Week 32 in Paraguay, Change 5 Week 7

Sounds like the home is a little busy right now. I`m not going to lie, I was looking forward to reading everyone`s reaction about my new change, but I guess I kind of just got on the computer a little too early, it is only 7:30 there. It seems like mom always writes me at about five AM. So for all who didn`t read last week, I got a pretty big change this transfer. I haven`t gone anywhere yet, I`m still in San Lorenzo right now, but on Wednesday (July 1st 2010) I`m moving into the office in Asuncion to be the mission`s next secretary. I`ll be going into the office the same day as the new Mission President. It looks like I`ll be working pretty close with him and getting to know him really well. I still don`t know how I really feel about the change. Most of the missionaries don`t talk so great about being in the office and from the way it sounds I`m going to be in there a long time because I`ll be the first secretary to the new President. Because of that too, I will be getting trained for 5 weeks when office training is usually only 3 weeks. Elder Peterson, the secretary right now, is going to be my companion/trainer for the rest of this change starting on Wednesday. There are a few perks to being in the office though, good food, air conditioning, and best of all, I`m getting a drivers licence. Yet, I will really miss it here in San Lorenzo and actually going out and finding and teaching and just being with the people. I will have some proselyting time still, but just from 6-9 at night. The rest of the time I`ll be working in the office.
Anyway, so that is the really big news right now, I`m going into the office, but at least my clothes with last for sure now, right?
Other news, the world cup is still going on and USA was eliminated on Saturday.
It is all we hear about now, when we give lessons and from drunks in the street, everyone seems to know. I really want Paraguay to win and advance on Tuesday because they have never gotten further than they are at right now, but that might just add to the USA comments, but still, I want them to win. We are all into the world cup in the house, we have the bracket posted on the wall and we have been filling it out and talking about who we think is going to win and what not, right now its looking like Uruguay, Brazil, Spain and Germany in the quarter finals, but Argentina has a really good team too, so that game, Argentina and Germany, will be an interesting one.
Anyway, more than that, I`m going to try and answer some of the questions I didn`t get to last week.
How are you doing? I`m doing really well, pretty much all I could think about this whole last week though has been going into the office. It is a different kind of change because I knew so long before it actually was going to happen, and its been pretty much all I have my mind on. It has been hard saying goodbye to people too, I love the ward here so much and I really don`t want to leave, not to mention I was about 100% positive before changes I would just be staying because Elder Williamson was going home. In anticipation of leaving, it has been nice to have the whole week already knowing. I`m not scrambling to pack and say goodbye to everyone like I had to do in my last area because I found out the same day I had to leave. All in all I am pretty excited, I`ll be working right with the President and maybe I`ll learn a lot of good things in the office that will help me later in life. I`m going to have to work a lot with lawyers too because of missionary visas and things, so my legal Spanish is going to get pretty good. I`ll be able to have intelligent conversations with Gary when I get home in Spanish, maybe. It will be interesting dealing with the government here.
Was the info about BYU helpful to your ward mission leader? Yes, it was very helpful, and we got everything all set up for him, but he is just a little down on the whole idea right now. Pretty much everything he looks at and does to get into BYU relies on how well he can speak English. He feels like its just too much for him, so he has been a little depressed about the whole task lately. He understands English pretty well, its just his speaking, he is really self-conscious of his pronunciation, and he isn`t really improving as quickly as he would like. Once he gets the English down it is all really easy, but the English is the hardest part. We have been working on that a lot and I think he is a little more excited about it now. He just really wants to get there and feels like he doesn`t have all that much help to help him learn English, but he`s getting it, it`ll just take a little more time.
How is your head, all healed up now? Yes sir, all better, there is a little bit of a scar where it was the worst, but you can`t tell unless you look for it. I think it`ll go away completely before I get home, so it`s all good.
How is the work? The work is great, I`m working with Elder Job and Ventura right now so they can get to know the rest of the area and we are getting them a lot of help again. San Lorenzo is a tough area, it always has been, but it is starting to show some growth, they are going to be having a baptism next week, and we are working with this other girl that is really cool named Rosi, she so far has kept with all of her commitments and has a baptismal date for July.
What is your weather like as you are in winter right now? It has been pretty cold because it is so humid, but some days are still really hot too, it feels like Spring was in NY, they are about the same, the Paraguayans think it is super cold though.
Anyway, not too much time left, I`ll be in the office on Wednesday, and a very very important note, my P-days are now going to be on Satuday, so write me on Fridays, or just continue on Mondays and I`ll get it on Saturday, but if you want to send me something this week, I am going to have another P-day on Saturday, I love you all so much, Elder Adamson V

