HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!...EAT LOTS OF CHOCOLATE!

Hola mi familia y amigos,
Happy Halloween or Feliz dia de los muertos, yeah I like halloween better! Thanks so much for the emails and the pictures (minus my parents) but I loved them and I´m going to print them and show them to everyone, how lucky are you. But thanks for the emails Dad, Mom, Nikki, and Kim. I´m glad all is well in the land of utah. It´s getting warmer I bought a goofy looking hat to protect me from the sun. I probably won´t send a photo of that one. So this week has been pretty eventful, no baptisms but we had zone conference, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The Da Silvas are really great people. He really wants us to learn to follow the spirit and to live worthy to have the spirit with us. It´s really great. I also got my packages. YEAH!!! I loved loved loved the bible and the gospel principles book, and medicine. I´m really excited and I got my card thanks. I also loved loved loved the orange sauce, it really saves some of my lunches when I eat at our apartment. haha. And thanks for the jerky and chocolate and everything. I was so happy. I think I will get packages every six weeks but envelopes I will get sooner so that might be better. But we recieved some great news Elder Bednar is coming November 20th to talk to us. I am so excited. It´s going to be 2 mission conferences, the west mission and us. So I will get to see some of the missionaries from the MTC. This past week we did a service project. We helped build a wall of house and leveled out a path and cleaned up, etc. It was a lot of fun. It was a little back breaking but I´m glad we could help her she´s a single mom and an investigador and the branch really has helped her out a lot. It´s been great. So here´s a funny story, there´s a conspiracy theory going on here in this little branch. This forever investigador Marcilino and this new member Richard have come to the conclusion that there is corruption in the branch with the money and the leadership and they tell us about and they tell us how they need to find a way to break in the church and look at the records and they are serious. It´s absolutely nuts. They are very different people. For instance Richard told us that he went to one of our investigadors mom´s house and gave a blessing to dog. (Is that allowed?) He used to be an evanglist and it really shows when he talks. It´s really funny some of the members here and kind of scarey because they could really start a break off or something. But that´s the conspiracy theory of Progreso. But today we had a zone activity which was really fun we played volleyball for a little while and then the elders played soccer. But today is our last pday of the change. So next week pday is wednesday as a heads up. Thanks so much for hte emails and the news. Here´s some photos of the service project and the zone conference. I Love you all mucho mucho!!! Thanks for the prayers, I know they help.
con amor, Tiffani

Middle of October...wow...and it´s getting warmer!!!

Hola mi famlia y mi amigos,
How are ya´ll doing? I figured I´d start out a little different. Anyways, thanks so much for the emails Dad, Mom, and Kim. I sure love them and you all too. I´m glad things are going very well. But this last week was good, we had a baptism for the cutest girl. Her name is Brenda and she´s 9. She´s the daughter of a used to be less active. The hermanas found her before I got here and got the ward involved in helping her because she´s a single mom and left the church because she joined and then met someone and they got married and he beat her. So she divorced him and moved. But we´ve been teaching her and her daughter and she was so excited to be baptized. And her mom has come back and she said a beautiful prayer at the baptism and how grateful she was for the church in her life. The ward has been really great with her and really supportive and helpful. It was such a beautiful service and Brenda borrowed this pretty little baptism dress, because they don´t have anything with her pink tennis shoes, there´s a picture it´s soooo cute. Earlier on Saturday, my companion had a baptism in another area and so we got permission and went. I really love baptisms, they are so neat and I love to see how excited they are. I ended up playing the piano for both baptisms, it was kind of amazing because in the mission I am able to play a lot a lot more hymns and I know Heavenly Father has really helped me with that and so I´m glad I can help. We had a really funny charla this last week with a family who the dad we are trying to help quit smoking and so we brought the branch president because he used to smoke, and it was the funniest, shake your head kind of charla. Because he starts telling stories of his crazy ways of quitting like being around people that smoke all the time, and having cigaretts in your pocket. We´re like what are you thinking? And then he started telling stories of when he got drunk. And we´re like stop stop.. But he just kept going and going. But by the end everyone was laughing. The president said the prayer and he was late with a interview with the stake president and he said in the prayer with the family there please bless that the stake president won´t hit him for being a half an hour late. We´re like...well that´s the last time he´s coming on a word of wisdom charla. The branch president is a really interesting, but really nice fellow. But we made a schedule with the dad and he´s almost done quitting, the sad thing was we tried set a baptismal date with them yesterday and they said no, because they don´t want to change and there is a lot of rules in the church. It was sad, but they said we can keep visiting them, so we´re going to keep working with them. Oh, Hna Yeates called me to give a reference yesterday and told me this cute cute kid Jose Luis, that we had found and had been working with got baptized in La Paz. I was so excited. We also had an incredible day at church yesterday, we had 10 investigadors. It´s been a very successful week. We also had an activity Friday that the young men we´re supposed to be in charge but they didn´t come till hours laters, so we at to do it, but we played ping pong and guess what all those practicing games of me losing paid off yet again. I beat everyone. It´s so fun. Also, this friday is zone conference and interviews so I will get my packages. YEAH!! Thanks so much in advance for the christmas package. I´m excited, is there anyway you can put in knee high nylons. I go through them fast, because the dusty roads just tear them up. And they are required, and they are really expensive here. Also maybe 45 or 50 boxes would be great dad. THANKS!!! Have a great great week. THanks for the prayers and advice and help and love. I LOVE YOU!!!
con amor, Tiffani
p.s. here are some baptism photos.

