So it is pretty ironic that you said that this hasn’t been too exciting of a week, because I could probably write you a novel about all the things that happened this last week. It is by far probably one of the most eventful weeks of my time in the office, and maybe my mission, and I have been by far more tired this week than any other week in my mission. That I can easily say. All of it started Friday night.
So if you remember from my last letter we didn’t get much of a P-day last week and so I didn’t really get to write very much. It was kind of funny because you wrote me about how Scott had got into a car wreck and I had planned in my mind what I was going to write about how crazy Paraguayan driving is but how there are never wrecks because everyone is always paying attention and they know what is going on around them. Now don’t get upset or worried about this, but justo Saturday night I got in a car wreck. It really wasn’t that bad. It was 9:15 at night and I was going down a back road trying to get to the super market so we could have food for the week (and by the way, I still haven’t got to go to the super market) so as I'm driving the road turns into pavement, but it’s still a back road no one usually uses. I look over to the left to this other paved road that leads out to the main road thinking about if it would be smarter to go that way to be able to park better in the super market, then I decide against it and look over to the right to see if anyone was coming, not really thinking anyone would be since we were on this back road. There was a truck crossing the street, so I slammed on the brakes and ended up hitting him right in the very back of his bed behind the back wheels. By the time I hit him I wasn’t going very fast so the damage wasn’t too bad and everyone involved in the wreck were perfectly fine, not even a scratch, which I guess is the most important part. After I hit him the truck just kept going. I stopped, put the caution lights on and got out of the car right away and called my President. He made sure no one was hurt and then asked where the other car was, I told him he had driven off and I didn’t know. He asked me if the car would make it to the church (which was just 2 blocks away) and I told him the motor was fine there weren’t any problems with the car running and he told me to drive there so he could see the car. So we waited there a little longer to see if the other guy would come back; while we were waiting two police officers drove by on a moto and pointed at us and yelled something in Guaraní and then just took off, so we waited a little longer and then went over to the church.
Once we got to the church the police were already there waiting for us, so I parked the car in the parking lot and went over to talk to the officer, the first thing he asked was if I knew why he was there. I told him because we had just crashed the car and asked him where the other car was, he told me the other car went two blocks away from the crash then told the police that we hit him and then ran from the scene, which obviously isn’t what happened, if the truck talked to the cops two blocks away from where the crash happened, so I explained that to the officer and told him that we just wanted to fix everything the right way, so he told us he would call the lady that talked to them and tell her to come to the church. I went back to the car to talk to President and then the police officer calls me back over and tells me that the lady had already left and the best thing I could do was to go to the police station to write a police report before she writes one stating that we hit the car and ran, and maybe we would even be able to find her there. So President loaded my companion and I up into his car and took us straight to the police station. The truck I had hit was already there, so we just went in. It was kind of funny, there was an older women there with a younger guy sitting at the desk writing a police report as we walked up and everyone just seemed really confused, with the kind of expression like we wanted to contact them or something in their work because we were missionaries, when we got up to them I shook their hands and told them I was the one that hit their car and it was like a light bulb turned on. Anyway, the people turned out to be really nice, it was a mom with her son, this is the funny part of the story, the son was the one driving and here in Paraguay you can’t get your driver’s license until you are 18 (a rule very commonly broken, but since these people were wealthy and well educated they actually kept this rule) so this son had just got a brand new car two days ago with his driver’s license on his 18th birthday and I hit him. Anyway, the son went to the American school here so both him and his mom spoke perfect English, and the son actually knew the sons of the old mission president, President Wade, that went to school with him and played on the basketball team. So I hit an 18 year old that had been driving for two days in a brand new car his parents had given him.
