It was so good to talk to you all on Christmas and so fun to hear everyone´s voices again. I had a little weird moment while I was hanging up the phone though, it really hit me I was still in Paraguay and I knew I wouldn´t hear any of you again for 5 months, but don´t worry, I´m completely fine. The work is progressing, we´re hoping we can get a lot done this next week and in the next couple months. Transfers are on January 6 and we don´t find out if we both stay or not until January 4. We´re both pretty sure neither of us will go and I´ll end up being the last companion Elder Dennis has. It was kind of funny listening to parts of Elder Dennis´s call home because the whole thing was pretty much plans with his family on what they are going to do when he gets back. It´s a little hard because all of the missionaries I´m living with are going home soon. I´m keeping my focus though.
Since I just talked to you, I´ll tell you what happened the rest of this week.
On Christmas Eve we all got together at the zone leaders house, where we live still, and roasted marshmallows and watched all of the fireworks. Christmas after I called home the President called and told the zone leaders we all got 25 mil extra on our cards to go out to eat for Christmas so we all went out together to eat at this pizza place which was really awesome. After that we sent off the Zone leaders convert to go be a local missionary out in Yby Ya´u (that´s Guaraní and its pronounced really weird because a Y in Guaraní is pronounced like a U using a lot of your throut with your toungue kind of in the back of your mouth so its like ubu ju-u, its weird) with Elder Canales because his companion went into the mission office to go home because his two years are up. I don´t know if I told you about these converts. Elder Reid, one of the zone leaders, found him in his area on a division and the first thing Fernando, the convert, asked him was how do I become like you, I want to be a missionary. Elder Reid told him he first needed to be baptized and the Fernando told him right there he would and got a baptismal date. He started reading the Book of Mormon straight through and took all the lesson and was baptized in 3 weeks, which is the minimum here, with his brother Orlando and his sister Maricel, who is the girl I baptized. Fernando is so awesome though, he plays soccer with us all the time on P-day and is so good. He has already started trying to learn English on his own with us and can already respond to greetings and things. He even cut his hair so that he would look like us and then this last week for 3 days he was companions with Elder Canales only a week and a half after his baptism. Both of the zone leaders are going home before he can turn in his papers to go on a mission himself. I was talking with him and we´re going to work things out so I can go through the temple with him next year before he leaves on his mission, its going to be so awesome.
Anyway, so back to our area, we had a ton of people lined up to go to church yesterday and all of them looked pretty legitimate and then it rained. When it rains here people just don´t do anything, they stay at home asleep because all of the streets flood and you can´t really go anywhere. The streets flood very fast. Anyway, we left our house at 8AM to go to church at 8:30AM. We didn´t get there until 9AM because of all the flooding. When we arrived the only people there were the President of the Rama (Branch) and his wife, so we were leaving to go and get two of the girls that said for sure they were going to go to church, they called us and told us we should wait a while because it is raining, but we just went anyway, and brought them an umbrella. We picked them up and they went to church and then we left again just before Sacrament meeting to get some more investigators, these 4 boys ages 10-12 and their mom/aunt they live with, but they all couldn´t come so in church yesterday we had 5 people, the President and his wife, Dirse, this pretty awesome member lady we have, and the two girls we brought and no one else. In the Rama (Branch) six months ago they had over 40 people go every week. It is kind of sad we have so few, but we´re still working hard to build the Rama (Branch) again. I don´t know if I told you but we just opened up this area again this change. It was closed before because of a bunch of problems in the branch and all went inactive and they started to have just about no one go to church everyweek, so they closed the area and just added it to the zone leaders area. That is why we keep finding all of these less active members that have all these problems and they won´t go to church. We´ve have decided now to focus more on converts, kind of like baptizing a whole new Rama (Branch), so we are really pushing towards the finding right now. The only problem recently has been that the new investigator we get don´t want to do anything when we come back for return visits, but we have a new year ahead of us and a couple of people working towards baptism so I think we´ll start having some success really soon, hopefully.
