Happy Carnival!

Angela's Baptism

Hello Everybody! Happy Carnival!:D

This week was very special. We received our new transfer information, and I will be serving in Sucre as one of the two sister training leaders in both Sucre and Tupiza. I am so excited and feel so happy to know that God has confidence that I can help build the God by serving in this calling:D

We painted one of our investigator's houses with the Elders

Funny: It rained a TON on Tuesday. We had a 10 minute walk to the church, and during these 10 minutes, we were absolutely 100% SOAKED! Because we were covered from head to toe in water, we decided to make the most of things, and we jumped high and hard into every puddle that we saw:D

Jumping in the rain puddles :D

Cultural: Happy Carnival:D Carnival is where there are tons of dances in the street, people decorate their houses with lots of colors and everyone douses each other with water to "chase away the devils":D

 Hermana Condori y yo at the last district meeting juntas;( 

Spiritual: We had two baptisms this week!:D The first was Angela and the second, Carlos Fernando. They are both 8 years old and were both very excited for their baptisms. My favorite part of the baptisms was their testimonies in the end because they thanked everyone for coming and described their decision to be baptised. So cool!

Carlos' & Fernando's Baptism

These baptisms were very special and SUCH miracles because Hermana Condori and I had been working, praying and fasting a ton to have 1 baptism, but God blessed us with 2!

Hermana Condori`s family sent her a package and they sent a sweet hat from Peru to me:D
We are so grateful to Hermana Condori!  Katie has loved serving with her.  She is a wonderful missionary and Katie will really miss her!

Have a great week. I love you all so much!

Hermana Garff 

Music, Sasha and Valentines

This week I accompanied the Young Women in my ward in their song festival with all of the other young women.  It was so neat because I could tell they loved it!

Happy Valentine´s Day:D

This week was incredible for lots of different reasons, but my favorite being that we are going to have 2 baptisms next week!!

Funny: This week was a little funny because there was tons of music! I accompanied the YW in my ward for their music festival. We preformed "He Sent His Son." I also acompanied the second counselor in our ward for sacrament meeting. He sang "Love at Home," and I LOVED accompanying him, because he was VERY excited to sing and happy to share his talent:D Lastly, I accompanied a group of missionaries in our zone conference. We sang "Be Still my Soul" and this too was very powerful:D

I accompanied these missionaries in our Zone Conference.  They sang "Be Still My Soul" and it was beautiful :D
It was so great to be a part of this!

Here is another beautiful picture of the celestial skies here!

Cultural: CARNIVAL:D This is a HUGE holiday here where people douse each other with water in the streets at any time and at anyone. Carnival is next week, but the celebrations have started this week and it is pretty crazy:D As we were walking past one of the grand events, a little girl doused us pretty well. Wow, I can´t wait for next week, haha:D

This is one of the set ups of a huge festival here called "Carnival".  Carnival will take place next week.  It is a HUGE celebration where everyone throws water at one another.  A little girl sprayed us pretty well when we were walking by ;D

There is a ton of fresh juice sold on the street and it tastes SO good!
The only problem is that the people selling the juice never want to take a picture with us, haha :D

Spiritual: This week we are expecting two baptisms: an 8 year old from a less active family who is going to be baptized by his dad:) and another 8 year old girl from out ward.  We have been meeting with her for the past few weeks because her family really wanted her to be baptized, but she had lots of doubts.  Now, she is excited, ready, and anxious to be baptized and receive the grand gift of the Holy Ghost:)

This is a picture of me and a dog named Sasha.  We are not friends, haha!  We had a golden investigator, but Sasha always interrupted the lessons because she wanted to play.  Now we can't get ahold of the golden investigator.
So yes, we are not friends ;)

We had a ward activity this week called Minute To Win It.  The members LOVED it and our investigators did too...

This is one of our investigators, Javier.  He is "super-awesome", and as we discovered, also very competitive, haha!  He was very proud that we won, so he asked us to take a picture :D

My companion can cook like a champ.  I am so lucky!

I love you all!  Thank you so much for your love, emails and support.  Sorry it I can't always respond right away - please just know that it always makes me smile to see emails from such great people!!

Love,

Hermana Garff

My Companion and I were each other's Valentine twin;)

Happy Valentine's Day :D

pic1: There is tons of fresh juice in the street and it tastes SO good! The only problem is that the people selling the juice never want to take a picture with us, haha:D

pic 2: This week I accompanied the Young Women in my ward in their song festival with all of the other young women. It was so neat because I could tell they loved it!

pic 3: This is one of the set ups of a huge festival here called "Carnival". Carnival will take place next week, but it is a HUGE celebration where everyone throws water at one another. A little girl sprayed us pretty well when we were walking by;D

pic 4: Here is another beautiful picture of the Celestial skies here!

pic 5: We had a ward activity this week called minute to win it. The members LOVED it and our investigators too...

pic 6: This is one of our investigators, Javier. He is super awesome, and as we discovered, also very competitive, haha! He was super proud that we won, so he asked us to take a picture:D

pic 7: This is a picture of me and a dog named Sasha. We are not friends, haha! We had a golden investigator, but she always interrupted the lesson because she wanted to play. Now we can´t get ahold of the golden investigator, so yes. We are not friends;)

pic 8: My companion can cook like a champ. I am so lucky!

