September 28th, 2015 - The Missionary Life: Making a Man

My dear friends and family,

Well... emailing is quite hectic as I've explained before and I always have TONS to say but things are chilling down rather quickly. I would have loved to tell you all about these incredible experiences with progressing investigators getting baptized every week like I imagined before, but unfortunately the missionary life has become depressingly realistic.... I have wasted quite a good amount of time simply adjusting to everything; all of walking which is I don't even know how many miles a day through basically sand, trash, and rocks which make up about 80% of the city to find impossibly confusing addresses (or no find them) in 100 degree near 100% humidity weather in full church clothes carrying a heavy over the shoulder bag with all the necessities miles away from your house and teaching tools including a massive bible and triple in Spanish, no dinner except street store snacks and food from members, the nonstop work, Spanish, and the ultimate brain block that comes when I try to do anything in this language, it seems like I'm just saying words and can't really express myself.... which is REALLY hard for me at times because more than scriptures or ANYTHING else, I've explained the gospel through stories and personal testimony. Every hour brings a new life-changing sometimes overwhelmingly difficult challenge. These past few weeks though have been incredibly great. I have ultimately developed very strong legs and feet, better Spanish than most missionaries at this phase in their mission, a good amount of all the qualities my incredible trainer has, and a strong independence and paradoxically dependence on the Lord in all things.
EVERYONE down here is EXTREMELY polite and shakes your hand on average 3 times in a simple passing street visit and is often very willing to listen.... but the hardness of hearts is rather difficult to plant the seeds of the gospel in. Not to be negative but we haven't found more than maybe 1 or 2 investigators in my month and a half here that MAY be willing to change their whole lives and live the gospel.... not a single baptism since the one we had from other's efforts 4 days into my mission here. There's a new church wide rule that an investigator must come to church 3 times before being baptized and it has cut down on the number of baptisms infinitely so.... but it's for the best because we have more inactives and less actives from past generations than our entire mission could bring back to the church just in our area.

I've had some incredible spiritual gifts of having incredibly specific answers to my prayers out here that I've talked to some of you individually about and that helps me a lot (being the perfectionist I so often am) that I'm living worthily enough to receive and recognize those answers to prayers every week. I've also been amazingly able to remember very old stories from my past through the Spirit in lessons that perfectly help people better understand and gain testimonies of specific principles. I've been speaking the language INCREDIBLY well and the gist of tongues is real EVERY day out here. I just lack a lot of new vocabulary and nit-picky grammar which will come with time and practice. I've also received some REALLY cool personal revelation on a daily basis.

Some of this really cool revelation.... God does not take our steps for us.... it is by grace we are saved AFTER ALL WE CAN DO. If we listen carefully under the spirit of prayer, the Lord will guide, correct, and mold our steps as we walk along the straight and narrow helping us to avoid cliffs and holes in the road.... but he will never take our steps for us, we have to take them and keep walking. It's vital to remember also that there is no one perfect path for you... this thought came to me as I prayed for where to go in a lesson that my companion and I were a little stumped on. We had to take the first step and try some things and ask questions and the lesson turned out great as we tweaked our steps according to the guidance of the spirit. I shared this thought with my comp later and it was EXACTLY what he needed to hear because he's going home soon (he REALLY doesn't want to go home, isn't trunky at all, wants to be a Bolivian forever and teach here.... amazing example for everyone) and has to move on and choose a career which he was really worried about. Often times the revelation we receive is exactly what those close to us need to here.... we also understand it better by teaching it.

More later because I'm running out of time again but we had a WONDERFUL blessing of overcast, cloudy, cool, breezy weather these past 2 days and today. I had an incredible intercambio this week and found out what I was made of and that I know how to do more than I thought I did and every day I'm feeling more and more like I'm almost 20 yrs old rather than the teenager I was before my mission.... that's what the mission will do to you I guess.... absolutely an answer to prayers as I've been praying to become the missionary I need to be for the people here and become the man I need to be for my future family after my mission.

Read chapter 4 in Preach My Gospel, it's amazing, lean unto the Lord in ALL thy doings. I love you all.

