Week 52 - Asuncion Paraguay - Villa Hayes

Dear Family,

Wow. 52 whole weeks already. Can you believe that?? I remember last Christmas so well--it´s hard to imagine that I've been in Paraguay for ten whole months and only have seven more to go. The time is going to fly by so fast. April Conference is going to be upon us in only three months, then Easter, then Mother´s Day (and another Skype chat! Yay!), then I´ll almost be home! It´s going to go by so fast. Seriously. Months seem like weeks to me now. I definitely need to strive to make the most of it.

This morning Hna. deVries and I were talking about that--about using our time wisely. We´d just read that talk in the Conference Liahona "A Time to Prepare," and I told her about how this year has probably been the most fulfilling, rewarding year of my entire life, yet last year I was a total bum and I have little to show for it. I could never just waste years to come because this year was so awesome. It doesn´t work like that--you´ve got to make the most of every day. God´s given us options of how to use our time. We´re going to be accountable to Him one day for what we chose to do with it.

Anyways, I´m glad to hear that you had an excellent Christmas. I haven´t gotten any of your packages or cards or anything yet, but I´m sure they´re on their way. :) Thank you so much for your letters and everything. Thank you Grandma, Mom, Dad, Goompa, Laurel, Ashley, and Amanda. And Hna. Messina, if you happen to be reading this, thank you for your letter, too! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas at home! 

My Christmas was a pretty typical holiday--a whole lot of hype leading to a relatively anticlimactic day. All week we´d been hearing, "Oh, la Navidad! I love the Navidad! We´re going to have such a blast! You´re going to get fed so much great food and see what Paraguay is all about!" I was really, really excited. But then when the actual holiday came, we saw nothing happen. Turns out they celebrate Christmas by having a big dinner starting at 9:00pm Christmas Eve and then shooting off fireworks at midnight and getting drunk and everything, only to sleep all day Christmas Day. So...we got no food (we had to go home before any food was ready to eat), hardly anyone wanted to talk with us because all their family was over or they were traveling, and we had a TINY amount of people come to church, even though it was only one hour this week to accomodate them. But honestly, I didn´t expect much else. :) I´m used to this by now.

I just felt bad for my poor companion, who´s fresh from the States (relatively) and was probably expecting something awesome to take her mind off of Christmas at home. I´m so unthoughtful. I didn´t do anything for her for Christmas. I was kind of trying not to think of Christmas at all so I wouldn´t get "trunky." She got to talk to her family on Christmas Eve, thankfully, but I could tell that on Christmas she was pretty bummed. So today, I made up for that. I called the Elders to come hang out with us today. We had a mini (late) Christmas feast at the chapel. We brought a cake, some deviled eggs, and sweet potatoes. The Elders brought drinks, and were supposed to bring some baked chickens. Turns out all the usually-reliable chicken stands were closed today, so we had hamburgers instead. :) It was pretty fun, though it was a lot more filling than I expected it to be. I think I´ve lost my ability to overeat. We had a lot of leftover food. We watched The Testaments, too, which made me cry, as usual. Hna. deVries had never seen it, if you can believe that! 

Oh, P.S. I´m still with Hna. deVries in Villa Hayes! I was SO SURE I was going to get Changed, but nope. This will be the longest I´ve ever been with one companion, and we´ll get to spend almost the whole summer in one of the hottest Hermanas areas. How lucky are we? :) God was really nice to us, though, and gave us a perfectly wonderful overcast, drizzly Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It felt SOOO nice after all the hot, restless nights. Our air conditioning hasn´t been working very well. We bought some new fans and we sleep with our frozen water bottles. Then when the water bottles melt, we dump them all over ourselves in the middle of the night. You were right--it works! We´re going to be moving soon, though, turns out. Our landlady wants to switch us places. She lives in the house next-door on the second floor, and wants to move to our house because her husband recently had surgery on his knee and can´t climb the stairs very easily. She promised us a new air conditioner if we agreed to the new contract. DEAL!!

