"It's absolutely awesome here!"

January 5, 2015

Hola! 

Man, Riley will be a great missionary! I can’t wait to hear how the Mexico ccm is!

It is absolutely awesome here! So, this first area they’ve assigned me to is in the far jungle. It’s so cool! it is on the border of Brazil, and I can see Brazil from my area. There is a giant river separating Bolivia from Brazil. There were 10 of us transferred from the ccm to Bolivia, Santa Cruz. They put us all in a hotel and we were just screwing around for 2 days before we were sent off to our areas. It was hard adjusting to the missionary life, but its awesome. My companion is Elder Del Valle and he has 3 months left in his mission. He has been teaching me a lot. He is from the Dominican Republic. The language is way harder than I expected. We arrived here Friday and we organized our house and on Saturday we went to a couple members houses and got to know them. Then, on Sunday, we had church. The church has maybe 40 people in our branch. Everyone is super nice, I felt right at home. Sunday afternoon the branch president took us around in his truck/ motorcycle thingy to all the less active members. We probably visited 12 families that night, it was awesome! We gave a short message to them and invited them back to church. Hopefully they come. We are reopening a new area so its hard to get started, but we are starting to find our groove. Seeing the people who live here has humbled me so much. I'm so grateful for everything I have back home. 

The language is slowly coming. I'm now at a point where its not one big slur. I can now hear the words, I just don't know what most of them mean. Haha! But, so far I'm loving my area I love the people here. My favorite part is the taxi’s. Haha! They are all motorcycles! So what you do is put out your hand to stop them, then hop on one and take off! It’s awesome! 

I hope everyone is doing well.

Love,

Elder Harding