Pictures!

baptism

view from our apartment

view of our apartment (we live on the second floor, our bedroom is the lift window, the doors to the balcony is the general area, where we study, and the right window is the bedroom of the other elders. we enter by the barred door garage thingy on the bottom right, behind the truck theres a little shop, and the owner lives behind the shop and garage)

Busy Week!

this week has been incredibly busy, i feel like we didnt even have any time to work. monday was pday, tuesday was district meeting (and even when we have district meeting we still have to do the four hours of study a day), wednesday there was a meeting in the mission office, we got back around 4 or 5, proselyted for a couple hours, and went back to the apartment at 7 to study, on thursday, we had daily planning, so didn't leave until around 3, and friday we had zone training, so the only full day we had was saturday.

nevertheless, it was still a pretty cool week. we found multiple people this week who have already had experiences with the church, but arent members, and have started teaching them. one, esteban, was about to be baptized in argentina, but then he moved to paraguay. he's pretty chill, and seems like a solid guy. his older brother smokes and drinks and does drugs and stuff, and it seems as though his brothers bad example has kept him away from those things. he said he was gonna go to church yesterday, but when we stopped by, he was either not there, or not awake.

another, elvis, used to go to church when he was a kid with his mom. i'm not sure if his moms a member or not, but they havent been in a long time. we contacted him and his friend, eligio, and gave them a lesson 1 booklet. we taught them a few days later, and eligio had read it and had questions about joseph smith and stuff, which was super cool, cus it's usually a battle to get people to read all the time, and people almost never act just from a contact. they said they were going to go to church, but that it was a bit early, so they'd come a bit later, but they didnt show up either, which was a shame.

the third, liz, has gone to church twice, but said that the missionaries just wanted her to get baptized (apparently there was a transfer coming up and they wanted her to get baptized before the change), and she told us that she just felt a ton of pressure to get baptized when she really just wanted to learn more first. she was busy this sunday, but she's cool, and hopefully she'll keep progressing.

Maria and jorge didnt come either, even though she promised us they would go with talia and her grandma when we passed by in the morning. she's still reading, but jorge's almost never there and hasn't been doing anything. she shows some desire, but if she never goes to church she's never going to get anywhere.

Glorias similar, she said she read, but when we ask her what she learned, she just says 'muchas cosas' which is the typical paraguayan response. I think my companion put it pretty well when he said 'if you can get a paraguayan to go to church, you can get anyone to go to church. people here often love listening to our message and stuff, but when it comes down to it, they dont want to make any more effort than that.

on to good news though, theres an older woman in our area who had previously lived alone, but is now renting out a room to a young couple, and she brought them to church yesterday, and they stayed for all 3 hours. theyre not married, but they said they'd like to get married, and we're gonna go visit and teach them today.

First Baptism!

1st baptism! The Lord is truly working miracles in Paraguay. this girl, Talia, had been taught by the missionaries a year or two ago, and her grandma got baptized, but she ''didnt want anything to do with baptism.'' Elder muñoz and i had passed by a couple times to say hi and invite them to church, but nothing more. one day, she just showed up at church and that week she told us she wanted to get baptized. i honestly feel like i didnt do anything in this, it was all the Lord. of course, we visited almost every day in the past couple weeks and shared messages, but our efforts wouldn't have amounted to anything if she hadn't been prepared.

we've had some other pretty cool experiences too, in finding people. we started teaching a family who lives near Talia, who is friends with her, and they're practically ready to get baptized. the mom is a member, but inactive, and her son and his girlfriend are awesome. after our first lesson, we invited them to read the scriptures and pray together that night (to the guy and his girlfriend (who also lives there)) and the next day we visited them to ask them if they had read, the girl, maria, said that they had, and that she had felt something really special, and had felt closer as a family. on top of that, the guy, jorge, had found a job the next day, when he had previously not had work. its amazing to actually see the power this gospel has. 

we also found a girl named gloria, who, when we taught her about the book of mormon, said she already had one. some missionaries had given it to her years ago, but never followed up. she had never read it, but still had it, and she said she already knew it was scripture from God, because three times, she had tried to throw it away when she was tidying up, but each time, had just instantly gotten a headache, that went away when she decided to not throw it away. we havent been able to follow up with her yet, but its just incredible how when we follow the Spirit, we can find people that have truly been prepared to hear us. there's a ton more cool stories, but i don't have a ton of time, and hopefully they'll be more relevant later.

sorry i havent been sending a ton of pictures, it's just that a lot of the computers arent in very good shape, and the usb ports dont work. ill try to send some next week.

i got the package from grandma on tuesday, which was awesome. i've been studying Jesus the Christ a ton, it's a super awesome book. i read it in all of my spare time, and i can barely bring myself to put it down. 

i also went on splits this week with one of the zone leaders, elder asay. from what we can tell, his dad is cousins with brother asay's dad. he's a super chill guy and an awesome missionary. i also realized that i'm incredibly blessed to have the area that i have, because both times that i've gone on splits, the areas have had more fields and stuff and there's been a ton more mosquitos, whereas my area is nearly all just streets and buildings, and theres not many mosquitos.