The worst part of the story is that this last week was change week. The way the van is built if you hit the front of the car it isn’t going to do anything to the engine because the engine is inside, but the radiator is still in the front of the car, so in the accident I punctured the radiator. So Monday we had to take the car into the shop during the busiest of all office weeks. We still don’t have it back because they started working on it Tuesday to get an estimate, because the church wanted us to get an estimate before we let them start. Then Wednesday was Dec 8, the day of the Virgin of Ca’acupe, the biggest of all Paraguayan holidays, so nothing was open. We got the estimate on Thursday and they started working on the car on Friday, so we won’t get the car back until at least the end of next week, and likely longer because we’re in Paraguay. So we had a problem with not having a car, so we ended up borrowing the south mission’s car, trading them for our President’s car, which ended up giving us a lot more work having to share the car with President and pick him up and go places. I really picked the absolute worst time to get into a wreck. The other thing was, when I got in the wreck, obviously I didn’t really think it was all my fault, I accepted it was partially my fault, but I didn’t run any stop signs or anything and we were both on paved roads, so I kind of just accepted it was more of a lack of traffic signals fault. Then I was telling the story to a few members that asked about it so they asked me where it happened and I told them and then they just started telling me how much of my fault it really was. This member family is about as close to American you can get while still being Paraguayan, they all speak perfect English, they all drive, and they have a really big house. I was trying to explain to them that the road of the other guy had a speed bump about a half a block before the place where I hit him and he should have yielded to me, but they told me that the other road has the right of way, it was actually pretty funny how the conversation turned out. Since then I have gone back to the intersection and seen cars go by and it is pretty obvious now that I did not have the right of way, and I take full blame for the accident, but there still aren’t any signs, people just know from driving there so much, and that was the first time I had ever driven that road.
So anyway, that was probably the biggest thing of the week. I made it five and a half months driving in Paraguay before I got into an accident, and the funny thing is it came at the time when I very least expected to get into an accident, and at the time when I was very least paying attention, which I guess is why the accident happened. But, just by my job description as Secretary in the office, I really have to drive. When I go to Immigrations and things I go by myself with new missionaries or other missionaries that don’t have permission to drive because all the other office Elders have other things to do. It was really awkward this week having to drive sometimes with even President in the car, it was like I lost his trust or something and it was a terrible feeling. I really don’t think anything has changed, but it’s like my own conscience puts it there or something. So anyway, that little incident Saturday night made the whole rest of the week really complicated. But I am still driving just as much, I have decided now though that whenever my replacement comes, which should be in 2 ½ weeks, he will be driving everywhere the second he gets his license and I will stop.
Anyway, I didn’t think I would write so much just about the crash, it was kind of a big deal for this week though. We had so much to do with changes and we didn’t have a car, I feel like everything just piled up and finally fell on this week, and it feels really good now to know it’s all over. I think the thing that ended up giving us the most work was the fact that the change day fell right on the biggest Paraguayan holiday there is, so some people couldn’t travel and nothing was open to buy things or go places, so we had to schedule everything out perfectly to do everything we were going to do on Wednesday, which is the big day, on Tuesday, Thursday, or Friday, knowing that those 3 days already had a lot of necessary things. Then on top of that this change was the change where we started to implement all the changes that Elder Foster presented to President, so we had to plan for all those changes, in the process opening up new areas and white washing a lot of other areas. There was a lot of planning to do, and all last week was really busy too, so most of the planning was done about a day in advance, and now I am so tired. Right now I am going home to sleep and I’m positive next week will be a lot less hectic and I will have a lot of time to get caught up and work tons in the area, which is really all I want to do now because we have barely got anything these last two weeks. Anyway, I need to go now, but I love you all sooooo much, and really don’t worry at all about anything, I’m great and I am happily waiting for the package, love you, Elder Adamson V
P.S. I sent a picture of each car after the wreck and a picture of my zone with Elder Foster so you wouldn't have to just see pictures of the wreck, I love you!
