i forgot my journal. so forgive me if this email isnt as great as other before emails

this week was good. we have been working hard, but we havent really seen a lot come from it.  one 15 year old  girl we visited seemed super receptive of the first lesson, and we gave her a book of mormon. but the next lesson we came back and she gave us the book of mormon back and said that she couldnt believe in joseph smith. and that when she read it she felt confused. a couple of days later we went back and tried to give her the book back and we tried to tell her that the holy ghost wont make you feel confused. but she said that when she prayed she felt calm and i think she  was confusing the calm feeling, which was the spirit, as an answer to not read the book of mormon and that it wasnt true. and that because she didnt want it to be true, she twisted what the spirit was telling her.

that just showed me that we have to be so careful when we feel the spirit. because if we arent  we can confuse his promting and twist it to what we want. one thing it sais in preach my gospel is that a prompting from the spirit will never go against the teachings in the scriptures or from the profets.

one good thing that happened this week is that yesterday (sunday) we were talking to this lady. and her little puppy sofi was going crazy and biting us and pulling on our pants and running around, and the tv was playing from inside a house nearby, and her 5 year old son was sitting on her lap and bouncing around. we were trying to explain to her why we were visiting and what we teach about. and it was pretty hard to feel the spirit. but at the end we asked her to pray. she did and as she prayed i felt the spirit slowly spread through my chest, and even though the dog was trying to chew on my hand i felt like it would be ok. after she ended her prayer, i looked up at her and i could see that she felt the spirit too.  

after that we went to two of our investigators, but they werent there. it was about 9 at nigh. and we have to be home by 9:30. we were kind of close to our house. but we had been trying to revisit some families on the other side of our area for a little bit. we had contacted them and gave them a pamphlet, and we had put them as a plan b for a few days, but we hadnt had time to go back. so we decided to walk all the way out there. and the first door we knocked on a lady answered and her little son ran and gave me a hug. we started talking with her and her and her husband have been fighting for a while, and she has been having a rough time. so we shared a scripture about comin unto christ, and then we gave her a copy of the family a proclomation to the world.

that was honestly the first time it really sunk in that i am a missionary. this is it. this is what the mission is. we didnt knock on her door and try to share a scripture that condems her because she wasnt baptized in the true church. we listened to what was going on in her life and invited her to give her burdens to the savior and follow him.

it would have been all to easy to go homea little early. but i promise you all that every time you do the right thing even though it seems harderm you will be blessed. i know i can promise this because it says so in the book of mormon. if you dont remember where, read it and find out 😉

(did i really just use an emoji... wow being on a mission does change you)

elder arkoudas

i just really want a karpil

I´m just going to dive right in.

tuesday night we were sitting outside the house of one of our citas waiting for them to come home, when this man on a motorcylce started to go up the road past the street we were on. then he stopped and came down the street we on. he flew past us sitting on the curb, and then he stopped turned around and came back to talk to us. he just said that he was going through a rough part of life and that he had seen the missionaries walking around and wondered why we were so happy all the time. we talked a little about the savior and then the family wewere waiting for showed up and we had to go, but we gave him our number and got his adress and we have tried tostop by a few times, but no luck yet. 

then when we started teaching the lesson to this family their youngest son eduardo, and their daughter nicole brought out a bowl of cookies. they handed me and elder archer one, and we ate them, and then they handed us another one. and another. and another. and another. and another. and another. and another. we seriously ate at least 10 cookies. my hand always had a cookie in it for the next half hour!

