Week 29 - Salado - New companion likes to eat frogs, Virgin of Caacupe, Eating Mango, Britez's conversion story

I´m still here in Salado! I stayed in my favorite area so far, from what I´ve heard from other missionaries it really is one of the best. My new comp is Elder Ingold, he´s from West Virginia. We get along ok so far, you can´t really tell how it´s gonna be from just a couple of days.  He works hard, so I can´t complain as far as that goes.

Jonas came to church again this week, he´s still on track to get baptized the 8th of December, which is a national holiday here in Paraguay.  It is the day of the Virgin of Caacupe, when all the Catholics collectivo/drive/walk/bike/crawl to Caacupe to worship the virgin statue there. It should be interesting. Hamilton got sent near there, so that´s too bad for him. But Jonas is awesome, he has tons of great questions, and he´s one of the people I know just really understands the message and the importance of it.

This week we ate at the house of the Familia Portillo and I started to eat a bite of a mango that one of the little daughters gave me and the mom told me to stop eating it because it wasn´t ripe and apparently they have a bunch of acid in them when they're not ripe. I got a little blister on my lip. It was kinda annoying.

My new comp mentions how much he likes to eat frogs whenever we talk to a member, so I don´t know how I feel about that. The good thing is the members always say guacala when he mentions it, which just means eeeewww, and its just super funny when they say guacala, I don´t know why. We are trying to get a new house in Salado because the mission doesn´t like there to be 4 elders in one house. I'm kinda hoping the paperwork doesn´t get worked completely out until I leave, becasue then I´d have to pack and move one more time before I leave.

We talked to Hermano Britez the first counselor in the bishopric, and he shared his conversion story as always, but it´s really awesome and I ´ve heard it like 5 times, so I though t I´d pass it along,

He said that he moved to Salado about 12 years ago and saw the missionaries.  He described them as Amercians with white shirts and tags and always wondered what they were doing in Limpio because I guess Americans aren´t usually outsie of the capital.  He went on to say that he´s tried pretty much all the churches here in Paraguay, and that after a while of seeing the missionaries on collectivos and stuff he got a feeling that he needed to talk with one of them.  He prayed that night and asked that he could talk with the Americans. Then the very next day they knocked on his door. There were only missionaries living in the centro of Limpio then too.  Salado wasn´t even it´s own area with it´s own missionaries yet,  and there wasn't a chapel in Salado, which is about 30 minutes away by collectivo. I just really like his testimony.

Elder Bowles

Julia- I haven´t gotten anything on my nametag really ever, besides rain or dirt. Most people in Paraguay just wear zapatillas (flip flops), and only because of pique and glass thats lying around places. One hard thing to get used to is a lot of the times they just expect you to open their gate and come in, which still just feels wierd to me so I don´t do it that often, unless they talk quiet.

Kami-they do celebrate Christmas, its just wierd cuz it´s hot.  Some people have Christmas trees, and threre is Santa here. We eat pasta once or twice a week.

Dad-that´s awesome about the house. Just keep trying to visit the inactive family, just so that they have to reject the gospel instead of being able to forget about it. When we visit someone who just speaks Guarani we say stuff like ¿crees en nandejara? or other basic stuff like that and just try to see if they´re interested, and sometimes we struggle through lesson 1, so they can feel the Spirit. Then we bring a member the next lesson or nothing will happen. They recently paved the one main road in my area, so there´s one paved road now. Most are impedrado or dirt. you avoid dog bites by watching them with your eyes until they back down or you are at a safe distance.

Mom- Sometimes I think  I got sent to this mission because it was the only one I would be able to handle.  I´ll say more about that next week, but you´ll need to remind me. Picking a favorite day would be just too hard. Probably Saturday because that´s when baptisms happen. The picture of the fish I sent wasn´t poisonous.  I can send a picture of a posionous one next week if you´d like.  I´m running short on time I have posion oak pills, and I´ve taken them already.

Week 28 - Salado - Bit by a Parrot, Poison Grass, Teaching "old" people, Sleep talking in Spanish

Genara´s baptism was this Saturday, and it was awesome. Her son Jonas came, and he wants to be baptized too, so that´s super awesome. She has a parrot, and it bit me, but when the district leader was here it pooped on him, so I think I got the better end of the deal because it really didn't hurt at all.
 My comp got bit by a dog this week, but the dog did less damage than the parrot, oh well.  I saw the ugliest dog in the world this week, it only had hair on the top of its back, and it was bleeding a whole bunch, and its eyes made it look like it was blind. The dogs here are ugly when they´re healthy too, just because they are all mixes of all the dogs that ever were. 