pic 9: I accompanied these missionaries in our zone conference. They sung "Be still my soul" and it was beautiful:D So great to be apart of it!

pic 10: My companion and I were each other´s Valentine twin;)

pic 11: Happy Valentine´s Day:DHappy Valentine´s Day:D

Happy Valentine's Day - Still loving Bolivia :D

My pensionista made me a cover for a can:D  It is beautiful, required lots of time,
and makes me smile tremendously every time I see it, displayed proudly in our house:D

Hey Everybody:D

This week was brimming full of appointments, but nearly all of them fell through. No obstante, this week was one of the greatest weeks of the mission because there were ALWAYS miracles that really showed us that God really was right there walking along with us!:D 

This is our wall of miracles:D Every day we make sure to right down 4-5 miracles becuase there truly are so many miracles every day. Sometimes when it seems like there are none, we are easily reminded from our wall that, YES, there are ABOSLUTLEY miracles! 

One of our favorite member families!!:D It is like heaven to walk into their home because it is filled with love. 

Funny: Angela is a girl in our ward who is 8 years old and is SUPER funny! We were in the chapel, practicing a musical number, when she popped her head into the room and decided to join us and also judge us on how good we sounded. After we finished playing, she had two checkmarks next to number 1 and an X next to number 2. I was number one, but we were a bit confused as to the marking for my companion. Angela explained that she sang too low in one place..harsh, haha! It was also super funny, because she drew pictures of us. I will have to send a picture of it next week, but she drew me at the piano with drops of sweat flying off of me because the song I was playing was a bit fast and perhaps I was a bit stressed, haha!:D

El cielo aqui es increible! 

Cultural: It has been a bout 6 months, so I guess I will finally describe what we eat every day:D For breakfast, we usually eat apples, bannanas and oatmeal, but when we are feeling super fancy, we will make eggs, eat granola and throw some bread in the mix. For lunch, we always eat tons of vegetables with some form of potatoes with rice and chicken, but every other day we eat some kind of soup (sometimes with lots of bones, haha:D). For dinner, we eat apples, carrots and bannans ("souper" fancy;D). Sometimes we will eat "dessert" at lunch, but this is usually yogurt with more fruit. It tastes really good, but I definitely miss chocolate, haha:D 

Cuando celebramos una mes nueva, celbramos con BURRRRRRITOS:D 

The dueños aqui know us by name and we are their favorite clients!

Spiritual: We have been teaching a less active family for months, and they have been great to work with. They have attended church 10+ times and this week we were finally able to set a baptismal date with their 8 year old son. He will be baptized on April 1 (this is not a joke;) because this was the same day that his dad was baptized a few years ago! They have really strong testimonies and are excited to be involved in the church again! 

Our house for Valentine´s Day:D 

Happy Valentine's day:D 

Con Amor, 

Hermana Garff 

I was sending a message one night, and apparantly was really tired, haha:D

The sky pic 2:D 

6 Months Out and Alllll's A' Wailll! (Thank you Trigger! (Robin Hood))

With blazing heat, sometimes you really have to take advantage of the little patches of shade :D

Hey Everyone!

This was such a great week, and a few days ago I hit my 6 month mark; this is crazy! I feel like I started my mission 2 months ago! Also, I would like everyone to know that our bathroom is now fully functioning!:D Our shower drains and our toilet flushes so life is GOOD!

The first time my watch broke, haha!

My watch has broken a few times, but our good, new friend, Augelogio, has not failed to fix it every time! 

Funny: This week was absolutely hilarious!! We got locked in an investigators house for an hour because the dad left and had the only keys to the house, I accidentally told the shower tech-man that we felt electric shocks during our shower (when I can`t understand questions, I just say "YES" because it feels better to say yes....except when my companion shakes her head "no" or we get strange looks from people), and when my companion shared some profound doctrine about the pre-mortal life, I shared some a story from the friend about a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich (what can I say, it looked like a really good story, haha!) This week was also great because our zone activity was some sort of water balloon volleyball and we nearly wet our pants we were laughing so hard:D

Waterballoon Volleyball :D

Cultural: Garbage is collected here with a gigantic garbage truck (like at home), but there are no garbage cans (so people have to wait for the garbage siren to bring their garbage to it). This is pretty neat, but it is a little hard, because the truck alwyas comes at different times during the day.

Cultural Tidbit for the Week:  Bolivian garbage trucks :)

AddMy companion and I purposely matched outfits this week to spice things up.
We were called: Trees of God and Blueberries of God"

"Blueberries de Dios"

Spritual: This week I learned that God works in mysterious ways. We worked really hard this week to get people to church. We were expecting 6 investigators to come, but by the second hour, our hearts were sinking a little, because nobody had come. Right before the first hour of classes started, we felt impressed to walk through the church. When we did this, we saw one of our CONTACTS sitting in one of the classes!!!! His name is Jose and he was one of our last contacts that we had encountered after hours of contacting one of the previous days (so we were really exhausted). Nevertheless, I remember feeling the prompting to contact just one more person. When we follow spiritual promptings, we will always, always be right. God will bless us, and we will never regret kind actions (especially when those kind actions guide people to church!)

The Work :)

Knocking the door of our favorite restaurant, burrrrrritos, hah :D

Have a great week everyone!:D

Con Amor, 
Hermana Garff