   

we are talking to an hermana zenter. she is about 20,and whenever we teach her, her neighbor´s little kids always come out and listen. any ways we were teaching her and we asked if she had prayed about what we had taught her, and she said yes (which was awesome), and then whe asked how she felt. she said when she prayed she felt peace and this really good feeling. (which was also awesome!!!) when she said that i honestly did a double take. i leaned over to elder archer and asked him if she just said peace, because peace is one of the feelings it explicitly tells you are from the spirit in galatians 5:22-23 (didnt even need to look that up ;) ) he then leaned back over to me and said that he thought so, and we asked her a bunch of clarifying questions to be sure she was talking about our lessons and yeah it was a pretty cool experiance, especially because we have only had one lesson with her and there were a bunch of little kids running around, so it was a little crazy.

ok now for the nitty gritty, slightly unsightly, not for the faint hearted real side of missionary work they dont even come close to preparing you for in the MTC.

I ate a chicken heart on friday. we went to our pension for lunch, and we always have soup and a main dish. and in my soup i saw this dark lump floating around. so i pick it up on my spoon, and it is a chicken heart! aortic valve and everything!! i showed my companion, and he was like dude you got to eat it. i was honestly the most scared i have been on my whole mission. any ways i knew i was going to do it. so i just kinda prepared my self, and popped it into my mouth. i started chewing and it wsnt actualy that bad. taste and texturally. the fact that i knew it was a chicken heart was pretty bad... but it was just a tough piece of meat about the size of the top half of my thumb, with a slightly bloody after taste... it honestly wasnt that bad though.

Another weird fod i ate was these beans you had to peel twice. you took them out of the pod, and then you had to peel the individual beans. They were super rico, to use the words of our pension´s son.

today we hiked to a waterfall and it was great. it reminded me of going hiking in southern utah with my family. i will put in some pictures cause i took plenty.

i realized everytime i am reading the scriptures and it talks about a righteous mother, i picture you doing what they did.

11/12/2018

This week has flown! i cannot believe it is already pday.

 well this week was awesome! we have a family who accepted a baptisma date, and others who are so close. the father of the family is named josé luis and he is awesome. he has been ready for a few weeks, but he is waiting  and helping his wife and one of his sons to be ready too.

yesterday onthe way back from church i was thinking about cultural shock... i dont think it exsists. here i am in a country that speaks a different language, uses different money, spending my time in a completely different way, and i´m good. not freakedout at all. maybe in a few months i will lose it and go crazy, but i guess we will just have to wait a little bit to find out.

one cool thing that happened last night, we went way out into the middle of nowhere to meet with this family, and when we got therethey offered us some juice, we said yes and when they brought it  i took a swig,it kinda tasted like dirt, and my companion said dont drink too much. i lookedover at him and he is chugging his glass. i´m gonna be honest i was super confused. he then took my glass from me and chugged that too. then he whispered to me, i wont get sick, you will. then i understood. it is crazy how easy it is to forget sometimes that i cant drink water from the tap. anyways that was kinda a cool story.

i dont know what else to share, we just kinda go to work. walking the streets, knocking doors and teaching lessons.

ofh i got something. so we eat lunch at a pension, that is just a fancy word for a member who we pay to feed us.but then for dinner we are on our own, so me and elder archer every nightcook hotdogs, and put them on this flat bead they sell here. and if we are feeling it we cook some eggs too. but one night we were talking about what we buy from the lady in the tienda (little store), and we only ever buy milk, cereal, hotdogs, bread, juice, eggs,and condiments. never vegetables, never anything healthy... just that. for lunch we always have a soup,a plate of rice, veggies and meat, and then a fruit based dessert, all in all a very well rounded meal. hermana rodriguez (the mission presidents wife) makes sure they feed us good stuff, the whole 12 food groups and all that stuff. so it isnt like we arent eating healthy, but the lady who runs the tienda probably worries about us just a little.

well that is all i can think of for this week.

one cool thing i was told this week is "when you dont know what to say... yo se que..." yo se que means "i know that" i relly likethis because when ever i dont know what to sayin a lesson i can just bare testimony.

have fun transitioning in to winter, it is summer here, and will be for the next 2 years, haha. but seriously if some one wants to send me a picture when it snows, i would be very happy.

till next week 

elder arkoudas

Bolivia, The Archer, a dog bite, and a sunburn

WOW!!! has it only been 7 days? (just kidding it has been 11) 

i am going to try and keep this email as organized as possible, but forgive me when that doesn´t work out to great.