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Week 55 in Paraguay Change 9 Week 6
First I have to start by apologizing because this is probably going to be a very short email. This whole week has probably been the least I have worked outside of the office since I got to the office. It seems like every single day there was something going on to keep us in the office, including today. All day we have been doing office work, and because of that this letter probably won’t be very long. I’ve been up since 4:30am this morning because all the Nivacle Indians came from Filidelfia in the Chaco to go to the temple. We had to direct them all to interviews and get name tags for all of them so we knew why they were there. There were over 100 of them and only about 10 spoke Spanish, the rest all spoke Nivacle, this different Indian language, not even close to Guaraní. It was a lot of work trying to get them all to the right places. The story about the Nivacle Indians is actually really interesting. I don’t know if you were watching BYU TV in between conferences sessions or not, because they did a whole documentary on the Nivacle Indians. We were watching it on the internet so it had to have been a documentary broadcasted to everyone. The first missionaries that when out there baptized the Cacique, or the chief of the Indians and he had all of the them get baptized, so it is a little Mormon nation of Indians, literally every Nivacle Indian out there is a member. The church even built a city out there and called it Abundancia, or Bountiful in Spanish, for them to all to live. They live more than 8 hours away from the temple, so about 2 times a year they do these big temple trips to have them all come and be sealed together and things like that. nyway, that pretty much consumed my day, as well as the fact that President started this huge project of sending a personal letter to every potential future missionary in the Districts, 1300 letters, and we have been folding them and stuffing them because they have to be done by Monday. Every other free second I have I’m working on my training program for the whoever the new secretary is going to be. On top of that next week is change week (I don’t know what happened, but the weeks on your letters are one off, I think probably last change we moved so the change was only 5 weeks, so this change was actually 7) so we have been working like crazy to get everything done for that, and on top of that change week falls on the biggest Paraguayan holiday, December 8, the day of the virgin of Ca’acupe, so nothing will be open and there will be no buses on the day changes are supposed to be, so we have to change all the plans because of that; and on top of that, it is the beginning of the month so we have to get everything ready for Presidents Personal Priesthood Interviews with the stake Presidents and turn in all the numbers and reports for last month. So needless to say there is a lot to do. Well, that is about all I have time for, sorry for the short letter, but I will write a nice long one next week, I love you all soooooooooooooooooooooo much, Elder Adamson V
P.S. Thank you so much for the eggnog recipe! I’m so excited for Christmas!
P.S. Thank you so much for the eggnog recipe! I’m so excited for Christmas!
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Week 54 in Paraguay Change 9 Week 5
So another week has gone by in the greatest mission on earth, and President’s plans are pushing forward. The biggest thing Elder Foster told President to do with the mission from now on to get the baptisms back up is to teach the rising generation correct principles quickly, pretty much to have great trainers. He told President that being a trainer should be the highest calling in the mission, more so than zone leader, and only excellent missionaries should ever be trainers. So this last week we had a lot of special changes all involving zone leaders so they can all train when the new missionaries come in December. There are going to be 9 new Elders and every single one of them will have a trainer that was a zone leader this last change. We worked a lot with that this week, and it looks like it is really going to help the mission, its logical, trainers really do affect the way a missionary turns out.
Other good news, finally for the very first time yesterday President talked about me getting a replacement, I had been waiting for that day for the longest time. He came up to me while I was at my computer and asked, “Elder Adamson, how long to do think it will take you to train a replacement?” Then I showed him this new training program I was making to speed up the training process, and, in indirect terms, he pretty much told me the day I would leave the office would be January 19th, which means probably the 29th of December my replacement will come into the office and I’ll have 3 weeks to train him. I can’t believe I have already been here in the office for 5 months. Time has gone by so fast. President wants me to finish my training program by the end of next week to be able to make a final decision on how long I will have to train and when I’ll be leaving the office, so I’m going to be working really hard this week to make it as detailed as possible. It already is pretty detailed, I already have 51 pages with hyperlinks and things and I’m only on week 2 responsibilities of a 6 week change. It’s a really cool document, I made it so it has all of these cool links, so you’re reading what you need to do and you think, “I don’t know how to do that” and the words are actually a link, so you click the thing you don’t know how to do and it takes you right to the page that explains how to do it, then on the bottom of the page it has a link right back to the page you were on, it’s really nifty, and really helpful. Anyway, so that’s my big project for right now, I like to call it the “If I do this really well I might get out of the office sooner” project, so I’m working really hard on it. With all this crazy stuff going down in the mission, who knows, maybe I’ll be training when January comes, the way it looks right now, and by what the assistants have told me, when I do leave I will either train or be a zone leader, honestly I’d rather train, but we´ll see what happens, it kind of looks like President from now on wants people to be zone leaders before they train, but you never know.
So, I don’t really have tons of time to write, and honestly I don’t really know what to say, other than the changes happening in the mission it has been a pretty normal and boring week, Thanksgiving wasn’t really anything special, everyone kind of forgot and then at the end of the day Elder Dailey and I went to Burger King to get Thanksgiving dinner, which turned out to be not such a great idea because we ended up eating around 10 PM and it didn’t sit very well the next day. I’m glad everything went well for Becky performing in the Forgotten Carols, I wish I could have been there. It would be wonderful to be in some snow too, Christmas really makes me miss snow. It is so hot here right now, 95, but it even feels hotter, and it technically isn’t even summer yet. I have this little side bar on my computer with the weather here and the weather in Spokane right next to each other and sometimes I like to put them in Celsius because it makes it look like it’s so cold there.
