April 21, 2014

hola! this week we had a ward activity on friday for easter (catholicism is a big part of the paraguayan culture so they consider the whole week a holiday - mainly jueves santo, viernes santo, and sunday) and we had a miracle! there's a recent convert (pablo) in our ward who got baptized and a bit later his little brother (daniel) and sister (mariela) got baptized. his brother has a fraternal twin (manuel) but he didnt want to get baptized cus he was afraid of the water, but he came to the activity on friday, we visited him on saturday, he came to church on sunday and now he wants to get baptized! his baptismal date is for this saturday. on friday in the activity we ate caldo ava - a traditional paraguayan food. it's basically a big stew where you put everything from the cow thats not meat or bones (heart, intestines, tongue, kidney, liver, etc.) and a bunch of vegetables. the activity was combined with the other ward in reducto and a family from the other ward brought stuff to make tacos for all the missionaries, but i still had some of the caldo ava just to try it. i thought it was pretty good, and so did elder yamberla (from the other ward) but our district leader and the sister missionaries in the other ward (all from the states) ate a tiny bit and couldnt finish. it smelled pretty horrible but the taste was pretty good, although the texture of some of the innards was a bit off-putting.

on tuesday we did divisions, and it was my first time doing divisions where i stayed in my area. we found a couple teenagers (victor y jose) who had awesome questions and understood everything super well but they were out of town on sunday so they couldnt go to church but they're super calidad

on thursday we had interviews with pte agazzani, which went well. he hinted to elder pacheco that he was gonna leave reducto, but he also hinted that he was gonna stay another transfer in reducto, and he didnt hint anything to me, so we're not quite sure what's gonna happen this transfer (we find out tomorrow, and change wednesday). the district should change quite a bit, as everyone in the district has been here at least two transfers.

angel is still a capo and his mom got called as the second counselor in the relief society yesterday. angel brought his stories from the book of mormon book to church on sunday, and all the kids in primary wanted to know where he got it, and after church a few kids came and asked me to give them one too. i had bought three, as we had originally planned to give them to juan's kids, so luckily i was able to give out a couple more, and more or less satisfy everyone (i gave one to manuel and daniel and mariela to share, but they're not really super into sharing).

elder pacheco's birthday is a week from tomorrow, but we're gonna celebrate tomorrow in case he gets transferred cus having your birthday the first week in a new area is pretty lame, as you dont know anybody and nobody knows it's your birthday. also in about a week a missionary that's out from this branch gets back, so he should be able to help a lot with the work and pte agazzani gave us some suggestions that should help quite a bit too, so the work should continue progressing well here.

i cant think of anything else so here you go