Transferred to Cobija

November 24, 2014

Hola!

Ok so you will never guess where I am.  I got transferred to Cobija! For those of you who don’t know, Cobija is the area farthest away from Santa Cruz in the mission.  I had to take a plane to get here, first to La Paz, and then to Cobija.  I could only bring one suitcase of 20 kilos; I think that’s like 50 pounds. This area is basically the jungle.  If there weren’t houses and roads, it would literally be jungle.  It’s super green and gorgeous and I love it! 

The last few days I was still in my other area in Belen, I felt like I was going to be transferred so I wrote notes to all the families we were visiting.  I realized that I really love that ward so much and all of the people we were visiting.  I loved my companion, and I’m really going to miss them so much.  But I am also so excited to be here.  Everyone wants to come to this area, but also everyone is a little afraid of coming out here. It is so far away, it’s the jungle, it’s really hot and there are a lot of bugs.  Which is true.  It is really hot and humid and I’m almost always sweating.  And yeah there are a lot of bugs, but it’s not really a big deal. You just have to always put insect repellent on. It’s really different because it’s una rama; a branch instead of a ward, so it’s way small, and church is at 3 in the afternoon, but just until the end of the year.  But honestly I just love it here.  The coolest part is that our area touches the border of Brazil.  The limits of part of our area is the rio; the river, and on the other side is Brazil.  We can literally see Brazil! There is a bridge where you can literally just walk across and be in Brazil.  We’re obviously not allowed to cross the bridge, but how cool is that! So anyway there are a lot of people that speak Portuguese, and we’re going to have to learn a little, because we have a recent convert and an investigador I think that only speaks Portuguese.  The other day there was a cute little Brazilian boy that was following us and I started to talk to him and he talked back in Portuguese. It was really funny because an Hermana taught us to say como esta in Portuguese and I tried to say it but he didn’t understand.  So anyway I’m going to start studying Portuguese. 

My new companion se llama Hermana B.  She’s from Peru and she’s pretty cool.  She’s really tough, kind of a tom boy, and really different from me, but I think we’ll get along well.  She’s nice and funny and a hard worker. 

I feel a lot more confident because I have over a year on the mission, and half of the elders in the zone are new.  I really like all the missionaries in our zone though, because we have service like every day, so we’re together almost every day. 

There aren’t a lot of investigadores, but we’re going to find new people.  The people that we’ve taught so far are all really great.   The people here are really nice and friendly, and very humble.  There are a lot of things that are different about the life style here than in Santa Cruz.  For example, the transportation.  Everyone here rides motos, like motorcycles, but the small kinds.  And there are small buses, but really like just vans converted into buses.  And then the water.  They have huge buckets of water that they put on the roofs to get water, because here there isn’t a lot of water, and they say sometimes the water goes out for a day.  Or also the electricity goes out for a little, but then it comes back.  Also the rainy season is starting, and when it rains it POURS! So that will be fun…!

Also another thing that’s really cool is since it’s like a jungle there are a lot of fruit trees and right now is the season of mangos, so we’re always eating mango, and it’s super good.  There’s a lot of tropical fruit I have yet to try.  Also, our pensionista is 19 years old and recently married and we eat rice and chicken literally every day…  But it’s all good.

Anyway so that’s just a little bit about my area.  My camera broke so I can’t take pictures, but we’ve been taking pictures with my companion’s camera, so I’ll try to send pictures from there.  But the Internet is really slow, so I hope it will work!

I just realized that this week is Thanksgiving.  I wish you all a very Feliz Thanksgiving! You’ll have to eat turkey and mashed potatoes and rolls and pumpkin pie for me in my honor. 

Thanks for everything! Your thoughts and prayers and friendship and love.  Love you all!

Con mucho amor,

Hermana Tijerino

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NOTE: In order to protect their privacy the names of my companions, members and investigators will be omitted and their name tags obfuscated.

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