Bermejo

I received the call Wednesday at 9:30 pm that I was getting transferred to Bermejo, Tarija, Bolivia and that I had to be ready at Thursdsay 4:00 am to go to the airport. I arrived at the airport at 5:30 am, checked my bags, and departed for Cochabamba at 6:30 am. After a layover in Cochabamba, we took off again headed for Tarija we arrived in Tarija at 9 am where they dispatched us to the bus terminal to take a trufi (a van that´s something in-between a taxi and a bus) to Bermejo.  At the terminal, they told us that it would be impossible to go to Bermejo because the road to Bermejo was blocked off by some protesters and that we would have to wait until the protests stopped.  I went to eat lunch with another elder who was waiting for his companion to arrive from Santa Cruz and then returned to the terminal where we waited until 6:30 pm when we received news that the protests had ended.  After the 3 hour trufi ride, I arrived in Bermejo at 9:30 at night.  I met my companion, we planned for the next day and I prepared a tiny bit for the district meeting the following day (by the way I got called as a district leader a month and a half ago).

I´ll let you all know more about Bermejo next week, but basically it´s a smallish town on the Argentinian border that´s a lot like Yacuiba.  It´s the hottest part of the Bolivia, Santa Cruz mission and one of the top 3 hottest places in all of Bolivia (possibly the hottest, depending on who you ask).  It´s extremely dusty (as you can see in the pics) and the air usually had a thick haze of dust that almost looks like fog.  It was formerly part of the Cochabamba mission and as such, more than half of the missionaries are from the Cochabamba mission as well.  I´ll let you all know more next week, but I´ll tell you right now that it´s really hot and it´s only going to get hotter (as hot as 50 degrees celcius).

Until Next Time,
Elder

Casdorph