We found another house this week, 800 mil and its a lot nicer than the other one we were about to get. Elder Brazier and his companion who are also looking for a house are going to live with us because it is big enough to fit us all and is super close to his area. It´s an upstairs apartment with a nice balcony and everything. The best part is it is brand new, we´re the first people that are going to live in it. I´ll send some pictures of it when I can, oh and speaking of pictures, I have a lot and I just need to copy them onto CD´s and I am going to send them out to you, probably next week. I was going to send them out this week but the CD´s I bought didn´t work so I´m going to buy more and try again next P-day.
Elder Dennis was telling me that they were having problems with Facebook last change so President has asked everyone to make it so you can´t get on it anymore, so if you could just change my password and stuff and then save it somewhere so I can get on when I get home that would be awesome. You´re not supposed to send anything from it to me anymore, so you can check it once and a while if you want, but for me it´ll be like I don´t even have one.
Hope I can start sending you some awesome conversion stories soon.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
Week 4 in Paraguay
Everything in Paraguay has been pretty awesome. I´m looking forward to Christmas, its coming up really fast. It really doesn´t even feel like Christmas at all though, it is so hot here I can´t even really imagine Christmas right now. My next Christmas in the mission is probably going to be worse too because the climate here in Pedro Juan is a little better than a lot of Paraguay. I guess we´ll see if that´s true in a year. I think it is going to be a pretty short email this week because I don´t have too much time left. I´m just going to go through all of mom´s questions and just explain how the call on Christmas is going to go down and then be done pretty much.
The five girls, they aren´t really progressing much. It was really sad too because we really thought one of them, named Liz, really got it. Two weeks ago we taught all about the fruits of the Spirit and how we can receive the answer that the Book of Mormon is true. All of them read and then told us they didn´t get any answer. We taught this lesson and it seemed Liz really understood what the Spirit felt like and even told us that she felt the Spirit. The next time we came over she had all these questions and doubt and told us she wouldn´t get baptized until at least February in order to give her enough time to receive an answer and learn everything. Now most of them aren´t even reading and none of them have gone to church in 3 weeks. Recencio´s son, Derlis, we actually haven´t really seen him much lately because he went and traveled somewhere last week and he works a lot. (he´s 10) His dad is going to church everyweek and doing what he´s supposed to so we don´t think we´ll have any problems with it. We do have to get over there and teach Derlis the rest of the lessons though before the baptism, but that won´t be hard.
More about Paraguay, I think I forgot to tell you about the fireworks here, everyone here has them and it is all about how loud they are. None of them do anything cool or anything, they´re all just really loud. We hear them going off all day everyday. We joke that we can´t tell if they´re fireworks or gunshots because Pedro Juan is known in Paraguay for smuggling drugs because it is the city right on the border with no border control. But don´t worry, I haven´t even seen anything and I´ve already been here a month.
I´m almost out of time so I´ll just explain the Christmas call. Here is how it works, the mission rule is 1 hour, which is actually pretty long. You are supposed to call me. We´re going to be at the church to do the call. You need to call me at 5:00 PM my time and it is a 5 hour difference, so noon your time. I´m also allowed a 3 minute call to finalize everything before Christmas so I´m going to call on the 22nd. That´s tomorrow, I´m going to call at 7:00 AM your time, so mom make sure you´re home, I know you´ll be awake, but don´t leave. I love you all and can´t wait to talk to you on Christmas!
The five girls, they aren´t really progressing much. It was really sad too because we really thought one of them, named Liz, really got it. Two weeks ago we taught all about the fruits of the Spirit and how we can receive the answer that the Book of Mormon is true. All of them read and then told us they didn´t get any answer. We taught this lesson and it seemed Liz really understood what the Spirit felt like and even told us that she felt the Spirit. The next time we came over she had all these questions and doubt and told us she wouldn´t get baptized until at least February in order to give her enough time to receive an answer and learn everything. Now most of them aren´t even reading and none of them have gone to church in 3 weeks. Recencio´s son, Derlis, we actually haven´t really seen him much lately because he went and traveled somewhere last week and he works a lot. (he´s 10) His dad is going to church everyweek and doing what he´s supposed to so we don´t think we´ll have any problems with it. We do have to get over there and teach Derlis the rest of the lessons though before the baptism, but that won´t be hard.
