Week 12 in Paraguay-Companion is Changing

Everything is pretty tranquilo right now, we´re just finishing up some last minute things after a day of saying goodbye to pretty much everyone. Elder Dennis is going into Asuncion tonight and he flys back home on this Thursday. Just to explain a little how transfers work here, transfer days are always Wednesdays, so I still don´t know who my new companion is, but I´m pretty sure it´ll be a Latin that doesn´t have very much time in the mission, that is what seems to be happening here lately. All the new missionaries that have had their trainers leave have all got young Latins for companions. We´ll see what happens in a couple days. For the next two days I´ll be with Elder Snow, one of the zone leaders here. Elder Reid, his companion, is also going home on a bus tonight, so the next couple days we will just be working in both areas. It should be pretty fun to be out with a zone leader a couple days, I went on a division once with him before and he is an awesome missionary, I´m sure I´ll be able to learn a lot from him.
Valentine´s Day here was a little crazy, pretty much this whole last week, but because of a different reason. There is this holiday in Brazil that lasts 5 days, the 14th being the middle of the 5 days and the biggest, called Carnival. It is pretty much the same as Mardi Gras, the one they celebrate in New Orleans, but they have a few different traditions. It gets so bad the missionaries in some parts of Brazil have to stay in their house for 72 hours straight, they aren´t allowed to come out at all. Since we are on the border, it isn´t as big as Brazil, but the people still get pretty into it. The big tradition here is water balloons. So the tradition is everyone pretty much gets water balloons and they just sit out in front of their houses and throw them at motos and cars and people that walk by. Then other people get in big groups in the back of trucks to drive by and hit the people that are on the side of the road, so its pretty much one big war and if you have a water balloon you´re in, but sometimes the people don´t really care if you´re in or not. Needless to say we were attacked quite a few times in the last few days, but no one was ever able to hit us. Elder Dennis likes to say that we were blessed like Samuel the Lamanite. Most of the people knew better than to attack us, they would just fake it and then say "hi" to us, but some throw them anyway. This one house we walked by there were these little kids and they wanted to throw the balloons at us and their Dad, who was with them was telling them not to. They yelled at us to ask us if it was alright if they threw them. Well we didn´t hear what they said and so we were just walking by and gave them a thumbs up (I don´t know if I told you yet, but a thumbs up here is just like waving, its like saying “What´s up?”) and the next thing we know this little girl just starts yelling, “Dijo sí, dijo sí” which means, “He said yes, he said yes” and then they proceeded to throw water balloons at us. None of them have very good aim, most of them just hit trees and things, so we didn´t get too wet, but it was really funny. I wish I had some videos of trucks driving by with all the people in the back attacking people on the side of the road, it definately would have been a fun thing to do back in the day, not that I would have done it or anything...
The weekend was pretty crazy and Elder Dennis is going home now, which is really crazy. It was fun to kill him though because he gave me a lot of stuff, good thing I didn´t ask you to send back some of the things I was going to because he gave me everything I was going to ask you to send.
I almost forgot also that today in Shopping China we saw all the missionaries from Ponta Porá, the city right next to Pedro Juan in Brazil, and they were so funny. It was like we were celebraties because we spoke Spanish and have Guaraní name tags. It was really funny and they all took pictures with us, but I didn´t have my camera at the time so I didn´t get any.
I am learning a lot in my scripture study. I think the most important thing I am learning right now is the Spirit, everything about it. I am learning so much about how the Spirit communicates, how it feels, what it can say to you, and more than anything the importance of doing exactly what it tells you right when it tells you. I think that is the biggest thing I have been learning from not only my studies, but pretty much all my time with Elder Dennis. I am sorry to say that I have not been the best with this thus far on my mission. I´m starting to realize that it is really hard for me to follow promptings and do things different ways when I feel as though it would be something my companion wouldn´t want to do or would react in a way I wouldn´t like, and I am realizing that is selfish and I need more now than ever do exactly what I know I have been told to do by the Spirit. That is definately something I have learned and I now realize how eternally important that can be. And to answer the next question, I think this more than anything would be the best way for Justin to prepare, to just read and pray everyday and write down everyday every time he feels the Spirit. I didn´t realize until I got out here how important the Spirit is, it is everything in this work, we can do nothing without, so if we don´t recognize it, or worse don´t follow it, we will not have success out here, it really is just that simple. When we have the Spirit, not just individually, but together as a companionship, we will baptize. This is a mission that baptizes over 200 people every month and we haven´t had a single investigator in church in 6 weeks now, there is definately something more that can be done.