My First Week in Paraguay

It is my first P-day (preparation day) in the country and we have been having a great time. I was glad to hear about the snow at home because it is so hot here, really hot all the time. It only gets hotter in December and January, but don´t worry, I´ve got sunscreen. I slept at the mission office Wednesday night in a little bunk house they have there for the new missionaries. We didn´t spend too much time there. Right after study time and breakfast we went to the church in Asuncion for changes. Its actually the church right next to the temple. It was wonderful to see the temple. You´ll never guess who my trainer is, remember how Haley Dennis has a brother serving here? Well, he´s training me, its pretty funny actually and he keeps on telling me about how crazy his family is going to respond to the news. He´s training me in a little city called Pedro Juan Caballero, its eight hours from the capital Asunción and right on the border of Brazil, literally on the border. Paraguay has three steps along the north border, I like to call it its back, and Pedro Juan is in the corner of the middle step. There are so many people here that speak Portuguese so it has been hard starting out with the language. My Spanish isn´t really bad at all, so people can usually understand me. Most of the people here speak Spanish, Portuguese, and Guaraní so I usually can´t understand them. If they just speak straight Spanish it is easier, I can´t understand everything but I get most of it. Yet almost always they speak Spanish with a Guaraní mix or Portuguese with a Guaraní mix so most of the time I just don´t know what is going on. It is nice people can understand me though when I speak Spanish. When we teach the people here need everything simply put so they can understand. I really feel the Lord has been helping me with the language. It is hard for me to keep up in lessons but it seems like when it is my turn to talk I can say everything I need to and I can pretty much answer questions directed to me. It is a little hard here to because we are opening a new area. We had eight people here already with baptismal dates but it looks like we only have about three that are super sure. This mission has a lot of baptisms. The first day we were here we were told by the AP´s (Assistants to the President) the goal for the mission for us to keep is a baptism every week, the goal is 4 per month. One baptism per week is pretty awesome, so pretty soon with the investigators we are teaching I should be able to write about some baptisms. The work is hard here but it is fun and rewarding. The people here are really nice. It gets frustrating sometimes though, for example, the other day we taught this lady and her neighbor the first lesson and set up a date to come back and the next day when we came back we could see the lady in the back of the house, she hid. Anyway, the city we are in right now isn´t as poor as the rest of Paraguay, but it is still pretty poor, but people still have some nice things. Everyone here has a motorcycle, I mean everyone, there are probably twice as many on the road or more than any cars at one time. Everything is going great, we had some investigators in church yesterday that are getting really excited about their baptismal dates. We´re teaching five sisters right now and they are just awesome. They all really have a desire to do what is right, they´re reading everyday and they´re praying and getting ready for the 18th when they´ll be baptized. Some are more excited than others, but I think we´ll have them all ready by the baptismal date we have for them. We are also teaching this Indian family where some of them only speak Guaraní. Most of the time we are there, Elder Dennis just says everything and I have no idea what is going on. The man has to get married to his wife before they get baptized, and we´re working on that right now. It seems no one gets married here. Everyone lives together and raises a family but very few we teach are married. They say they are husband and wife. Here in Paraguay if you want to separate it is a really hard process and you have to wait two years so people just don´t get married. We have been working really hard though, we have met a lot of good people and have been teaching pretty much all day everyday. We also have some awesome members in our branch here that love to go teach with us and that is such a big help. The branch is really small. We had fifteen people in church yesterday. Three were investigators. Elder Dennis and I gave the talks, said the prayers, and passed the sacrament, so it was special. We´ve already had one huge rainstorm and got soaked walking home, I don´t think we would have been more wet jumping in a pool.