Anyway, as for P-day, our dueños finally came over today with a metal guy and a carpenter to fix the damage that was done when the house was robbed, so our house is pretty safe now. The construction here is so funny, how unprofessionally professionals do their work. Last week they came over to get all the measurements of the front door to make the piece we needed during the week and they came to install it and all the measurements were wrong, it was funny and they had to drill through the metal and make new holes. Then after that we all went to Cocodrilo, that gym we go to, to play some soccer. There was this guy there practicing that plays professionally here. He was born in Costa Rica, but grew up in Miami, so we just spoke together in English the whole time and we had him play with us, he just dribbled right around all of us the whole game, but it was still really fun. I think Cocodrilo is really doing me good, I was worried when I came into the office that I would gain weight sitting down all the time, but I’ve actually lost about 6 pounds and toned out a lot more just by going to this gym an hour every morning, I attached a picture to see if it reminds you of anything, but yeah, I love going to the gym in the morning.
Anyway, I’m about out of time, I love you all so much, hope you all have a great week and enjoy the Christmas Season with snow, because you never know, next year you could be celebrating Christmas in 100 degree weather, enjoy it while it lasts, I love you all, Elder Adamson V
Other good news, finally for the very first time yesterday President talked about me getting a replacement, I had been waiting for that day for the longest time. He came up to me while I was at my computer and asked, “Elder Adamson, how long to do think it will take you to train a replacement?” Then I showed him this new training program I was making to speed up the training process, and, in indirect terms, he pretty much told me the day I would leave the office would be January 19th, which means probably the 29th of December my replacement will come into the office and I’ll have 3 weeks to train him. I can’t believe I have already been here in the office for 5 months. Time has gone by so fast. President wants me to finish my training program by the end of next week to be able to make a final decision on how long I will have to train and when I’ll be leaving the office, so I’m going to be working really hard this week to make it as detailed as possible. It already is pretty detailed, I already have 51 pages with hyperlinks and things and I’m only on week 2 responsibilities of a 6 week change. It’s a really cool document, I made it so it has all of these cool links, so you’re reading what you need to do and you think, “I don’t know how to do that” and the words are actually a link, so you click the thing you don’t know how to do and it takes you right to the page that explains how to do it, then on the bottom of the page it has a link right back to the page you were on, it’s really nifty, and really helpful. Anyway, so that’s my big project for right now, I like to call it the “If I do this really well I might get out of the office sooner” project, so I’m working really hard on it. With all this crazy stuff going down in the mission, who knows, maybe I’ll be training when January comes, the way it looks right now, and by what the assistants have told me, when I do leave I will either train or be a zone leader, honestly I’d rather train, but we´ll see what happens, it kind of looks like President from now on wants people to be zone leaders before they train, but you never know.
So, I don’t really have tons of time to write, and honestly I don’t really know what to say, other than the changes happening in the mission it has been a pretty normal and boring week, Thanksgiving wasn’t really anything special, everyone kind of forgot and then at the end of the day Elder Dailey and I went to Burger King to get Thanksgiving dinner, which turned out to be not such a great idea because we ended up eating around 10 PM and it didn’t sit very well the next day. I’m glad everything went well for Becky performing in the Forgotten Carols, I wish I could have been there. It would be wonderful to be in some snow too, Christmas really makes me miss snow. It is so hot here right now, 95, but it even feels hotter, and it technically isn’t even summer yet. I have this little side bar on my computer with the weather here and the weather in Spokane right next to each other and sometimes I like to put them in Celsius because it makes it look like it’s so cold there.
Anyway, as for P-day, our dueños finally came over today with a metal guy and a carpenter to fix the damage that was done when the house was robbed, so our house is pretty safe now. The construction here is so funny, how unprofessionally professionals do their work. Last week they came over to get all the measurements of the front door to make the piece we needed during the week and they came to install it and all the measurements were wrong, it was funny and they had to drill through the metal and make new holes. Then after that we all went to Cocodrilo, that gym we go to, to play some soccer. There was this guy there practicing that plays professionally here. He was born in Costa Rica, but grew up in Miami, so we just spoke together in English the whole time and we had him play with us, he just dribbled right around all of us the whole game, but it was still really fun. I think Cocodrilo is really doing me good, I was worried when I came into the office that I would gain weight sitting down all the time, but I’ve actually lost about 6 pounds and toned out a lot more just by going to this gym an hour every morning, I attached a picture to see if it reminds you of anything, but yeah, I love going to the gym in the morning.