I feel bad, though. Our house kind of has some problems. We have the one room still without a light bulb, our shower head still doesn´t work, and now we have a mouse problem. The stupid thing ate half my bag of popcorn kernals! We bought a trap the other day. The thing snaps so violently whenever I so much as nudge it, and yet for five nights in a row the mouse has escaped unscathed. Last night, the bait was half-eaten and everything! We´ve never actually seen the thing. Maybe it´s a rat so big that one time it got caught in a trap but was so big that it wasn´t killed, and now it knows better than to touch our enticing peanut-butter-and-popcorn-kernal bait. We´ll see. I want that thing to die, though. Before, I used to be all for humane traps. Now, after it´s smelled up our house and eaten my beans and popcorn, I want it OUT! :) 

But anyways, this was definitely a Christmas that I´m forever going to remember. It was definitely lacking on the whole charitable, Christian, peaceful feeling. Most of the people we shared with on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were listening to loud rap music and could have cared less about the birth of our Savior. But the messages that we shared sure touched MY heart. We used Luke 2 the most. I love the part where the angel comes to the shepherds. They´re afraid, but the angel tells them not to fear, because he brings good news that will be for all people--that the Savior has come! So many people here see God as something to be afraid of--someone who, if they don´t recite "Padre Nuestro" every night, will rob them of their basic necessities like health, work, and daily bread. But the coming of our Lord wasn´t something to be afraid of--it was something to give us hope and joy! The birth of Christ was the moment when God, out of infinite love for us, sent His Son to redeem us from our sins. With the members, we shared out of 1 Nephi 11 (I think...) where Nephi is learning the interpretation of Lehi´s dream. When he wants to know what the Tree of Life stands for, the angel shows him the birth of Christ. Nephi is so moved by the vision that he recognizes that the Tree of Life is the Love of God. Showing him Christ´s birth was the angel´s best way to show Nephi the love of God. We should all see it that way, too.

On Friday we had a little mission party at the Mission Office. We got an amazing lunch, of course, and then we watched those video clips that apparently they showed at the Christmas Devotional this year. They were really brilliantly well-done. Are they making a full-length New Testament movie from those or are they purely online clips? I just bought the interactive Doctrine and Covenants study guide DVDs from the office, and they´re so great. I love the videos on that, too. I´ve learned so much already. Anyways, after watching the videos, we went to the huge, scary public hospital to sing. I never wanted to set foot in there, but it was much better without the fear of actually being worked on by a Paraguayan doctor. It was nice and cool in there, too. The patients really loved our caroling. Several people were moved to tears. I love that our mission presidents had us go do service to celebrate Christmas instead of just partying at the office or something. It was really nice.

Well, I´ve got to go now. Merry Christmas again, and never forget to have Christ in your hearts all year round! I LOVE YOU!!

---Hna. Springer

Hey family! I know you just saw my beautiful face and all, but here are more pictures of me from this week. It was SOOOO good to talk with you this morning! I´m so happy. :) I LOVE YOU!!

1-The Elders with the stockings we gave them for Christmas (those are the fishing lines that I bought when I was with the latinas--we won't ever use them again probably.)

2-We had a mini-party last Tuesday where the Elders gave us whatever gifts they found on the way to the church. Ha ha!

3-One of the many adorable nativities in the neighborhood.

4-Caroling in the hospital on Friday.

5-Me trying to cool down before another loooooong hot night.

6-Our little Christmas feast

7-Another picture of our Christmas dinner

Week 51 - Asuncion Paraguay - Villa Hayes

Dear Family,

¡Feliz Navidad (almost)!

I hope your Christmas weekend is full of family, friends, laughter, carols, fudge, and charity. Thank you all for your Christmas wishes and your prayers, and for helping me to remember that even though I´m thousands of miles away from any snow or sleigh bells, the spirit of Christmas is still here with me. I swear I can feel your love. That´s the only thing I could ever ask for this year. :)

Thank you Grandma, Laurel, Jared, Mom, Dad, Ashley, Pam, Clayton, Madison, Lexi, and Cami for your e-mails this week. You´re all so sweet. Clayton, I especially liked reading about your armadillo. Who knew all this time I just had to go to Texas to see exotic wildlife? I really enjoyed the picture. Thanks for sharing that with me. 

I´m still not entirely sure what´s going to happen this Christmas. I´ve heard rumors of a mission party on Thursday, but we have Changes on Wednesday, so I might get transferred to an area that has already done their Christmas party. That would be sad to miss it. I´m really scared for Changes. Part of me would LOVE to be with a stronger branch, and in a cooler environment, but there are so many people who could get baptized in January and I wouldn´t want to miss that. It would also be sad to spend the holidays with complete strangers instead of a branch that is at least loving if not active in the church. I´d also really miss Hna. deVries. We get along so well. The prospect of a new companion is always scary. We´ll hear tonight (hopefully--tomorrow morning at the latest) what Changes are going to take place in the zone. I can´t believe my time as a Trainer is already over. This was a fast three months. I can´t believe I only have seven left! I can count the number of Changes i have left on one hand! That´s psycho.