TRAVEL

we left the CCM at 11:30 monday morning. after an hour drive to the airport, a 6 hour flight to Panama, an hour layover, a 5 hour flight to Santa Cruz Bolivia, and another one hour bus ride we arrived at a hotelito(basically a room with 12 beds and a toilet) our plane landed in bolivia at 4:00 in the AM. thankfully the presidente let us sleep till 11 and then we went out to lunch at an italien restaurant.

we spent all tuesday with the president and then on wednsday in the after noon we met our companions. my companion is named elder Archer, super cool guy, my area is Tarija. normally you take a hour plane ride and then a three hour bus ride to get here, but there were no flights scheduled till friday so we spent another day in Santa cruz halfway on splits with the secretaries and the president´s assistantscontacting and running errands.

thankfully thursday in the afernoon they found a flota  (basically a tour bus) that was leaving for Tarija and so we spent 15 hours thursday night and friday morning on a flota and we arrived in Tarija at 8:00 in the morning.

TARIJA

our apartment is pretty nice, it would probably be condemned if it was in the states, but here it is perfectly fine.we have beds, three sinks, a toilet you can flush toilet paper down, and electricity. the hygiene here in bolivia has obviously improved a little since... actually i think it is just a lot better than i thought it would be. the water from the tap is a little sketch. you "can" drink it, i dont but some other missionaries do and they dont have any noticable problems... that being said i am going to stick to juice and bottled water for now.

side note juice here comes in a bag... and so does milk...

FOOD

maybe i should have just put the side note about juie asnd milk here... ... oh well too late. the food here is pretty good. a lot of fried chicken and rice, and chopped vegetables. lunch is the biggest (and kinda the only) meal here. we usualy get soup; a plate of rice,veggies, and a meat thing; and a fruit dessert thing. over all pretty good stuff. 

here in Tarija it isnt as hot as in santa cruz. in santa cruz it was like 8:30 at night and i was sticky, that is kinda the best way o describe it, but here in tarija it isnt too bad. in the sun and around the middle f the day it is nie to stop at a tienda (a little store that are every where around here) and grab a cold bag of juice. but other than that it is a lot like home, weather speaking.

 we have a lot of investigators, i havent met all of them yet, but everyone here is super oben about religion. we will knock on a door, and they will open and say i´m catholic or i´m pentecostal, but then we talk about jesus and how he established a church while he was here and they are super receptive and we set a return appointment.

DOGS

friday we were walking down this street, and we were passing all of these dogs. when all of a suden they all just started barking and growling at us. i was freaking out a little bit, and elder Archer was freaking out signficantly less than me, but still a little nervous, when this big dog named boyka came up to us and chased all the other dogs away. it was awesome!! the church is definitely true!!

then sunday we were walkng past these dogs and they didnt move until after we passed them, but right after we passed them they feaked out and ran up to us and tried to bite us. one bit my knee (i am fine it didnt break skin). it was crazy. elder archer pretended to pick up a rock to throw at them and they ran away. definitely scared the crap out of me though.

then today we played soccer and i got a sunburn... thats all

elder arkoudas

 our kitchen. that isnt a bag of cat food. it is cereal.

 our washing machine... yep it is just a sink

outside our window...

Good News! Bolivia Santa Cruz Mission

Dear Arkoudas Family,

It is a pleasure to tell you that Elder Arkoudas has arrived safe and sound to his new area, 4 de Julio 1, with his trainer, Elder Archer, from Draper, Utah.

Thank you for all your support and love. Elder Arkoudas is serving in the Lord´s work, and even though the time seems long, we promise it will go by quickly and the blessings will be grand for working in His vineyard.

For concerns or questions, you may always respond to this email address.

Attached are a few photos with your missionary.

With love,

President and Sister Rodríguez

President of the Bolivia Santa Cruz Mission