it was to a different person so I was looking around and realized we were the only ones so I waved back and she told us to come over. There were two families outside. One family who came from Santa Cruz was out visiting some other members of their family who were members. They just recently just had a death in the family so they were going to try and give a little bit of comfort and explain about the plan of salvation. Just as they were explaining about that we walked by so they waved us over and asked if we could talk a little, so we were able to testify of the plan of salvation and how families can be together forever, and that is just what that family needed at that moment. Then setting up for an appointment for another day they told us that there were about 2 other families that lived in that house and that they would like to listen too.

In both of those experiences I know that the spirit guided us to be able to help those people in the moment that they needed it, the mission is so great. Times like this just make all the tough times seem like nothing. I love being here in the mission more and more everyday, I love it!!!

Well I love you guys and all the letter and pictures, so glad that you guys are having a great summer.

Lots of love from down here in Bolivia,


Elder Grigor

The missionaries eating the gigantic pizza in Cochabamba. 

Elder Grigor making silly faces 

Having fun at the festival playing a shooting game 

Elder Grigor with a dancer from the festival