Elder Mark Yates, Jr.: Abril!

Hard to believe it's already April. Time flies so fast. Along with this normal letter, I bring a little surprise. If someone has been counting or paying attention to the cambios here in Bolivia, one would logically think that this new week we are starting would be the cambios. For whatever reason, however, this past cambio was only 5 weeks instead of 6, meaning the changes already happened. My companion and I didn't actually have any cambios, nor the other Elders we live with, so it's like nothing happened. Just to let ya'll know that the cambios already passed.

With that little news out of the way, there really isn't too much to write about. Monday we didn't do much more than wash clothes, clean the house and visit in the evening. Tuesday we did have a little adventure. Because of all the rain recently, tanto aqui en Trinidad como en otras partes de Bolivia (both here in Trinidad and in other parts of Bolivia), we had heard that the land outside the city limits was completely flooded. And we wanted to see if it was true or not. As such, we wandered on out to the city limits and, sure enough, we found a giant lake with trees sticking out. It was pretty odd to see, and will send pictures as proof. We then returned to proselyting and the like.

A view of the flooded land. We're on top of a mound of dirt.

Another view of the flood.

We're told that the water was higher before, and has lowered substancially.

Not sure what happened, but we didn't do too much walking Wednesday, as we were visiting the entire day. There is a family in our area that is breeding (I think?) alligators and has a little artificial pond of some 10ish gators. Very cool to see, but no pictures of this experience (sorry). Since these gators were much bigger than the last gator I held, we wern't to desirous to pick on up this time. Thursday we went to visit a part of our area that is pretty aisilated from the rest of our area. We spent the entire afternoon out there, and contacted some pretty nice families. The real adventure was the trip out there in the motos. After all the rain, it seemed like some big cars tried to pass through the little path, leaving giant holes along the way. Even though it was all dry, it was still a bit nerve-wracking, but very fun. Not so much fun for the driver though...

After the great success we had contacting the aisilated area Thursday, we decided to go and contact the secret area we found the other day. Unfortunately, it did not go as well and we got to work on our sweet farmer's tan instead. Also, the other week when I sent pictures about our adventure to the hidden land, I realized I didn't send a picture of the bridge, so I will correct that today.

My companion crossing the bridge that leads to the little neighborhood we found.

It's mostly safe and only bends a little bit.

In the evening we did have much better success and visited some people, including the Flia Gaston. This family is the one I mentioned the other week (I think) that is progressing super well for their baptism the 23 of April, along with their marriage. Very excited for them.

As ya'll should know, this Saturday and Sunday past we were priviledged to listen to the General Conference. We listened to many great and uplift talks. There was a little difficulty in the Saturday afternoon session, as the power decided to go out about half way through. After some time, the power came back on for a few minutes, then shut off again. Oh well, guess I'll have to read those talks later. Apart from that little malfunction, the rest of the conference passed right along without any problems.

The 4 of us missionaries in Mangalito during the General Conference.