Another week...with a great bapism

Hola mi familia y amigos,
¿Como estan? I´m glad all is well. Thanks for the emails Dad, Mom, and Hermana Bell. I really appreciate knowing how everything is going. This past week has been really good. Our investigator Irene was baptized and it was a really beautiful service. She was so excited to be baptized. When we were asking the questions to prepare her for her interview she said she had an abortion when she was younger and so she had to have an interview with one of mission presidents counselors. But everything went well, and her daughter and son in law and grandkids came and supported her. It was really great. We are teaching them right now so hopefully they will follow in her footsteps. On Sunday when she recieved the gift of the holy ghost she bore her tesimony of her own will and she was really grateful for the gospel. It was neat. We also had a spring activity on friday and it was pretty funny. Because there is this one lady in the ward who wanted to really help plan the activity and so she said we should act out Alma 32. And one of us should be the dirt, the seed, and the tree and her boyfriend our ward mission leader would narrate. So I was the seed, it was pretty embarrassing and hillarious actually. This woman said she was going to be the soil and so she dressed in all black and had a black nylon on her head and she said she was going to be fertile soil and dance. (How dancing means fertile soil, I have no idea) But her boyfriend turns on some classical music and then in a very dramatic voice talks about Alma 32 and she comes out and starts wiggling because shes fertile soil. I was trying so hard not laugh and then it was my turn and I made a seed around my neck so I sat down like a seed in dirt. It was sooo funny. But the thing is we had investigadors and I could see their faces, they were like, who are these crazy mormons? But at least we made that woman happy and our ward mission leader. But after we decorated little cakes like sugar cookies and gave them sprinkles and colored frosting and they really enjoyed it. So that was good. My companion got a little sick this week and on saturday and sunday I started feeling bad, the spring weather here is crazy hot and cold, hot and cold. But now I am better, thank goodness. Springtime is really pretty here there are so many kinds of flowers and it is so green. Our area is so huge, it´s a bunch of little tiny towns put together so we ride buses all the time. We also get to use trains once in a while which is fun. We are having zone conference and interviews October 23. So I will get my packages then. They are combining them so I guess I will only get packages every 6 weeks which is a bummer, so if you could send my medicine well in advance, that would be good. I am excited for the thanksgiving one, hope I get it before thanksgiving haha. Thanks for your testimonies and experiences. I love hearing about them. Thanks for the encouragement, advice, and prayers. I love you all mucho.
con amor,
Tiffani
ps. here are some photos. The first are of the baptism of Irene and her family. And then there is one of her with this cute little family that the boys always give us little presents. And then one of our acting out of alma 32. so so funny.

Happy October!

Hola mi famila y amigos,
¿Como estan? Thanks so much for the emails Dad, Mom, Kim, and Alyssa. Loved them, loved them. I´m glad you all enjoyed conference. It was sure amazing. Thanks for sharing the talks that really touched you. I was able to watch conference saturday and sunday and all in english except the relief society session, so I´m glad you gave me a little update kim. But actually I understand quite a bit, which I was really grateful for. The talks that I really loved were from Elder Scott about listening to the spirit and recieving personal revelation and Elder Holland and his very powerful testimony of the book of mormon and the prophet..amazing. And the one seventy about the mighty change of heart and the likening it to the physical heart transplant. There were so many great talks. One of my earlier comp told me that if you go into conference with a question that you have been prayerfully pondering you can recieve the answer in conference. So I decided to try it, and it was really neat. I recieved one of the answers in conference and the other no and I was kind of disappointed. It was the question that you want to know when I should go home, so I was like well, a lot of the talks talked about recieving revelation and the how sometimes it takes time and patience. But then this morning we woke up to no electrictiy and a huge storm and so we were trying to find the breaker and then tried to start a fire and tried to call someone and all didn´t work and so I suggested we have a prayer and right as I asked for us to have light the power flipped on. It was really amazing. And it was just another testimony to me that I know heavenly father hears ours prayers and even if he doesn´t give an answer right away like my question he will answer. And it was just a really neat experience. So that question, I´m still praying about. But we had an amazing conference because we had 13 investigadors come. And they had to ride a bus 20 minutes away. We also had a miracle because of some miscommunication this fmaily that we´re teaching missed the bus, but they were all ready. So my comp arranged for a taxi but there were six of them so they wouldn´t fit and they were kind of mad at what happened, so we prayed that they could come and the grandma and the grandkids came in the taxi and then 20 minutes later the parents came on a moto. It was so neat, and they felt the spirit really strongly. We´re going to have a baptism for the grandma this saturday and we´re going to invite the family to be baptized as well in a few weeks. We also were doing some contacts in the other city between sessions and we found this neat woman Norma, right across the street from the church and we talked to her for a while and then shared our testimonies and then invited her to conference the next day and she said yes. So that night we wrote our testimonies in a book of mormon to give her because she´s not in our area and so we passed by to get her and she was ready with a skirt which is rare here and she was really grateful for the book of mormon and then she came to conference and really felt the spirit. She really enjoyed it. We then presented her to the elders and so hopefully they can teach her and baptize her. But it was such a neat experience. So technically 14 investigadors came I was really blown away. That´s all we taught this past week to everyone follow the prophet and an invatation to conference and it paid off. In minas when we had conference it was in the same city and not nearly as many people came. But Heavenly Father is really blessing us. I saw a few families from La Paz, they were visiting family, which was so great, they gave me big hugs, it was great to see them. I loved conference. Oh I have a question for you all, What are your absolute favorite scriptures? Thanks for everything, for the emails and prayers and everything. I love you all mucho.
con amor, Tiffani
p.s. these photos are of the norma and us the neat woman from the other city, and the family that was a miracle that came and the grandma is going to be baptized the end of this week. And us the country with the cows.