Random fact: I wish I had kept a bug bite and bug kill count because I'm definitely in the hundreds on bites, Denge and Chikenguña are sure to come and I'm in the thousands on mosquito, fly, and cockroach kill count haha, no worries mom and dad ;) all is well and bugs are immune to repellent down here. Missionary life still doesn't really seem real but it's more and more real every day. Our pensionista's daughter's name is Cielo.... I guess it's not really a guys name dang it, but don't tell anyone because I still want that to be my nickname when I get back haha. We made some BOMB banana bread last night with some members. Missionary life is more and more fun and enjoyable EVERY day.

Sincerely,

Elder Van Horne

End of our intercambio from Friday afternoon to Saturday afternoon this past week. Elder Sperry and Elder Rico on the right. Elder Sperry is from Draper, Utah and has a twin brother in ROSEVILLE, CA on his mish right now!

This little guy was in our kitchen this week. (From email 9/21/15)

September 14th, 2015 - Settled In

My beloved friends and Family,

Alright I don't really remember what I said about my daily schedule from last week but we are working non-stop out here and it's WAY different from the states. I'm having a lot of firsts out here like shining shoes for the first time, cooking eggs for my comp, drinking soda from a bag, eating a little cooked cow utter.... it's really exciting.... I'm LOVING trying all these new things. Our house is right next to the SUPER rich, probably millionaire Choquevillca family whose son Mauro just left on his mission a few weeks back to Trujillo, Peru. We have about 4 or more elders out of our ward alone here which is WAY cool and 2 more putting in their papers right now and about 5 more preparing and coming to teach with us a TON. WAY cool! I've been giving away tie bars, a few gnarled up ties, vials, and watches like crazy because there hasn't been a single report of things getting stolen from missionaries out here for a really long time and that's half the reason I had all that stuff... Anytime I give anything away though... it's rarely even that expensive and definitely not something I need, but it's to people that REALLY make a difference for us.... by coming to teach with us almost EVERY day of the week, giving us rides to tons of places instead of us having to walk and they treat it like GOLD wearing their watch, tie, or tie bar EVERY day they get the chance and thanking me for it because it's usually the ONLY one they have.... way humbling and cool. No worries mom or dad, I'm not giving away ALL my stuff and you know how much I love my ties, tie bars, watches, etc. Our house is right next to the Choquevillca's massive plaza I should say where they have their massive banana shipping semis pulling in and out to get fixed up and loaded with bananas on the daily.... it's not even fair how rich they are and how awesome the guys are that work on their trucks. They love to BLARE music which makes it a little difficult to study in the morning especially since basically no one down here understands the strictness and importance of the missionary rules down here. Kind of a tender mercy though because they play some pretty sick music and half of it is the American good electronic pop in English from back home.... which all of which i'm not supposed to be listening to or focusing on. Just a tender mercy and a curse at the same time. The people here struggle quite a bit with fulfilling their callings and our investigators REALLY struggle with keeping ANY commitments. Half our appointments fall through every day. We rarely get help with missionary work except from the teens getting prepped to go on missions and a few other golden members that help us. EVERYONE listens to our message.... and then wastes our time by not keeping commitments and displaying after several appointments that they're really not interested or willing to change.... more next week. Gotta get some pics in :/

Elder Van Horne

We had a multi-zone conference with Elder Uceda from the 1st quorum of the 70 this past Wednesday. This is me and my district with him and mission pres. and wife. WAY COOL guy.... VERY spirited. Understood the WHOLE conference..... which was completely in Spanish. :j I guess Bolivians have some of the worst Spanish so practicing understanding them all the time made it WAY easy to understand someone with really good Spanish.

September 7th, 2015 - How Time Flies - 2 Months in the Mish

My dear friends and family,

Alright, this is going to be kinda scattered but I've got a bunch of stuff I've been wanting to tell you all. First of all, always try to send pics, never worry if you've written too little, this little hour and a half is plenty stressful with what I already get haha. I take pics of all my emails and pics you've sent me to review in down time throughout the week if I ever get any. I've even thought that if they're aren't things you want me to answer or address right away to just put a little note and I can take a pic and read it later in the week so I can use this time more efficiently, that would help a TON.