They have this poison grass stuff here, which does exactly what poison oak does, so that hasn´t been fun this last week or so, at least now I know to avoid it.

Spanish is a lot of people´s second language here.  I've been noticing that here in Salado,  that my Spanish is a lot better than a lot of people´s Spanish here, it´s kinda interesting.  Guaraní is still a lost cause for me right now.  I learn new phrases every so often, but it´s a weird language.

Guarani is impossible. but if you just repeat what they say to you they think you´re really smart. but that´s harder said than done, because it´s super nasally and hard to pronounce, and every word has like three meanings. A lot of people here ask if I´m Brazilian, and when I say no, they always say oh, well you must be German then, and it´s super funny.

Elder Bowles

Julia-I haven´t even seen the temple here in Paraguay yet, since my flight got delayed on the way here, they just sent us to our areas instead of showing us the temple first. They just changed it so that missionaries here go to the temple once every year instead of once every six months. But when Juan Carlos goes to the temple I should get to go with him. You´re supposed to wear the missionary name tag all the time, we don´t wear them sometimes when we go on runs in the morning though, but it´s not like a name tag would get in the way of bowling.

It´s raining really hard right now. Our youngest investigator was S., who was the one who ran out of the font and was 9 years old.

 I used to think that old people were way harder to teach, but right now we have a great 60 year old investigator, so I guess it really depends on the readiness of the person.

Mom-We don´t get the Liahona with the conference talks until way later after the conference. when I got here (in July) my companion was super excited because he had just gotten the conference talks from April.

I should be able to skype, about half the cybers here have webcams, but I will let you know after I know if I´m staying or not. I´d say it´s about 80 percent chance that I stay.

I feel fluent with the words I know, but I feel like the more fluent I get, the more people we find who speak just Guaraní, so it´s hard to measure. There will always be work to be done with the language(s). Especially if I get sent somewhere where they speak Portugese.
Dad-Since there aren't a whole bunch of members, we have appointments for each day of the week that happen every week, so we see our lunch appointment families more than the families that don´t feed us lunch.

One of the members we visited a week ago said that she had a dream where she was holding two keys and was trying to catch up to her dead cousin, who was all dressed up in white, to give them to him. What we had planned to share was about the temple and the plan of salvation. It was crazy. I have a hard time remembering my dreams when I wake up though, I've been told I've sleep talked in Spanish though.

Ivan's big catch!

Spending another P-day fishing

Week 27 - Salado - More Guarani investigators, Prayer with a knife & gun, Inviting friends to church

Well, we found another Guaraní to teach this last week. It´s Sonia´s uncle, and he knows even less Spanish than she does, so that makes teaching kinda tricky. Elder Ferreira and I went and walked with him to church, and it was left to me to tell him "jaha tupaope" which as far as I know means "lets go church." He came, so things worked out just fine. We had set up a time that we could come visit him, but we couldn't get a member to go with us.  We didn't have his phone number, if he has one, so we went because we said we would,and all we could do was ask if we could say a prayer with him and set up a time to come back with a member so that we could actually teach him something. When we asked if we could make a prayer, he said Sí, and then he pulled a knife out of the back of his pants and set it on the chair next to him, and then he pulled a gun out of the front of his pants and set it right next to the knife. And then we prayed. He is super smiley, and every  time he smiles we see that he has more cavities in his mouth than he has teeth. He´s awesome, and he loved church yesterday, even though he really couldn't understand all that much.  

Genara is gonna be baptized this week too, she basically reactivated her neighbors because they have a moto with a trailer thing and she wanted rides to church, so now they´re bringing her to church and staying the whole time as well.

Elder Bowles

The end of this change is next week, we´ll see what happens. I really have no idea if I´ll stay here in Salado or not, so it´ll be a surprise either way.

Kami- About a quarter of the investigators that I have taught have been members giving us a friend or neighbor or family member to teach. Out of the 4 people so far that I've seen or will see baptized, we only found 1 of them by ourselves.

