Week 52 in Paraguay Change 9 Week 3

So it has been another great week here in Paraguay, we have really shifted into Christmas mode here in the office too, we actually just finished watching Mr. Kruger’s Christmas and right now as I am writing you we are listening to Bing Crosby’s Christmas music, the season is approaching!

As for the tree here, it still isn’t up, I was so close to getting it up on Thursday so we would put it up the same day. I explained everything to President and his wife about how the family always puts up the Christmas tree on Veteran’s day and Sister Madariaga got really excited, I went with her and Elder Morrill to the Centro of Asunción and went Christmas shopping and everything to have it all ready on Tuesday, and then on Wednesday we were talking about where we were going to put the tree in the office and everything and I guess President didn’t realize when we would be putting up the tree or something and he wasn’t very excited about it because we have a General Authority coming next week for our zone conferences. The general authority is Elder Foster, he’s the second counselor in the Area Presidency here. Wednesday night Sister Madariaga called me and asked me if it would be okay to wait until he leaves to put up Christmas decorations and put up some Thanksgiving decorations instead, so of course I told her it was fine, though I was kind of sad about it. Now we have some Thanksgiving decorations up in the office, but next Thursday it is all going up, so I don’t have to wait too long. I realized today too that I still have the Christmas tree you sent me from last year so tonight when we get back to the house I’m going to set that one up on my desk at home. So anyway, we are all getting really excited for Christmas to come, it is going to be a really fun Christmas too because it falls on our P-day, which mean Christmas Eve falls on P-day Eve, which sometimes is just as great or better than P-day, so we’ll get to call our families, play games, go out to eat where ever we want, and just relax for a while on Christmas, and then the next week New Year is also on P-day, and New Year’s Eve on P-day Eve. So the point is there are a lot of really cool things happening in the near future, but to be completely honest this last week was pretty uneventful.

The only real interesting thing we have been doing is listening to John Bytheway talks. Elder Payne’s birthday was on Wednesday and he got a whole pack of John Bytheway on CD and we have been listening to it in the office, in the car, at home, everywhere. They actually are really good and they have a lot of interesting facts. He gives this one talk called “No Brainers” where he talks about the Commandments and how they really are no-brainers when we learn about the consequences that come from them. It was really cool to talk about because it covered all of Lesson 4 out of Preach My Gospel and gave a lot of explanation of consequences and blessing of the commandments, more specifically focused on the Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chastity.... He did a very good job with the way that he presented the consequences and it was a very interesting and enjoyable talk. An interesting statistic that we heard today, the average household in the US, in 2003 when the talk was given, had the TV on in their house 7 ½ hours a day, and according to a study done, every 10 years the allowed use of profanity on the networks CBS, NBC, and FOX doubled and was projected to be at 17 times per hour by the year 2006. It is kind of crazy the world we live in sometimes. Anyway, I don’t know where I was going to go with those statistics, they were just interesting.

Something else I noticed today, I don’t know why this happens, but while we were playing soccer today, I noticed that if I’m playing soccer but I’m not trying very hard and I lose I don’t really care very much, but if I’m playing all out as hard as I can and I still lose, I get really upset, I don’t know why, and I tried to apply it to some gospel principles, so I’ll try to express the best I can what I was thinking this morning. I was thinking that if we are doing the very best we can, we should feel good no matter what the outcome, but really honestly I have been noticing, mostly in soccer, but I can kind of apply it to other things too, that when I do the best I can and I fail, I get really upset, and this is what I came up with. Most of the time I get upset it is because I feel like I was doing it all alone, and the thing I was trying to accomplish I couldn’t do on my own, first the soccer application, I start trying as hard as I can, and maybe the other members on the team aren’t trying very hard, they don’t care as much about the outcome, so I just start trying to defend 3 people at once and dribble all the way down and score, which works sometimes, but not as many times as it doesn’t, and I start to get frustrated and upset because I am trying to do something by myself that physically can’t be done without the help of someone else, my teammates. So now, the spiritual application, I feel like sometimes we get a little caught up on the end that we have in mind and we forget to seek the divine intervention we need to complete certain tasks, taking them all on our own and failing. Even though we are trying the best we can we just can’t overcome habits, or finish projects, or complete with worthy goals, and so we get frustrated and upset, but the only real reason we failed in the first place is because we left out our key teammate, our eternal friend, who is Jesus Christ. Anyway, just a cool little thought I thought of today, I’ll try to apply it a little to not get as frustrated when I lose soccer games, and hopefully it can help a few of you also, who knows.

I’m really looking forward to Christmas and talking to everyone again, I love you all soooo much, Elder Adamson V


PS If you can figure out a way to send eggnog, please send some, love you!