More about Paraguay, I think I forgot to tell you about the fireworks here, everyone here has them and it is all about how loud they are. None of them do anything cool or anything, they´re all just really loud. We hear them going off all day everyday. We joke that we can´t tell if they´re fireworks or gunshots because Pedro Juan is known in Paraguay for smuggling drugs because it is the city right on the border with no border control. But don´t worry, I haven´t even seen anything and I´ve already been here a month.
I´m almost out of time so I´ll just explain the Christmas call. Here is how it works, the mission rule is 1 hour, which is actually pretty long. You are supposed to call me. We´re going to be at the church to do the call. You need to call me at 5:00 PM my time and it is a 5 hour difference, so noon your time. I´m also allowed a 3 minute call to finalize everything before Christmas so I´m going to call on the 22nd. That´s tomorrow, I´m going to call at 7:00 AM your time, so mom make sure you´re home, I know you´ll be awake, but don´t leave. I love you all and can´t wait to talk to you on Christmas!
Monday, December 14, 2009
Week 3 in Paraguay
I´m just about to 3 weeks now in Paraguay and it is pretty sweet. There was a lot of tough stuff that happened this week. It´s been a pretty hard area for us here. Well for Paraguay, probably anywhere else missionaries would love to be doing what were doing, but its been a little hard. We had 6 people with dates to get baptized this month and it looks like all of them are going to have to be pushed back and most probably won´t even get baptized at all, at least while we´re here. We had this family of 5 sisters all lined up to get baptized on the 18 of this month, but none of them are really excited now. When we first met them they seemed so golden, all of them went to church, they still read the Book of Mormon and pray everyday, but they just don´t seem to understand what they have to do to get an answer. Now it really just looks like they don´t want to change. They have a very Catholic family and there aren´t really any doctrinal issues, but they seem like they don´t want to give up their Catholic family traditions. Elder Dennis and I were a little sad about that one. We also had the 10 year old son of the recent convert we have, Recencio, we are planning on giving Recencio the priesthood this week and he was going to baptize his son on Christmas, but he didn´t bring his son to church because he said he didn´t have any clean clothes and converts have to have gone to church at least twice before they are baptized so we are going to have to push him back to New Years Day, I think we are going to see about if we can get permission from the president to baptize him because he is in a complete member family that goes to church and he is a young child, but it looks like the baptism is probably going to have to wait. Recencio´s daughter also turns 8 in January so he is going to get the chance to baptize two of his children within a couple months of being a member so we are pretty excited about that. We´re going to focus really hard in these next couple of weeks on getting some new investigators with baptismal dates so we can have a least 4baptisms in January. The biggest problem for us right now though is we don´t really have too many members who can help us out. We have these standards of excellence that the President gave the whole mission that our goals shouldn´t be lower than every week. The goal for lessons with members present is 23 per week and we had 10 members in church last week, so that is definately our hardest one every week, but the Lord really has been blessing us though, it seems like all the time we are finding these less actives that just pop out of nowhere that help us out and we are able to get our goals. It´s just like something one of my good friends from the Museum of Art sent to me in a dearelder letter this week, he told me while we are making goals we should keep in mind what the Lord´s will is and He will help us to accomplish the goal because it is His will. Well I thought about that and I realized that President Wade is a man called of God to direct this mission, and he has told us 23 lessons with member present is the Lord´s will for every area, every week, so if that is the Lord´s will, no matter where I am, it is possible and I can testify that has been the case. It seems as though we have been having a pretty rough time here these first couple of weeks opening the area, but the more I look at it the more I can see the Lord´s hand in all that we are doing here.
