Week 35 in Paraguay Week 3 Mission Secretary

Things have been going pretty great here in the greatest place on earth, the only thing is its cold now, really cold. It was really nice last week, there were actually a few days in the 90s about two weeks ago, and now it is just bitter cold, all the way down to 40, with wind and humidity, and today rain, and there is no insulation in the houses here. I think that is the biggest thing, it feels like your camping here, the houses are just as cold as outside. It is nice in the office though, with our nice heater all day, but the coldest part of the day we are outside.
About my area. My area here is Campo Grande A, the 6 office Elders all share the area of Campo Grande. The areas right around here are kind of like the 4 corners in the States, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico, the place where the two streets in front of the church meet, Julio Correa and Santísima Trinidad, is our little 4 corners here in Campo Grande. The corner where the church is, is the Assistants area, Campo Grande C; clockwise, next is Campo Grande B where the membership records elder and the mail elder work; next, Campo Grande A where I work with my companion the Financial Secretary; and then the last corner is Mburacuya, and that area has real Elders working there, not to say we aren´t real Elders, but we work our area three hours in the evening after all the office work is done. Campo Grande is the richest part of Asunción, and in a way I feel like sometimes I am just in the states. There are some huge houses here, and I mean huge, and most of the nights we spend contacting all we do it push the little button on the speaker phones people have and the people don´t even have to come out of their houses. It is kind of hard also because it is so cold right now and we can only work at night. A lot of Paraguayans go to bed early in the winter, so a lot of times we just get the whole I´m already in bed thing. We are having a little bit of success though, we have this one man named Luis with a baptismal date, he is progressing really well, but it is a little hard with him, he has a hard time speaking Spanish because he is poorer. He literally lives in these little rented out rooms on this one street with all these little houses, right in the middle of huge houses all around them. He speaks a lot more Guaraní and he is always really excited with what we are teaching him, but it doesn´t really seem like he understands much. He is going to go to church with us again tomorrow and I think he´ll be ready for his baptism at the end of the month. We just really have to make sure he understands everything so he won´t go inactive right away after his baptism.
It really has been cool working in the office though, it has been fun to work so closely with President and learn kind of how the mission runs right along with him. Even though we haven´t been having too much success in our area, I really have been able to feel a lot more of the spirit while teaching people in this area. I´ve got a super cool story about one new investigator we found this last week, it´ll probably finish off the email, I´m sure you´ll like it. So we had set up last Sunday a lesson with our ward mission leader at his house with one of his friends. We started off getting to know her and she seemed like the kind of investigator that already has their own church, but loves to talk about God and discuss gospel topics, but won´t ever go to church because she already has her own. Just a little side note, a big belief here in Paraguay that is hard to help people realize is wrong, is that all the churches are true. I don´t know how many times I have heard that one here, people will talk to you and believe everything you say and then they won´t go to church with you because they already have their own church and don´t want to leave that community. People believe that since everyone believes in the same God, even if you worship him differently, all the churches lead to him. So a big thing we focus on in a lot of lessons is the authority and the importance of the restoration of the priesthood. But anyway, back to the story, this lady seemed like one of those Paraguayans that wasn´t going to change because she already felt good in her church and it was a very normal first lesson up until we started talking about Joseph Smith reading James 1:5. Right as I said James 1:5, she said she knew the scripture and quoted it to us, she then started to tell us that she had had a dream about that scripture and said it is the only scripture in the Bible that has really impacted her. So we just ate it right up and told her that is just how Joseph Smith felt and shared the first vision and the spirit came and the whole lesson changed, she was so much more interested because it was personal to her. And then something even cooler happened, she stopped us and told us that she had another dream, she was walking with someone else, and friend of hers, and 3 angels came to her and started asking her questions, I don´t remember the questions she said they asked but the last one they asked was what was the meaning of Romans 1:15, she was confused and turned to her friend and her friend told her that Romans 1:15 would make everything clear about the angels, and then she woke up. So we got out the Bible and started reading Romans 1:15 and it just talks about how Paul is soon to bring the gospel to Rome. She then went off about how much she had thought about it and she figured that she represented Rome and the gospel was soon to come to her, but she didn´t understand why the angels came. The coolest thing is that right now we are in a 3-some companionship, just like 3 angles coming to bring her the gospel, so we suggested to her that maybe we could be the fulfillment of her dream and closed with a prayer leaving her with some things to read in the Book of Mormon. It was a very cool experience for me and related directly to an experience I had in the MTC about angels and how missionaries are figuratively angels to the people they will teach. We have the same calling now to bring about the gospel as the angel Moroni had to bring forth the gospel when he appeared to Joseph Smith. I am so grateful for the calling I have and for the accompany of the spirit I have been able to experience already in this area. It is going to be a wonderful 6, 7, or 8 months more in the office.