I´m not sure what to expect for Christmas no matter which area I´m in. All I´ve heard is that on the 24th they stay up until midnight, then set off fireworks and honk their horns and get drunk and stuff to celebrate the birth of Christ. Then on the 25th they sleep in (we´re only having one hour of church, from 10 to 11 so they can all sleep) and have a big dinner I´ve heard. They don´t exchange presents until January 6th, which is when they celebrate the Wise Men coming to give gifts to Christ. That´s where the 12 Days of Christmas comes from, after all. 

Everyone keeps asking us why we haven´t made a little nativity on our porch yet. I sent you a picture of all the stuff they sell on the highway for it. I think it´s a very cute idea, but we don´t have time to weave palm flower branches together, and buying the little ceramic figures is way too expensive. Our house is actually quite un-Christmas-y now that I think about it...Oh well. :) 

We are LOVING mango season. So far there aren´t too many, but some of the trees further into the forest are just dropping them like crazy. They´re really small and very stringy because they don´t bother to prune the trees, but they´re still pretty darn yummy. And we have a tree by our house (see attached photo) with some HUGE ones that are so much better. So far we´ve only found one on the ground before the cows got to the rest. Every day when we come home we check to see if any more fell for us. We made mango juice with one yesterday (just mango, milk, ice, and sugar) and it was so yummy. I´m definitely a fan of this authentic mango stuff.

The work is continuing to go well. STILL no baptisms, but I´m honestly not upset about that. Numbers really don´t mean anything--I´ve never been more convinced of that before in my life--but it would be nice to end my mission with more than just seven baptisms on my record. I´m sure my President understands that I´ve helped so many more people than that, but still. Something I´m really learning though is that success isn´t mine to control. I know I´ve already written about that before, but this last week our Zone Leader, Elder Argyle, shared a story with me that has pretty much changed my whole outlook on mission work.

The story goes something like this (sorry if you know the story already and I tell it completely wrong): A man one night is visited by the Savior, who tells him to go push against this huge rock in front of his house every day. The man obeys, of course, and day after day goes out and pushes against that rock. It doesn´t budge at all, but he keeps trying. Years go by, and still the rock is exactly where it was before. Satan sees that the man is starting to become disappointed in himself, and so he whispers to him, "It´s impossible. You can´t move that rock. You might as well not even try." The man becomes discouraged, and starts to just do the bare minimum every day--going out, pushing on the rock a bit, then going home. Finally, he decides to make it a matter of prayer. He asks God´s forgiveness for not being able to move that rock--for not being good enough. The Savior appears to the man again and says, "My son, I asked you to push against that rock every day. I never asked you to move it, I just asked you to obey. Now look--you are stronger than you have ever been before. You have grown so much. I only asked you to obey, and you have. Now I will move that rock."

That hit me so hard, and I´ve thought about that every day since then. It´s so true--the simple act of obedience has made me so much stronger physically and spiritually. God never asked me to get more than seven baptisms. He simply asked me to obey. Now look how much I´ve grown! I can only imagine how much more I will grow as I keep "pushing against the rock" every day for the next seven months (and beyond).

We finally got the November Liahona too, so those amazing Conference talks have helped me loads this week, too. I LOVE conference. That was a Christmas present enough, just getting that and being able to re-live those talks. I especially love reading those by the apostles, whose voices I know so well. As I read, I can still remember them saying it, and the Spirit comes so strongly. I loved finally getting to read the Priesthood session, Relief Society session, and a few other talks we missed when the power went out. So beautiful! I´ve already read the whole copy, but now I´m gonna go back through and take notes and stuff.

Our English class continues to go fairly well. We played Jeopardy this last time to review all the things that they´d learned. It was so much fun. We don´t usually have non-members show up, though. If we can´t get others to come, I think we may have to discontinue it. I´ll be sad if we do, but it´s been fun, and we´ve at least helped one person a lot. There´s this recent-convert kid in the branch named Sergio who is very shy and a little awkward socially. He lives with just his dad and his four-year-old brother, and we get the impression that his dad can be kind of mean to Sergio sometimes. When I first met him, he never smiled at all. He was the most serious kid I´d ever seen. Now, though, after the English class, he´s gained so much self-confidence. His dad praises him for his intelligence and Sergio´s made friends in the branch. He smiles so big when we show up at his house, and he loves greeting us in English. He´s also the Deacon´s quorom president (because he´s the ONLY deacon). Yesterday the district presidency came to the branch, and we did the sustainings of everybody, and when they proposed that we sustain Sergio as president of the Deacons, his face lit up so much. He felt so important. He has a place in the church. That´s what the work is all about. 