Okay whoops, I wasn't done with that. I learned a while back how frustrating it is to be unable to perfectly explain gospel principles to people because of a language barrier and had the personal revelation that I'm learning to express these gospel truths in the simplest way possible and what a blessing that is rather than using my own words to relish or possibly complicate the message further... sometimes a simple testimony is all we can and need to offer these people. Which, especially for these people who often know so little about these gosepl truths, is perfect. Since I've viewed it in that light the language has come 100 times more easily to me. I don't exactly know what the definition for fluent is, but I feel like I'm pretty much there. If I focus enough I can understand the gyst of whatever anyone is saying and I can ALWAYS express what I'm trying to say. What a blessing.... that I've been humbled even down to the dust of the earth every day and in turn been teachable enough to receive the VAST gift of tongues, personal revelation, and answers to prayers that I have received in this short time on my mission.

Okay.... these computers are ghetto haha sorry for accidentally splitting this email up a ton. I sadly can never express everything I want to say in these emails but no worries, I've almost hit page 300 in my journal.... good thing I brought about 5 of them, I have over 600 pictures, and I write in my agenda/planner, my journal, and a study journal every day so I'll have plenty of what some other people call the plates of Elder Van Horne to bring home and share further details with you all.

I also wanted to testify of having a scripture marking system and especially recommend buying a little book by Sandra B. Black about a scripture marking system. I makes studying the scriptures infinitely more interesting and enjoyable. My brand new English quad is filling up wuick with colorful markings and annotations :) PLEASE check that out.

Alright, My average day... wake up at 6:29am (1 minute earlier than usual as directed by mission president.), companionship prayer, personal prayer, put my contacts in, exercise: sometimes we run a little first, we have two hand weights in our house, I'm getting pretty yoked and go hard in the paint for every workout, not to mention that my legs are ripped from walking like 5 miles every day. We usually play church music on our little speakers as we get ready, breakfast: cereal (granola and Bolivian Frosted Flakes), yogurt, sometimes a banana and leche con avena sabor a canela, shower, finish getting ready, 8am personal prayer, personal study: scriptures and preach my gospel for the first 12 weeks, then missionary library books are allowed too and other church talks, 9am: comp prayer, comp study: read 3 pages of missionary handbook, share personal study insights, plan for day more, study together, 10am: The First 12 Weeks: working through activities to make me a full fledged missionary with my trainer, 11am: language study for 30-60 minutes (usually 45 ish), 12pm: comp prayer, leave house for proselyting, street contacting, and appointments, 1pm: lunch at our pensionista that we usually have to wait forever for and have some downtime, 2-230pm ish: proselyte and more appointments, 9-9:30pm return to house, plan for tomorrow for half an hour with the comp starting and ending with prayer, prepare for bed, 10:29pm go to bed. Goodness I hate running out of time to email.... more on this and the people we teach next week. Check 2 Nephi 32:7 for a bit of foreshadow though.

The timers on these computers force shut it off after an hour and a half :(

You should love your trainer so much that when you're done shining his shoes, you can't tell the difference between his with 22 months and your's with 2.

First actually cool wildlife, not much around here in the city. If you whistled, it would whistle the same thing back.

The meal that made me sick all this week... only cost like 12 Bs though... under $2.... soup in a bag... everything is in a bag down here including the milk. If you buy a soda you have to buy the bottle too..... or drink it out of a bag.

Got my first Boliviano haircut last week, not bad.... He actually used a razor blade to get my sideburns and back of my neck.... only cut me twice, not bad. :j

Not many lizards or geckos down here either sadly :/

A lot of people make clothes down here with English on them.... check that tag :j

August 31st, 2015 - Update with Pics

My breakfast bundle on a good day... I kinda blew through my money for the first two weeks a little too quickly but at least my breakfasts were awesome for a little while. Leche con avena sabor canela tastes just like horchata! :D

My companion and I don't always get to wear pday clothes, but when we do.... we look gooooood.... and match apparently accidentally.

Still got a little photography skill. Goodness I wish I could send more pics.... My camera is pretty bomb and has like 4x HD photos I guess.

Heidi dogs? (Our family dog is a miniature pinscher named Heidi)

How most people get around down here on what they call Micros. One of our members owns one and that's his grand-daughter in the pic.... this is one of the cleaner ones.

VERY humbling when members that have a 2 or 3 room dirt floor house home bake brownies for you, give you their best chairs, and go buy you a drink from the nearest tienda under the light of a single light bulb.