Anyway, I’m about out of time, I love you all so much, hope you all have a great week and enjoy the Christmas Season with snow, because you never know, next year you could be celebrating Christmas in 100 degree weather, enjoy it while it lasts, I love you all, Elder Adamson V
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Week 53 in Paraguay Change 9 Week 4
This week passed by so fast, I have no idea what happened to it, it’s like we were just leaving church to go home and eat 10 minutes ago and now it’s already the end of P-day again. It is amazing how fast the time goes by. The week probably went by so fast though because of how much work there was, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday Elder Foster was here for zone conferences. I’m glad I was able to be in the office during the experience, we didn’t get to have a meeting with him or anything, but we definitely got a little more time to talk to him, chat with him as an office. It was really interesting the whole experience with him here and I really was able to learn a whole lot of things, one thing really stuck out, and one thing I didn’t even really acknowledge before, is how greatly important it is for the learner in a teaching situation to have the spirit as well, it doesn’t matter how full of the spirit the teacher is, even if it is a seventy, like Elder Foster, if the learners didn’t come prepared to learn.
It was amazing the difference of the spirit felt from the Monday meeting to the Tuesday meeting, we office Elders were even able to talk to Elder Foster a little bit about it. It was amazing how the same people can teach the same thing to different audiences and there be such a difference in the spirit. On Monday, to say the least, there was not much respect among the missionaries to the fact that there was a General Authority present at the meeting. It seemed almost as if the missionaries came that first day more to socialize with mission buddies they hadn’t seen in a long time than to really learn from the things being taught. That message was quite evident, much more then I think Elder Foster and President would have liked. On Tuesday it was just like night and day, the spirit in the room was so strong and we were able to learn and apply the things being taught. It was a lot of fun to see the difference. It was really a great experience to meet Elder Foster. If you don’t know who he is or don’t remember, he gave a great talk about mothers in the April conference of this year, I would invite everyone to go to lds.org and look for it because it really was a great talk. We didn’t even really notice who he was and then after he left we found the talk and remembered how much we had liked it when we heard it back in April. Anyway, so conferences were pretty much life Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, we had to set up, help with lunch, help missionaries, everything, so we didn’t really get to go out and work much those days, actually on Wednesday we had all the people from far away areas here and we had to drive them to the terminal and everything, so we didn’t get to work at all that day.
Anyway, so then after that Thursday rolls around, when President got to the office he called in his assistants and they were in there together in a meeting for over 3 hours, so all of us office Elders were sitting out in the office just thinking about what kind of interesting stuff could have been going on in there and the plans they could have been concocting, then they came out just in time for lunch and President told us he wanted to have a super confidential meeting with everyone, which has never happened ever, at least since I’ve been in the office, and I’ve been here longer than anyone else now, so we thought something really big was happening or something. President shared with us many things he had learned about mission organization from Elder Foster and thoughts he had of some changes which could be implemented. It was so very interesting and I felt privileged to be part of this special meeting.
Since then, really since the beginning of this week, we have been having great things happening in our area, all of our past investigators have just kind of petered out, including Laura’s family, who we still visit every once in a while, but they aren’t really progressing at all, it is so hard to not try and just teach them more and more though, because of how close we have got to them and how much they have come to mean to us, but the more we get out in our area the better things get and people literally are just coming out of nowhere. We had a man show up at the church and ask when we have church, so we got his number and just taught him yesterday for the first time and put a baptismal date with him. He has a family too that we haven’t met yet we are hoping he will bring to church tomorrow, but if not we will meet them after. We have been getting into a lot of houses and finding receptive people, it is so interesting because I really felt like we have just contacted everywhere. I have been in this area longer than any of my other areas and now there are things just popping out I hadn’t seen before. It is awesome because we have really been struggling to get things going these last couple weeks. Yesterday it was 7:00pm and we only had one lesson and one new investigator, so we put a goal to both do ten contacts and finish the night with one more lesson and one more new investigator, at 9:05pm we both had done 14 contacts and hadn’t been received by a single person. So we were thinking about just going home and then I asked my companion to just contact this one last house, so we did and the lady came out and it started like she was just going turn out like all the other contacts we had done, but we started to solve some of her doubts and testify to her right there at the front gate and after about 5-10 minutes of talking and discussing things at the gate she let us in. We sat on her porch and taught her and two of her daughters, met her husband and had a great lesson and in the end we left them with 2 copies of the Book of Mormon and they seemed really excited to read. They can’t go to church tomorrow because they are traveling this weekend, but they said we could come back on Monday when they get back and they would go to church with us the next week. We have had so many things just like that happen to us lately, just miracle after miracle this last week, we even got into this super nice house, nicer than the average house in the states, with nice couches and a huge flat screen TV and everything, and taught a great lesson to a 16 year old guy that by the end of the lesson accepted an invitation to be baptized. Hopefully all the work can turn into people in church tomorrow, right now we should have one man in church for sure, and hopefully we can get a few more than that though.