Well, time to go again. I´ll be talking to you (Mom, Dad, Sarah, and Ashley) on Skype hopefully on Saturday at 3:00. I´ll tell you on Friday if that changes. I´ll only have 40 minutes, so I´d like 10 minutes with each of you individually if that´s cool with you. I can´t wait to hear all about your pre-Christmas week! 

I love you all so much! Thank you again for everything, and MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

---Hna. Springer

Here are some more photos! Enjoy! I wish i had more. 

1-The mango tree by our house

2&3-Better pictures of the baby coati

4-Nativity stuff salesmen alongside the road

---Carly

Week 50 - Asuncion Paraguay - Villa Hayes

Dearest Familia and Friends,

Happy Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day and Feliz Dia de la Adoracion de la Virgen de Caacupe!! (The 7th and 8th respectively). We had quite the week. Our zone leaders challenged us to meet our daily goals every single day this week. They promised us that if we did it, we would have more baptisms and confirmations. So we worked as hard as we possibly could, and we did it! On Saturday, when we had six days of goals met and only faulted one more, we were so excited. But funnily enough, when we met our goals yesterday and successfully got 7/7, we weren't all that celebratory. We were just really, really tired. :) 

But we did have a good week. Three of our investigators either went to the chaco for Christmas break or are being hidden from us by their parents, but we have two investigators who are really doing well. One of them is the girlfriend of one of the members--Jasmin--and just the fact that she's dating a member kind of gives me hope that she'll go all the way and get baptized. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that--we don't want her commitment to the church to end with their relationship--but at the MTC we heard so many new missionaries tell their conversion stories, and so many of them involved member girlfriends/boyfriends! That's how Fabiola got baptized, and she's doing amazing. She still loves to learn so much, and she's super strong in the church. Hopefully Jasmin goes the same direction.

The other investigator is our dear Ruben. We visited him again earlier last week, after he failed to come to church. When we got to his house, he seemed okay, but as the lesson went on we realized that he wasn't himself. It was obvious that he was either currently on something or he had very recently been on something. We got through the lesson, but he just wasn't there. He was kind of snippy, and we left feeling really sad for him. Hna. deVries was devestated, thinking that he was a lost cause, but thankfully I've had experience with drug addicts in the past and I told her we just needed to forget that visit and remember how he'd been before when he wasn't under the influence. Honestly, I was just really hoping that I was right about him and that he sincerely did want to change. I was kind of in denial that we'd seen the other side of him. But then yesterday at church, after having not spoken a word to him after that last visit, he showed up out of the blue! He was his normal, humble, super polite self again, and it made us so happy. He was so sincerely apologetic and ashamed of how he'd been when we'd talked to him, and at church he was completely reverent and hungry to learn more about Christ. Then we went to find him at his house yesterday after church, only to find him helping fix a car along with two of our strongest families in the branch. They're totally friends already, and now my hope for him has doubled because the members live so close by and are so willing to be there for him. He gave the prayer after our little reunion there at the gutted car, and it was the sweetest, humblest prayer I've ever heard. He really is wonderful.

It continues to be freakish hot here. I'm constantly wet with a sheen of sweat, and even with my umbrella I feel like I'm getting dried up like a raisin. Several of you have suggested that we soak our sheets or clothes or both in water before going to bed. Not a bad idea. We may just try that. I just hope it would help. It's so humid, I'm honestly not sure that it WOULD dry. Oh man, yesterday we totally jinxed ourselves by saying, "Man, we are so grateful that we at least have air conditioning!" In the middle of the night last night, our power went out and we lost our air conditioning and our ceiling fan. Our room grew steadily hotter, and we both just laid there, wide awake, staring desperately at the ceiling fan and waiting for it to move again. It was boiling. When the power did finally come back on, I said a prayer of thanks and fell promptly back asleep. Circulating air has never felt so good. Sadly, the power went out again at like 5:00AM and this time stayed off until 9:00, along with our water. Joy. Now all's well, though. I just pray that doesn't happen often or we're gonna have lots of restless nights. 