There is this huge family that lives adjacent to the same plot of land Recencio lives on with his family and so every time we go over to talk to him with Derlis (his 10 year old son) we meet and talk to this family before or after. We´ve all become pretty good friends and they like listening to us but it didn´t really look like it was going anywhere with them. They we´re just really genuine nice people. Yesterday we are walking down the road and Rueben, one of the boys in this family, stops us to say hi and tells us that his brother´s wife that was pregnant just gave birth to her baby and it had died it her womb. We went over to see how the family was and they all seemed to be alright. They had the baby there in a cardboard box in the house and the mother was still in the hospital. I don´t know how the got there and everyone was just kind of looking at it and touching it. They had some good questions for us and were really receptive to our message.
I´ll share a few things about Paraguay to end off, motocycles are like family cars here, we see 3 or 4 and sometime 5 people all on one at the same time. They are everywhere here, and speaking of driving, its no rules here. It literally is the definition of offensive driving. You can pass people whenever you want, no one stops at intersections, and J walking is how you walk around. Today we took two taxis to Shopping China, something awesome I´ll have to tell you about later. They raced there, cutting down back roads and passing each other with cars coming the other way. Oh, and its normal to have 3 cars wide on a 2 lane street, and I have never seen a speed limit sign here.
The most defining thing about Paraguay are the bugs, it is so loud here all the time because of the bug noises. I think I get about 5-10 new mosquito bites everyday, most of them being on my feet which are the worst.
If you´re out on the street here and you´ve got to go to the bathroom pretty bad, people just go out on the side of the road, everywhere here. In Asuncion I saw a guy going on a tree that was part of the landscaping of the road and that is totally normal, no one thinks it´s even wierd here.
There is this huge family that lives adjacent to the same plot of land Recencio lives on with his family and so every time we go over to talk to him with Derlis (his 10 year old son) we meet and talk to this family before or after. We´ve all become pretty good friends and they like listening to us but it didn´t really look like it was going anywhere with them. They we´re just really genuine nice people. Yesterday we are walking down the road and Rueben, one of the boys in this family, stops us to say hi and tells us that his brother´s wife that was pregnant just gave birth to her baby and it had died it her womb. We went over to see how the family was and they all seemed to be alright. They had the baby there in a cardboard box in the house and the mother was still in the hospital. I don´t know how the got there and everyone was just kind of looking at it and touching it. They had some good questions for us and were really receptive to our message.
I´ll share a few things about Paraguay to end off, motocycles are like family cars here, we see 3 or 4 and sometime 5 people all on one at the same time. They are everywhere here, and speaking of driving, its no rules here. It literally is the definition of offensive driving. You can pass people whenever you want, no one stops at intersections, and J walking is how you walk around. Today we took two taxis to Shopping China, something awesome I´ll have to tell you about later. They raced there, cutting down back roads and passing each other with cars coming the other way. Oh, and its normal to have 3 cars wide on a 2 lane street, and I have never seen a speed limit sign here.
The most defining thing about Paraguay are the bugs, it is so loud here all the time because of the bug noises. I think I get about 5-10 new mosquito bites everyday, most of them being on my feet which are the worst.
If you´re out on the street here and you´ve got to go to the bathroom pretty bad, people just go out on the side of the road, everywhere here. In Asuncion I saw a guy going on a tree that was part of the landscaping of the road and that is totally normal, no one thinks it´s even wierd here.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Week Two in Paraguay
I´ve a whole two weeks here in the mission field and I am just loving it. The people are great and we get to teach a whole lot. I´m really grateful for that. Anyway, I´ll just answer you´re questions one by one. The plane ride was good and actually not too long because I just slept the whole way. The only long parts were actually in the airports, especially Argentina because we had to go and get our bags from the claim, get tickets and re-check them because we were on a different airline. It was pretty easy because there was this Argentinian lady, who spoke English that helped us out with everything. It was just long, the funniest part though was this one Elder that was with me in the MTC got really air sick and in the airport in Buenos Aires the lady that was helping him had him go to the doctor in the airport. I went with him to be his companion. The doctor checks him out a little and then just tells him to roll over onto his stomach and starts pulling the back of his pants down but couldn´t because of his belt. He was so confused but went along with it, she gave him a shot and then had him sign for it and we left. We still have no idea what was in the shot.
