December 26th, 2016 - Christmas Call Home

December 19th, 2016 - Just About Every Week with the Assistants

December 12th, 2016 - Memory Books (Libros de recuerdos)

Here in the mish it's really popular to have a book where other elders write and put a pic and what not. I made these for other elders this past week.

Here´s a phat schedule I made for this week...

November 28th, 2016 - Times Are Changing

Well we have 2 new secretaries now. Just so you know, here in the mission offices there's a secretary to the president (me - 2 months), records secretary (my comp Elder Decoud - a few weeks), materials secretary (Elder Palomar - 6 months), a financial secretary (Elder Cummings - few weeks), nurse (Sister Huber - whole mission), and the assistants (never more than 6 months - Elder Eduardo and Lara). It was Elder Cumming's 20th b-day this past week so we had a lil party in our house with papa john's pizza that showed up here in Bolivia for the first time about a year ago and has been way successful since then.

Elder Eduardo is taking the pic, I'm there in the back, Elder Palomar is there posing, and Elder Lara is up in the corner.

Anyway I'm just kickin it trying to help our dear mission president get adjusted to our mission and work a little better with us in the offices, trying to train and help the other secretaries, enjoying the fun activities and food that's here in the center of Santa Cruz, working with my companion through any difficulties, organizing the calendar for the whole mission, learning new stuff about Windows 10, computer shortcuts, Excel and Word, and being a secretary every day while balancing working in my area that's one of the toughest in the whole mission. We're headed into Bolivian summer which is not too fun but there's no other position in the mission that allows one to spend more time in an air conditioned room than the one that I have so I can't complain. I'm learning and growing with every day and loving mission life as always. Love and miss all you guys, always feel free to hit me up with your updates, things you want me to pray for, things you wanna talk to someone about, etc. :j

Love,

Elder Van Horne

November 21st, 2016 pt. II - Another Group of Cambios Behind Me

My dear family and friends,

Well I came to realize that I buy and take care of approximately 50 flights every time there's a week of transfers.... and those don't include all the other flights I take care of between transfers... so I could easily say that I've taken care of over 100 flights at this point... feeling quite a bit more confident.

Things were a little difficult this past week. I'm no longer in a trio. My companion is just Elder Decoud now and he's been pretty stressed this past week with everything that happened in the transfers so we have just been suffering through it. The missionary work gets pretty darn hard when things are stressful and you have to really rely on your companion when you're in the middle of a city. We have a lot of work to do for the week to come.

Here's part of my new room set up and my super short hair cut. :)

Part of my last area in Tarija.... actually really pretty place getting outside of the city part.

These guys show up every now and then. :)

and there's that classic wealthy poverty mix again...

The beautiful clouds that the humidity whip up.

November 21st, 2016 - Fotits Ejta

Here´s a few pics we took with a cam app on one of the computers here in the office to destress a little during the week of transfers. We take care of just about everything you can think of for 184 missionaries now that change areas in all of southeastern Bolivia during one week... so you can imagine it gets a little stressful.... so here's the secretary to the pres (me), Registries Secretary (I guess that's what it would be in English haha secretario de registros), and the 2 assistants to the president.... we're pretty good friends here in our international office: U.S., Ecuador; Brazil, and Argentina represented. :j