Mom-My poops are normal, thanks for asking. The handyman is still trying to fix the suitcase, but it sounds like it´s not gonna end up fixed. It's the green one. We find out about transfers a week from today in the evening, so I still won´t know if I´m staying or not when I write next week.

Dad-All of them still go to church every week except for JC, who didn´t come for a month, but came this week. I didn´t have to speak in church yesterday, so that was a relief. We eat lunch with members everyday except for Wednesdays and Mondays.

Julia-surprisingly enough I've seen my fair share of naked kids too, because they always  take baths outside in buckets. We ride collectivos (buses) pretty much everyday, just because our area is as big as it is. 

I've got two or three haircuts, at different places, they have electric razors to trim hair here. We have a neighbor with red hair and freckles, but that is it. 

Alma 34-something the verse that says that this life is the time to prepare to meet God. Paraguayans don´t plan for the future, not even like 5 years in advance, so it makes it hard to make them think as far away as dying and after this life if they don´t even think about 5 or 10 years ahead. Don´t try to ´formally´ do it, just invite her to church or something, and ask her what she thought about it. Or ask her about her church first. Or talk about me or something, and then ask if she´s ever rejected the missionaries, and see what happens. There was an article about it in the Liahona here a month ago I think. 

Week 26-Salado - Survey of Paraguayan Bathrooms,American Music, $4000 for a House, Talkative, Elder Bednars visit

This week was great, we put in a lot of hard work, and it´s still getting hotter.

There was 105 people in church this week, the highest I´ve seen since I got here. One of our investigators went to church and loved it, there´s really no reason not to if you want to be there. Her name is Genara, and lives right next door to a different member´s house, so that makes it even better.

The funniest thing happened yesterday. We heard the "girls just wanna have fun" song being blasted from someone´s stereo, and as we got closer we saw this big Paraguayan man just sittin in front of his house just chillin. If only he knew what the song actually said.

I saw my share of Paraguayan bathrooms this week, just the way things worked out, they are made out of anything from a couple layers of bricks with a hole in the ground, fruit crates, or just regular toilets that may or may not flush. Some of them are made out of tarps with quite a few holes in them, and you can have a pretty nice view of your surroundings while you´re in there and just hope they can´t see you just as well. I really do appreciate nice, flushing toilets.

If someone wants to buy a nice, brick house with two bedrooms here in Salado it would only cost about 4000 dollars, kinda crazy.

The one and probably only thing that I don´t appreciate about Paraguay is how much they love to talk. If you let them, they could talk to you for hours, and when they run out of things to say, they just hit play and start going again, but I really do like pretty much everything else besides that.

Elder Bowles

Mom-could you send me the recipe for potato soup? The good news is that S. got a job taking care of someone´s house and baby. She really was blessed, for keeping her commitments for the month or so that we´ve known her.

Elder Bednar (one of the 12 Apostles) opened up for question and answer for about an hour or so, and told us that a lot of the people ask guess what I´m thinking questions and won´t accept anything besides what they´re thinking for an answer, and how that is just a ridiculous tradition. He also talked alot about treating people as agents instead of objects, and helping them to be able to find their own answers to spiritual things before we leave them.

That´s super crazy that they didn´t even let the MTC´s know (about the age change for missions).

Obra misonal week is every 2nd sunday, but we had general conference for one of them, and then Prete and Fererria showed up for a different one, so I´ve still only speaken once so far, I think it´s my turn again this week.

Dad- R is 15. He knows castellano, but it´s not even as good as mine is, he mostly speaks Guaraní. Elder Prete had to stay in the hospital with Feirerra.  It was back to me and Hamilton for a couple days, but it was already weird without them.

Some of the members are awesome fellowshippers, and some I just hope won´t say anything at all while the investigators are there. Also, one of the members tried to tell me that the Mississippi River dried up and people started walking across it, but I found that hard to believe.

Kami-that´s funny about your room, are they gonna show it in class, or just a couple of them? Did you go trick or treating?

Julia-We ran into two real bad drunk guys this week. They always like talking about the law of chastity more than anything, I´ll just leave it at that. One we had contacted before at his house, and he was way more talkative this time while he was drunk, and kept asking us what our doctrine was after we had explained it like 3 times. The other one got mad because we laughed at him, and kept asking us whiy we were laughing at him, and how today was the only time he drank since he quit drinking.