We actually don´t have an apartment right now, we´re living in this apartment that is built right behind the church with the zone leaders. It´s pretty nice for Paraguay, just a two room, bath and kitchen with four of us living there. We´ve been trying really hard to find a place in our area because it is about a 30 minute walk to where we do most of our work. We´re working on getting our own place. We found this really nice house right next to the members that wash our clothes, perfect size and everything, but it´s a little expensive, 1 million guaranies, which is about 200 US dollars. We´re trying to get the office to let us get it because everything is so expensive here. We are supposed to find something around 800 mil, 800,000 guaranies. It´s kind of cool how the money works here, everything is in guaranies and 5,000 guaranies is about one US dollar. You buy everything by the mil, which means thousand in Spanish. All the bills are 1 mil, 5 mil, 10 mil, and so forth, and 1 mil here is about equivalent to 1 dollar in the states meaning what it is worth to the people. The other day I bought a loaf of bread here for an amount about equivalent to 25 cents in the states and that is just normal here, especially in Asunción.
As for the rain, it feels like it rains just about everyday, we only really got soaked two days so far where we were just super wet. It rains a lot, but it has made it pretty cool. The heat really isn´t too bad here and I´ve been told that Pedro Juan is about the best place temperature wise. So hopefully I´m here all through the summer too.
It is true, there is a lot of dressing down by the people, because it is so hot. Its even worse when your closer to the border of Brazil because they have a pretty modernized culture. Some can even look pretty American. I think I already told you but our area is right on the border of Brazil, just today I could have thrown a rock into Brazil if I wanted to where we were shopping. Its really just two cities that mesh into one city but have different names because they are in different countries.
As for the food I actually really like it, the members here can cook some really good stuff. The culture here though is you have a small breakfast, a big lunch and then just like a small snack dinner if anything. It has been a little hard to get used to. The food here is just kind of bland, a definite lack of flavor, But I´ve been enjoying it, there has only been really one thing so far I really didn´t like and that was their pudding. It has a very different taste, but I´ll get used to it. As for the soda we do drink quite a bit. Our mission president doesn´t let us drink Coke. I´m getting a new president in July. We drink a lot of Fanta, Sprite, and Guaraná, and a lot of juice, lots of juice here. I think I miss milk the most though. The milk just isn´t the same, and I loved it so much, good thing I drank so much in the MTC! We never have dinner appointments, only lunch around 12:30 pretty much every other day. We only had 17 people other than us in church last Sunday though so for that I think it is pretty good, we´ll be getting more though, we´re working on it, it seems like everyday we hear about or meet some other less active member of the church. We taught a full lesson to a guy the other day just to find out recently he has already been baptized, that´s Paraguay for you.
Thanksgiving was just like any other day, we had a bunch of empanadas to celebrate but nothing big, nothing like home that is for sure. It was fun to hear about all the good times back home, keep me up on what's going on. The languages are going pretty good, I´m understanding more and more and we share pretty much evenly the time in lessons, Elder Dennis does a lot of the initial approaches though, just because understanding is my biggest problem right now, I can speak it just fine and people act like they understand me, but I´m just constantly working on more comprehension.
As for Elder Dennis he is great, its been pretty fun, he speaks Spanish super well and knows a lot of Guaraní so its fun to just ask him things for both languages. It´s still such a "tender mercy" I got put with him. I´m super grateful for it. He´s been a big help and I´m glad he speaks English. I think it would really be hard starting with a Latin companion like some of the other elders that came with me are doing right now. We´ve been working super hard and we teach tons everyday and we actually had our first baptism last week. His name was Recencio and he got married and baptized all at the same time. It was wonderful to watch, we´re trying to get him the priesthood now so he can baptize his daughter who is going to turn 8 in January. It was super awesome to see and to have a baptism so soon. I hope I can tell you about a whole lot more. Elder Dennis has baptized over 100 people here and 79 of them were all in one area so I think I´ll have a lot more to tell you about baptisms as the years go by.
