Hello to all:
We sure love you all and appreciate your love, support, and prayers. We know that we are being blessed everyday with safety, success, and inspiration to know how to serve and whom to serve.
We continue to be challenged with our car. It is a good car, but the roads here are so bad, and when we travel outside of the city we are many times “offroading” and it isn’t good for the car. We need new rear shocks, we have a airbag indicator lit on the dash, the air conditioning stopped working, and everything is starting to rattle and squeak. Come to think of it, it sounds a lot like me!
We have been doing more visiting with the members this week - with Daisy Duarte the YW President and Mirna Duarte- the Primary President and Branch President’s wife. We are visiting many people who haven’t been to church in many years. Yet one common theme we hear regularly is that even though they don’t attend church, they still have a testimony that the church is true and most have a desire to return. More often than not they are embarrassed by what they are doing now, that they have not come to church, or that their children have strayed. Our counsel to them is that the Lord loves them and their children, He has not forgotten them, and that it is never too later to return. We had one very interesting experience this week. There is an inactive member family who we visited with Hna Duarte. This brother sells hammocks door to door during the morning and sells hot dogs and burgers on the corner of the plaza in the evening until late at night. We had a great visit with him, and he said that he rarely greets the missionaries because they try and commit him to come to church. We said, “Hermano, we are here to invite you to return to church and to bring your family with you”. He received it well but said he would not commit or promise to come. His wife however said that she could and would commit to come to church this next Sunday. We told her that the Hermana Cranney would be out front waiting for her. This good family has 4 children and 2 of them have returned to activity in Brasil where they currently live. One of the daughters and her Brazilian husband came to church yesterday and it was wonderful to see the light in her eyes and face as she and her faithful husband sat next to each other. A great testimony that like with the Prodigal Son, our loving Father is always ready and willing to accept us back into the family.
This week one of the Elders, Elder Mendoza, taught Cheryl how to cook a traditional Bolivian meal. It included a ground beef patty loaded with spices and bread crumbs, tons of white rice, cooked beets, and salads. It was a pretty dry and bland meal, but we enjoyed the experience. We fed the Elders yesterday prior to our trip to Tacuati (more to follow) and each of them ate 2.5 hamburgers, loads of cole slaw, chips, etc. They can really eat!
This week I finally broke down and Cheryl and I purchased a really cool new blender that has a juicing attachment. We have already made juice of Maracuya and it is really good. With this attachment the blender keeps all of the pulp inside of the attachment and the juice flows out into the jar. It is pretty cool. We also purchased a 42 litre electric oven. It is a Brazilian brand but Cheryl baked a cake the other day and it seems to work really well. Our counter space is shrinking but we enjoy having a few more household items to make it more pleasant.
The weekly attendance here has been dropping and we are concerned. So as a District and Branch Council we are doing more visits and inviting people to return, testifying to them of the blessings that come from keeping the Sabbath Day holy. Yesterday when we started Priesthood Meeting, it was only the Branch President and me. We sang a lovely duet for the opening hymn and talked about some of the challenges in the Branch. Our final attendance at Sacrament Meeting was 40 in Horqueta and 26 in Tacuati - a reasonably good attendance number. Everyone was just very late!
We had a good grip to Tacuati yesterday with the two Elders from Horqueta. They received permission to go with us to visit some of the investigators that are being taught by the members there. I also talked to the Group Leader (kind of like a branch President) and then taught a little to the members about how it is important to serve with all of our ability regardless of where we are called to serve. It was a good day and we enjoyed traveling with the Elders.
We love hearing from all of you. Please feel free to email regularly. We really are grateful that we can call you by phone or Skype and stay in touch. How very different from when Dad and Karen were in the Phillipines.
With the time change you recently had, we are now 4 hours ahead of Mountain time and 5 hours ahead of Pacific time zone.
Thanks again for all that you do.
We love you all.
Jerry and Cheryl