Week 31 in Paraguay, Change 5 Week 6

I`ve got some great news today, but I don`t have tons of time so to tell everything I`m just going to answer mom`s list of questions.
So how hard of a week working did you have sending your companion home? Well, let`s just say that he has pretty much already been home for all of last week. We have not been having really any success at all, pretty much all week we spent packing, giving things away, saying goodbye to members and all the people he wanted to see.
Who is your new companion? Did you stay in your area or get moved somewhere else? Do you have your new mission president yet? I`m going to answer all three of these at once. I usually wouldn`t know what my change is yet because we get our changes the Tuesday before change day, but I got a special change. President Wade personally called me to see how I felt about it, and of course I told him I would do it. The new mission president comes in on the 1st of July, and I am going to get to know him really well. I just got called to be the mission`s next secretary, so it looks like I am going to be moving to the office and I`ll be the very first secretary to the new mission President.
I don`t have much time to explain things, but I am going to be in San Lorenzo for one more week because they are closing up our area and giving the whole area, like it was when I got here, to the other two missionaries, Elder Job and Elder Ventura. I`m staying for a week after Elder Williamson goes home to show them the other half of the area and then it is off to the mission office when the new mission president gets here. Sorry, I can`t write too much, we are in a cyber by a hospital because a lady from another zone called us to give someone a blessing and we have to go in at four, but it looks like I will have two P-days next week, because the office elders have P-days on Friday, so you`ll get double next week.

P.S. Paraguay, campeón del Mundo!
Translation---Paraguay, champion of the World

Week 30 in Parguay Change 5 Week 5

So another fast week already in Paraguay, I can`t believe how fast the time is moving by. I was just thinking this morning looking at Elder Williamson`s countdown that I have already been in San Lorenzo now for 11 weeks this week, it still kind of seems like I just got here. Anyway, so things are kind of crazy here right now with the World Cup starting last week and all. I don`t know if you guys knew that it started or not, but the World Cup here is pretty much the world for the people down here. Every advertisement and promotions and everything having to do with business in general here is revolving around the World Cup. It has got me pretty into it, too. I borrowed a little pamphlet from a member here to make a bracket last P-day like they do in the states with March Madness and I gave it to the members here to fill out. We have all been having a lot of fun speculating what is going to happen. Pretty much everyone says its Brazil and Spain in the final, so we`ll see what happens. Paraguay plays their first game today, against Italy, the defending champions. We`ll see how it goes, we`re all getting ready to watch it, all the missionaries got permission to watch the game in both missions here and all the zones are getting together to watch it in our building. Paraguay has a pretty good team and Italy lost a lot of players from the last cup, so we`ll see what happens, we are hurting a little from what happened to Salvador Cabañas, but I think we still got a chance to win, or at least tie.
The work has been pretty slow lately, we had a couple people ready for church this last week and when we went to check on them on Saturday the one had a miscarriage and was sick in bed. She didn`t even know she was pregnant. The other ones told us they were going to Chechos (a dance club here in San Lorenzo) Saturday night and then to church in the morning. We asked them what time they were going to get home to sleep and they told us they were planning to stay at Chechos until six in the morning, then to the church at eight. Needless to say, we didn`t see any of them in the church on Sunday. Our convert that we gave the priesthood came though, so we had three of our four converts in church, even though we didn`t have any investigators.
More than that, not really much has been going on lately, I had chivivi (the runs in Guaraní) last week for a while and I`m still kind of recovering from that, but I`m feeling a lot better now. I love you all and I`ll be working hard this week to send Elder Willy off (home) with some hard working memories, love Elder Adamson V