We actually don´t have an apartment right now, we´re living in this apartment that is built right behind the church with the zone leaders. It´s pretty nice for Paraguay, just a two room, bath and kitchen with four of us living there. We´ve been trying really hard to find a place in our area because it is about a 30 minute walk to where we do most of our work. We´re working on getting our own place. We found this really nice house right next to the members that wash our clothes, perfect size and everything, but it´s a little expensive, 1 million guaranies, which is about 200 US dollars. We´re trying to get the office to let us get it because everything is so expensive here. We are supposed to find something around 800 mil, 800,000 guaranies. It´s kind of cool how the money works here, everything is in guaranies and 5,000 guaranies is about one US dollar. You buy everything by the mil, which means thousand in Spanish. All the bills are 1 mil, 5 mil, 10 mil, and so forth, and 1 mil here is about equivalent to 1 dollar in the states meaning what it is worth to the people. The other day I bought a loaf of bread here for an amount about equivalent to 25 cents in the states and that is just normal here, especially in Asunción.
As for the rain, it feels like it rains just about everyday, we only really got soaked two days so far where we were just super wet. It rains a lot, but it has made it pretty cool. The heat really isn´t too bad here and I´ve been told that Pedro Juan is about the best place temperature wise. So hopefully I´m here all through the summer too.
It is true, there is a lot of dressing down by the people, because it is so hot. Its even worse when your closer to the border of Brazil because they have a pretty modernized culture. Some can even look pretty American. I think I already told you but our area is right on the border of Brazil, just today I could have thrown a rock into Brazil if I wanted to where we were shopping. Its really just two cities that mesh into one city but have different names because they are in different countries.
As for the food I actually really like it, the members here can cook some really good stuff. The culture here though is you have a small breakfast, a big lunch and then just like a small snack dinner if anything. It has been a little hard to get used to. The food here is just kind of bland, a definite lack of flavor, But I´ve been enjoying it, there has only been really one thing so far I really didn´t like and that was their pudding. It has a very different taste, but I´ll get used to it. As for the soda we do drink quite a bit. Our mission president doesn´t let us drink Coke. I´m getting a new president in July. We drink a lot of Fanta, Sprite, and Guaraná, and a lot of juice, lots of juice here. I think I miss milk the most though. The milk just isn´t the same, and I loved it so much, good thing I drank so much in the MTC! We never have dinner appointments, only lunch around 12:30 pretty much every other day. We only had 17 people other than us in church last Sunday though so for that I think it is pretty good, we´ll be getting more though, we´re working on it, it seems like everyday we hear about or meet some other less active member of the church. We taught a full lesson to a guy the other day just to find out recently he has already been baptized, that´s Paraguay for you.
Thanksgiving was just like any other day, we had a bunch of empanadas to celebrate but nothing big, nothing like home that is for sure. It was fun to hear about all the good times back home, keep me up on what's going on. The languages are going pretty good, I´m understanding more and more and we share pretty much evenly the time in lessons, Elder Dennis does a lot of the initial approaches though, just because understanding is my biggest problem right now, I can speak it just fine and people act like they understand me, but I´m just constantly working on more comprehension.
As for Elder Dennis he is great, its been pretty fun, he speaks Spanish super well and knows a lot of Guaraní so its fun to just ask him things for both languages. It´s still such a "tender mercy" I got put with him. I´m super grateful for it. He´s been a big help and I´m glad he speaks English. I think it would really be hard starting with a Latin companion like some of the other elders that came with me are doing right now. We´ve been working super hard and we teach tons everyday and we actually had our first baptism last week. His name was Recencio and he got married and baptized all at the same time. It was wonderful to watch, we´re trying to get him the priesthood now so he can baptize his daughter who is going to turn 8 in January. It was super awesome to see and to have a baptism so soon. I hope I can tell you about a whole lot more. Elder Dennis has baptized over 100 people here and 79 of them were all in one area so I think I´ll have a lot more to tell you about baptisms as the years go by.
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