He's Arrived

Good Morning,

It’s a pleasure to inform you that Elder Arkoudas has arrived safely to the Bolivia Santa Cruz Mission.

Attached is a photo of the arrival of their group in the airport.

We’re happy to receive him and serve together with him in the Work of the Lord.

We are going to do everything possible to help him have not just a positive experience as a missionary, but an experience that will serve them for the rest of their lives. We will take care of everything we can for your faithful son of God.

Mondays are our preparation days and you will receive notices from your son weekly. We encourage you to write and encourage your son each week to faithfully serve a full-time mission.

We know that this is the Work of God and that Elder Arkoudas will share this truth with many people here in Bolivia.

Sincerely,

President and Sister Rodríguez

President of the Bolivia Santa Cruz Mission

it is finnally starting to get cold!!!

well at least in the mornings... and by cold i mean that everyonce in a while i can wear a long sleeve shirt.

this week has been really great. i had an opurtunity this week in one of my classes to set goals for my mission and for my life, it was a great experiance, and i highly recomend that everyone takes some time to invite the spirit into their lives, and when you are really sure you have him with you, set some goals. one thing they taught us earlier was that if you dont set goals you will still progress but you wont get as far as if you monitor your progress towards a set goal.

the other night (i think it was sunday, but i'm not really sure) we wached the new restoration video and in one part as they are building the temple Joseph Smith says that they arent just building a temple they are building themselves. i think this applies to missionary work because as you teach the basic principles of the gospel over and over again, they finally start to sink in and you learn to apply them to real life. i remember in science class the best part was always the expiraments. your teacher could tell you that mixing baking soda and vinegar will produce carbon dioxide. but until you built the volcanoe and did it for yourself you didnt fully understand the importance. 

for all of you that want to go build a baking soda and vinegar volcanoe now, congratulations! i would have done the same thing. please for the sake of your mothers do it outside though ;)

also i learned how to play hot potatoes in spanish and that packing up a suitcase all by yourself is a lot harder than when you have a mom, a dad, and 9 brothers and sisters to help you. this is my last week in the ccm and i leave for bolivia monday or tuesday.

if i said i wasnt a little nervous i would be lying, but i know that the lord will watch over me and everything will work out as the lord has planned it to. 

elder arkoudas

ps

 one thing i have noticed is that all the sauces are straight fire. we submitted an evaluation of our experiance at the ccm and i said " why is everything so spicy? not complaining just curious."

thunder thunder thunder

so last Wednesday right after i got done emailing you lovely people i went back to my dormitorio, it was raining a little and was talking with another elder in my dorm when this huge flash of lit up my whole room. after a split second of confusion i realized it was lightning, and then BOOM!!!!!! the loudest thunder i have ever heard tore through the room! we both turn to each other and started shouting and cheering. we were all going crazy for a few minutes after, and then i look back at my window and water is pouring over the sill!! it was raining sideways through lour window i slammed the window shut, but the seal was about as useful as an empty fire extinguisher. so we spent a good half hour mopping up water and trying to find a way to fix our window.

i already told you guys about my pants not fitting...still a little embarrassed about that... 

one thing i have learned while here at the CCM is that the days when i think a lot about what is going on back home(i hear it is actually getting cold) or the people i won't see for 23 and a half more months, like my little baby brother hyrum. are the days when the food tastes the worst, my feet hurt, and i fall asleep in devotionals.

on the other hand, the days when i think that going on a mission isn't taking a break from my life, but that i chose to do this, to serve a mission. those are the times i feel the holy ghost tell me what to say and i say things in Spanish that i would never have been able to say by myself. yes the food still doesn't taste super great, but it is worth it. because the person i will be when i walk of that plane in salt lake city, will far out pace the boy who left home those two years ago. 

we recently watched a talk by Elder Holland, and he said (more or less) that you can never go back, that person you were before your mission is gone. if you go home and fall away from the church after two years of preaching repentance and faith, how could you ever be able to look an investigator, your family or anyone else in the eye? the savior said feed my sheep, and that isnt just for two years, it is for the rest of your life.