So all in all it has been a great and really spiritually uplifting week, I hope everyone is doing great and everyone has a great Thanksgiving.
Oh, I almost forgot my biggest news, after that meeting with President on Thursday we broke out the Christmas decorations and went crazy, it was so much fun, and I even got to put the star on the tree, I pretty much did everything though, being the one that was the most eager and into doing it, but I had help, so we are all ready for Christmas here, only 5 more weeks! I love you all sooo much, Elder Adamson V
It was amazing the difference of the spirit felt from the Monday meeting to the Tuesday meeting, we office Elders were even able to talk to Elder Foster a little bit about it. It was amazing how the same people can teach the same thing to different audiences and there be such a difference in the spirit. On Monday, to say the least, there was not much respect among the missionaries to the fact that there was a General Authority present at the meeting. It seemed almost as if the missionaries came that first day more to socialize with mission buddies they hadn’t seen in a long time than to really learn from the things being taught. That message was quite evident, much more then I think Elder Foster and President would have liked. On Tuesday it was just like night and day, the spirit in the room was so strong and we were able to learn and apply the things being taught. It was a lot of fun to see the difference. It was really a great experience to meet Elder Foster. If you don’t know who he is or don’t remember, he gave a great talk about mothers in the April conference of this year, I would invite everyone to go to lds.org and look for it because it really was a great talk. We didn’t even really notice who he was and then after he left we found the talk and remembered how much we had liked it when we heard it back in April. Anyway, so conferences were pretty much life Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, we had to set up, help with lunch, help missionaries, everything, so we didn’t really get to go out and work much those days, actually on Wednesday we had all the people from far away areas here and we had to drive them to the terminal and everything, so we didn’t get to work at all that day.
Anyway, so then after that Thursday rolls around, when President got to the office he called in his assistants and they were in there together in a meeting for over 3 hours, so all of us office Elders were sitting out in the office just thinking about what kind of interesting stuff could have been going on in there and the plans they could have been concocting, then they came out just in time for lunch and President told us he wanted to have a super confidential meeting with everyone, which has never happened ever, at least since I’ve been in the office, and I’ve been here longer than anyone else now, so we thought something really big was happening or something. President shared with us many things he had learned about mission organization from Elder Foster and thoughts he had of some changes which could be implemented. It was so very interesting and I felt privileged to be part of this special meeting.
Since then, really since the beginning of this week, we have been having great things happening in our area, all of our past investigators have just kind of petered out, including Laura’s family, who we still visit every once in a while, but they aren’t really progressing at all, it is so hard to not try and just teach them more and more though, because of how close we have got to them and how much they have come to mean to us, but the more we get out in our area the better things get and people literally are just coming out of nowhere. We had a man show up at the church and ask when we have church, so we got his number and just taught him yesterday for the first time and put a baptismal date with him. He has a family too that we haven’t met yet we are hoping he will bring to church tomorrow, but if not we will meet them after. We have been getting into a lot of houses and finding receptive people, it is so interesting because I really felt like we have just contacted everywhere. I have been in this area longer than any of my other areas and now there are things just popping out I hadn’t seen before. It is awesome because we have really been struggling to get things going these last couple weeks. Yesterday it was 7:00pm and we only had one lesson and one new investigator, so we put a goal to both do ten contacts and finish the night with one more lesson and one more new investigator, at 9:05pm we both had done 14 contacts and hadn’t been received by a single person. So we were thinking about just going home and then I asked my companion to just contact this one last house, so we did and the lady came out and it started like she was just going turn out like all the other contacts we had done, but we started to solve some of her doubts and testify to her right there at the front gate and after about 5-10 minutes of talking and discussing things at the gate she let us in. We sat on her porch and taught her and two of her daughters, met her husband and had a great lesson and in the end we left them with 2 copies of the Book of Mormon and they seemed really excited to read. They can’t go to church tomorrow because they are traveling this weekend, but they said we could come back on Monday when they get back and they would go to church with us the next week. We have had so many things just like that happen to us lately, just miracle after miracle this last week, we even got into this super nice house, nicer than the average house in the states, with nice couches and a huge flat screen TV and everything, and taught a great lesson to a 16 year old guy that by the end of the lesson accepted an invitation to be baptized. Hopefully all the work can turn into people in church tomorrow, right now we should have one man in church for sure, and hopefully we can get a few more than that though.
