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.