Week 29 in Paraguay Change 5 Week 4

Hey Family! So first things first, my forehead is pretty much completely healed, in only a little more than a week. You can still tell it is there if you look hard, but you definitely have to look a little hard, but I am amazed at how fast it healed. I just put Aloe on it everyday for about three days, and then switched to neosporin and its completely gone.

My companion`s foot is doing really well, he just took a few days to recover because of how deep it was. Yesterday he got sick though and was throwing up at night and rested a little bit this morning, but it looks like he will be doing all right. He has been getting really trunky though lately, he does only have two weeks left until he goes home, the two companionships in the house has only made it worse too. The senior comp in the other companionship is a friend of his he made earlier in the mission out in Concepcion, a city out in Zone Lejos, which if you remember just means far away, and he is going home in two more changes, so the two of them together just make them both really think about home. Elder Williamson has been really good once we are out working, but once we get into the house he is just off the walls, slap boxing, wrestling, dismantling my bed, whatever he can whenever we are in the house. It makes for a fun time, but sometimes, as you can imagine, it gets a little crazy in the house.
Anyway, for my letter today I actually wrote down all the things I have been thinking about that I have wanted to write to you and so I`m going to see how much I can write with the little time that I have left.

First of all, I haven`t ever said anything about the buses here. Out in Pedro Juan there weren`t any buses, but here they are everywhere, probably half of the cars on the road are buses and we have to take them to get places all the time. The buses here are a lot like the NY subway in the states, but even more full of people. Especially in the morning and at night when people are going in and out of the city you`ll see a bunch of buses that literally have people hanging out of the bus, holding onto the hand rails to hold all the people in, and it's their job here, they work for the buses. They are pretty much there just to make sure people pay, but sometimes it seems like they`re there to hold people in too.

Another thing I`ve never told you, noone in our ward knows how to play piano, except one person, and she is a counselor in the YW Presidency and can only come to our ward on fast sundays, so guess who plays the piano on Sunday here, that's right, I do. I`ve got pretty good at just sight reading one hand, I still haven`t started playing with two hands yet, but maybe I`ll get there.

This week went by super fast and again, we aren`t having too much success with investigators, but we are having a little success somewhere else. We had 6 less actives in church this Sunday, two of which have 8 year olds that need to be baptized, so they won`t count as converts for us, but they will count as baptisms for the ward and maybe reactivate some families. One of the families is this lady that didn`t want to talk to us and go to chuch because she was living with her mom that hates the Mormon chuch. She already had another house but couldn`t move in because of all the brush that was in the lawn, it was a mess. So we got all the Elders in the ward together to do a service project for her and got her moved in. She seemed like at first she had just used us to get her moved in, so on Saturday we were walking by her house and Willy was on the phone so I thought I would just quick go over and talk to her. Turns out she had gone to the church last week and just didn`t go in because she was wearing jeans and saw everyone in dresses, so she just went home. We told her it was alright and that no one would say anything and to just come. So she came to church yesterday and really suprised my companion. Someone was trying to tell us that her son is 9 years old, not 8, so we may get a baptism out of it too.

Anyway, that is the good news today, I love you all and I am working hard for all of you, I hope Dad will recover soon from his ruptured calf muscle and I will keep him in my prayers, tell him to make sure to take it easy and let it heal, I love you all again, Elder Adamson V

My Burn Healing Well

The Water Dispenser - Instrument of the Burn

My Burnt Head

I just had zone conference today and the Hermana Wade told me that you sent her an email asking about my head pretty worried, so she gave me permission to write you to send you pictures so you aren`t as worried. Love you, Don`t worry, love you again, Elder Adamson V