i really like this, i feel like to often i have settled for pretty good, or i haven't stood up against inappropriate jokes, or a load of other things that i haven't been great at, now i know i wont ever be perfect, but i can definitely do a lot better.

i'm sorry if any of you were hoping the old Noah would come back and still want to go dumpster diving, or any of those other things we used to do that weren't all that great. i cant go back, i wont go back. in the same talk by Elder Holland he talks of how after the savior's death, peter didn't know what to do. so in essence peter said " this has been a great time but now i am going to go back to fishing" they fish for a night and don't have any luck and then in the morning a man appears on the shore and tells them to throw their nets on the right side of the ship. they do and the almost sink their ship trying to pull in all of the fish. it dawns on Peter that they have been in this situation before and he doesn't even wait for the boat to row to shore, he leaps into the water and swims to the shore. the savior feeds them breakfast and then he asks peter, do you love me more than these fish and your boat? Peter answers that he does, and two more times Jesus asks the same question. then he tells peter to feed my sheep. after this one night of going back to fishing peter realizes that the savior didn't call him just for that short period of time, it was for ever. peter then becomes so faithful the sick would ask for their beds to be put in the street so his shadow might touch them and they would be healed.

i have been called, set apart and ordained to this work. and it isn't just for two years, it is forever.

Elder arkoudas

Wednesday 10/10/18

This week was pretty crazy. general conference was super bien, i got to watch it in english thankfully. I really enjoyed sister cordons talk, and i especially liked the part where she said we are engraven on the savior's palms. i know that as we go through this live we can sometimes feel like just a face in the crowd and that no one really notices us or takes the time to get to know us, however in the savior we will always have a friend. He will not. He can not forget us. i know this church is true, i know that the savior loves each and every one of us. i went to a devotional with elder bednar right before i left, and he said that often we apply the atonement to everyone else but ourselves. he then said that if he could he would take each with his hands on either side of our face, look in our eyes and say that the atonement is for you.

anyways, on a less spiritual note, i finally learned how to catch things! it actually wasn't that hard... you just need to look at the ball and then keep looking at it until it is in your hands! i know that is what everyone says, but it is honestly true! my first week at the ccm we played ultimate frisbee, and i couldnt catch anything. now however i am a pretty good player if i do say so myself. 

the food here is ok. there are some bad days and there are some good. one thing i have learned is that if there is ever a sauce you can put on something only use a little, because it will give you third degree burns in your mouth.

even then though it still tastes pretty good. i didn't think i was over eating, or that i had gained any weight, but i went to the temple today, and when i put on my pants they didnt fit... before i left on my mission i had tightened the waist with a fancy button i didnt think i would ever have a need for, but lo and behold it was a good thing my mom helped me with that purchase. anyway i moved it back down a button and everything was good.

what else to tell you about...

oh pesos are cool! im still not sure if they are real money, a bag of doritos is like 10 pesos, and i guess the transfer rate is 18 pesos per dollar. so each peso is like 5.5 cents. but there is just something about walking around with a 500 peso bill that doesnt seem real.

thats all i can think of this week, have a great week

elder arkoudas

semana dos

this week was super fast! i cant believe  it is already time to write you all again( if you didnt get the last email los sientos, but it wasnt super good and you didnt miss much) this week i am going to try and give more details, the food here is pretty good. a lot of mexican food, wich is all super spicy, but its all good. i think i know why everyone kept telling me i would get sick, when you have the oppurtunity to eat 3 plates of tacitos... it is really hard not to. last week i went to the temple, and i forgot to mention how crazy it is to ride in a car through mexico city. we are in this huge school bus, and we are going 45 miles per hour down the road with cars literally 9 inches to either side of us. then whenever there is a gap of more than a foot, a motorcycle flies through the gap!! it is pretty crazy! sorry about the pictures last week. i thought i had a good idea, but google is un poco loco, and most of you probably couldnt see them. i will resend them a different way and hopefully it works better.

    hopefully i get better at writing emails because i have a feeling some people are going to be a little disappointed on how short this one was...

yo se que jesuchrist es el hijo de dios y nuestro padre celestial est amoroso, josé smith es un profeta de dios, y es iglesia est verdadero. en el nombre de jesuchristo amen.