So all in all it has been a great and really spiritually uplifting week, I hope everyone is doing great and everyone has a great Thanksgiving.
Oh, I almost forgot my biggest news, after that meeting with President on Thursday we broke out the Christmas decorations and went crazy, it was so much fun, and I even got to put the star on the tree, I pretty much did everything though, being the one that was the most eager and into doing it, but I had help, so we are all ready for Christmas here, only 5 more weeks! I love you all sooo much, Elder Adamson V
Saturday, November 13, 2010
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!
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!
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Week 51 in Paraguay Change 9 Week 2
So today was the first real relaxed P-day I have had in a long time, and I think my phone only rang about twice today, so that is really nice. Today was a great day, we started off with our studies like normal and then at 10am we went to Cocodrilo, this gym we have memberships at. I don’t know if I had mentioned that before. There is this nice gym really close to our house here so we asked our President if we could start going there and he said yes. It is so nice, we go every morning at
6:00am and workout, lifting and stuff, until 6:30am, then we go upstairs to this soccer gym they have and play soccer until 7:00am when we have to go home. It has gotten me in really good shape, hopefully I won’t lose it all again once I get back out into the field. So today, we went to the gym at 10am and played soccer solid until about 1:30pm, it was awesome, really tiring but awesome. It has been so much fun being able to play soccer so much here, I think I’m getting better too. I guess we’ll really see that one once I get home. Anyway, after that we went home, all took showers, and then took a nice little nap until about 3:00pm, got ready to leave and ate lunch and now we are just kind of finishing off the day with emails and things in the office. The Assistants have a baptism today, so they are steady working on that, the rest of us are at the computers. Anyway, work this week has been really hard, we had another sick Elder in the office so one of us had to stay with him all week, so we were pretty much working 3 areas with 2 companionships, and to make it worse those 3 areas used to be 4 areas, but one was just recently closed. Our areas are a lot bigger now, on top of that Elder Payne had to send in all the baptismal records for October 2 days earlier than usual, so we were in the office pretty late all week to begin with, so the area hasn’t really even seen too much of missionaries lately. We found this really great new investigator last Sunday too, and I really wanted to be able to meet with her this week, but we haven’t been able to stop by her house when she was home and she hasn’t picked up the phone the few times I’ve tried to call. Hopefully we can get a hold of her today and maybe by some miracle she will get to church tomorrow. Things with Laura’s family haven’t been too great lately either, the last time we went over there we were trying to figure a lot of things out, I really just wanted to get a feeling for where they were at spiritually with prayer and receiving answers, and then she told us she doesn’t think Joseph Smith could have been a true prophet because of what happened with polygamy. She always tells us that she goes on the internet to learn more about the church, but as much as it had sounded she was only going to Mormon.org to get information, but it really sounded like she got a hold of some anti literature or something. It has really caused me though to look a whole lot into the subject, I had no idea how much of it was explained in Doctrine and Covenants, and it has actually strengthened my testimony a lot about the subject studying about it and why it had to happen, today I did a study pretty much to answer the questions that she has about it all, I mean I was able to answer them with her, but I felt really bad about it because I didn’t have anything in scripture to back me up, so I studied a lot about it today and found some really good things I think might help her. I really think there is something a little more than that behind it all though, she doesn’t believe in the apostasy, she can’t believe the fact that no one had the authority for such a long time if the apostles left and passed on the authority to baptize to people, she is kind of offended by the whole temple ceremony and how we make covenants we can’t talk about, she always says that if Jesus loves us so much, why would the covenants be such a secret, but the amazing part behind all of it is that she is constantly reading and praying to know if it is true. She has read almost the whole Book of Mormon, parts of the Doctrine and Covenants, all of Our Heritage, most of the teachings of the prophet Wilford Woodruff, and a lot of the teachings of the prophet Spencer W Kimball, and she tells us every day she is praying to know if the things they say are true, but she kind of already can’t believe that they are. Fatima has been doing better, she told us the other day that she thought the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet, but that was before the whole polygamy lesson happened, hopefully that didn’t shake her at all, but she tells us she just doesn’t feel the need to be baptized yet. It is really nice to teach them because they really understand what we are teaching, but they just can’t say yet they know it’s true. I think we have basically decided that we are just going to go over there to teach and help Laura stay active for a while, and really focus on her instead of getting the rest baptized, and hopefully she will be able to help the rest of the family that’s not there. Anyway that is about it for now, we are going to have to leave now, I love you all so much! Thank you for all the emails, love you tons, Elder Adamson V
