June 9, 2014

i got transfers this week - i'm now in obrero 1.1 (zone 1, in asuncion mismo) which if i'm not mistaken, was the last area of brandon carpenter. my companion is from utah (my first gringo), elder huntsman. he came to the mission 3 months before me and started in the same stake as me. obrero is a lot like san isidro; it has a lot of paved roads and the rest stone. we live with another companionship too which is cool but we're gonna have to move pretty soon (the renter wants to sell the house) and Pte Agazzani says we have to move into separate apartments cus he's considering putting sister missionaries in one of the areas (which means i may be here just one or two transfers). we spent a lot of this week looking for apartments (we have to find for the other companionship too, as their areas a bit poorer) but got a good amount of work in too. theres a lake in our area and a road that has a stream (which also serves as the landfill and the sewer for the people in that road) running through the middle of it about 15 feet down with about a foot and a half of space on each side for walking. there's also a river nearby, and the area of the other elders is quite a bit lower down in elevation and 3/4 of their area is flooded. on wednesday morning we went to help a member family move out of their flooded house, and everybody that lived there is building houses of plywood in parks or in the middle of big streets (on the islands). the member was lucky enough to be able to get the rights to an abandoned house, so even though he has to do a bit of fixing up, he at least has plumbing and electricity. apparently this flooding happens every few years and it's gonna be another 5 or 6 months before the water goes down again, and even when it goes down it's gonna leave everything considerably dirtier cus the river wasnt super clean to begin with.

we had one investigator (francisco) in the sacrament meeting, who is dating a member, but he wants to get married and baptized on the same day and he doesnt want to get married until he finishes building his house, so he has a baptismal date for july 5th (unfortunately not this month but it is this transfer) but he's basically ready. there was another investigator (victor) that we saw outside of the church after going out of sacrament meeting so we invited him to come to gospel principles and he came. he's a bit older (50s or 60s) and likes the church but we cant teach him in his house because his mom is super catholic but he already has everything too and we're gonna see if we can get him to come to sacrament meeting again and then baptize him.

we also saw a miracle on friday. we went to visit a convert who has a bit of memory problems, and he said he had a friend that we could visit. he didnt know how to explain where the house was but he said he could take us there, so we went to look for the house. he wasnt super sure and we walked in circles a bit but eventually he said 'ah here's the house'. we clapped and somebody came out and the convert started to laugh. he told us that it wasnt the house of his friend but the house of an old friend from work. we taught him igual and had an awesome lesson. he (emilio) was working on sunday and couldnt come to church but hopefully he can come this sunday, cus he said he works every other sunday.

it was a bit hotter than normal for most of the week but last night started to get a bit colder again. i'm not sure if the heat is because i'm in the city now or just because it was hot but i suppose we'll see how the weather goes in these coming weeks.

on tuesday in reducto i said bye to a lot of people and we found some cool new investigators too. we had asado for dinner with angels family and with another family

dinner on tuesday (and angel)

my new companion

lake