6:00am and workout, lifting and stuff, until 6:30am, then we go upstairs to this soccer gym they have and play soccer until 7:00am when we have to go home. It has gotten me in really good shape, hopefully I won’t lose it all again once I get back out into the field. So today, we went to the gym at 10am and played soccer solid until about 1:30pm, it was awesome, really tiring but awesome. It has been so much fun being able to play soccer so much here, I think I’m getting better too. I guess we’ll really see that one once I get home. Anyway, after that we went home, all took showers, and then took a nice little nap until about 3:00pm, got ready to leave and ate lunch and now we are just kind of finishing off the day with emails and things in the office. The Assistants have a baptism today, so they are steady working on that, the rest of us are at the computers. Anyway, work this week has been really hard, we had another sick Elder in the office so one of us had to stay with him all week, so we were pretty much working 3 areas with 2 companionships, and to make it worse those 3 areas used to be 4 areas, but one was just recently closed. Our areas are a lot bigger now, on top of that Elder Payne had to send in all the baptismal records for October 2 days earlier than usual, so we were in the office pretty late all week to begin with, so the area hasn’t really even seen too much of missionaries lately. We found this really great new investigator last Sunday too, and I really wanted to be able to meet with her this week, but we haven’t been able to stop by her house when she was home and she hasn’t picked up the phone the few times I’ve tried to call. Hopefully we can get a hold of her today and maybe by some miracle she will get to church tomorrow. Things with Laura’s family haven’t been too great lately either, the last time we went over there we were trying to figure a lot of things out, I really just wanted to get a feeling for where they were at spiritually with prayer and receiving answers, and then she told us she doesn’t think Joseph Smith could have been a true prophet because of what happened with polygamy. She always tells us that she goes on the internet to learn more about the church, but as much as it had sounded she was only going to Mormon.org to get information, but it really sounded like she got a hold of some anti literature or something. It has really caused me though to look a whole lot into the subject, I had no idea how much of it was explained in Doctrine and Covenants, and it has actually strengthened my testimony a lot about the subject studying about it and why it had to happen, today I did a study pretty much to answer the questions that she has about it all, I mean I was able to answer them with her, but I felt really bad about it because I didn’t have anything in scripture to back me up, so I studied a lot about it today and found some really good things I think might help her. I really think there is something a little more than that behind it all though, she doesn’t believe in the apostasy, she can’t believe the fact that no one had the authority for such a long time if the apostles left and passed on the authority to baptize to people, she is kind of offended by the whole temple ceremony and how we make covenants we can’t talk about, she always says that if Jesus loves us so much, why would the covenants be such a secret, but the amazing part behind all of it is that she is constantly reading and praying to know if it is true. She has read almost the whole Book of Mormon, parts of the Doctrine and Covenants, all of Our Heritage, most of the teachings of the prophet Wilford Woodruff, and a lot of the teachings of the prophet Spencer W Kimball, and she tells us every day she is praying to know if the things they say are true, but she kind of already can’t believe that they are. Fatima has been doing better, she told us the other day that she thought the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet, but that was before the whole polygamy lesson happened, hopefully that didn’t shake her at all, but she tells us she just doesn’t feel the need to be baptized yet. It is really nice to teach them because they really understand what we are teaching, but they just can’t say yet they know it’s true. I think we have basically decided that we are just going to go over there to teach and help Laura stay active for a while, and really focus on her instead of getting the rest baptized, and hopefully she will be able to help the rest of the family that’s not there. Anyway that is about it for now, we are going to have to leave now, I love you all so much! Thank you for all the emails, love you tons, Elder Adamson V
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