Good news! Mango season is coming on! We still haven't actually eaten any, but we've seen others feasting on them. It's so funny--they just wait for them to fall off the tree when they're ripe instead of actually harvesting them. We'll be in the middle of a lesson and all of a sudden hear a thump behind us, and the little kids go running off squealing excitedly to collect the fruit. They never share. :( But they assure us that soon so many people will have so many mangos that they'll just leave baskets of them in their front yards for anyone to take. We're excited. :)

So today for P-Day we went out to Benjamin Aceval (where our district Elders work) to say goodbye to Lilian--that RM girl who helps us do visits (both here and back when I was in Mariano). She's flying out to Utah today to go to BYU this winter! I am so excited for her. She's such a charitable, honest, hard-working girl, and she deserves every moment of happiness that she experiences in Provo. She served her mission in Salt Lake City, so she has tons of connections and is already United States-savvy, but she was so nervous today. Her poor mom was just silently crying. Lilian may honestly never live in Paraguay again, and she just got back from her mission nine months ago. But she had a great last few hours with her family, and was nice enough to invite us. We ate rice and beef and hot dogs, and she showed us all her pets (a dog, three cats, and two rabbits). Her aunt (Cesar's mom) was there briefly, along with her new baby coati. I immediately begged her to let me hold it and take a picture. I've always loved coatis (from what I've seen of them on Animal Planet) and was thrilled to get to see one in real life. 

People here have some weird pets. Pretty much any baby animal they find in the chaco, they take back to some pet store in the city to sell--monkeys, parrots, coatis, toucans, owls, you name it! I want to see some in the wild sometime. We may have to explore the forest again. I hear there are armadillos around here, too. Last night, Ruben was talking about how some people eat them, but he didn't know the word for armadillo in Spanish. He started describing it--"It's big, and it's like a turtle..." "Okay," I thought, "It's some kind of fish. Whatever." "Except," he said, "It can go like this," and he motioned it curling up. My jaw dropped when I realized what he was talking about. "You EAT armadillo?! You barbarians!" I was just teasing, of course. :) But really, I like armadillos. 

Anyways, I've now finished reading the Liahona for April conference, and I CANNOT WAIT to get the Liahona for November tomorrow. I love reading the words of the modern-day prophetes. Something that I've heard repeatedly recently is that when we listen to the prophet today, we literally come to know God better. The prophet is God's spokesman, and if we are familiar with their words and their ways, we're familiar with God. Also, there was a verse in the scriptures the other day about how when there's a prophet on the earth, we can rejoice as if Christ was already here with us, because we'll already be preparing to see Him. I have a testimony of that. The prophets are men of God and I just love reading their words.

Well, I gotta go. I love you all so much! Thank you for your letters, and enjoy the Christmas season while it lasts! Take care!

---Hna. Springer

Here are some pictures from my week. Well, actually, just from today. :)

1-Me and a baby coati! 

2-Hna. deVries at Lilian's house about to chow down on hot dogs.

3-Lilian on her way to SLC.

Love you all! Have a great week!

--Carly

Week 49 - Asuncion Paraguay - Villa Hayes

Mis Queridos Amistades,

Thank you Mom, Dad, Ashley, Grandma Springer, Sarah, and Amanda (twice this week!) for writing to me this week. Happy birthday to both of my Grandpas!! (I´m pretty sure...if not, sorry. I have a horrible memory) I love you all so much and I´m trying not to miss you too badly as I start playing my Christmas playlists on my iPod. 

Honestly, though, it doesn´t feel like December at all. Thankfully this weekend has been a lot cooler, but last week was SO HOT. We drank our 20-liter jug of water in under four days, just guzzling it like camels. It got so hot that even our air conditioning couldn´t penetrate the heat at night, and we would soak our sheets with sweat. That was a very tiring week with so much lost sleep, tossing and turning. I almost considered just sleeping on the tile floor (those sheets felt so thick and hot), and at one point I just got up and guzzled some tap water (after our 20 liters of mineral water ran out) out of desperation. I haven´t gotten sick yet, so yay, but I probably shouldn´t make that a habit. :) The heat just built up and built up and built up...and then on Friday we were teaching in this house and a freak wind storm came out of nowhere, rattling the house´s thin walls so hard I thought they were going to collapse. It only lasted like twenty minutes, but dust was everywhere afterwards, and now the weather is totally cooler and overcast. No rain, though. I don´t think rain would help the problem much--just put more humidity into the air. Ew.

We had some really great teaching experiences this week, I´m happy to say. We went to go teach Cleto (that guy who´s president of some international Guaraní-speakers association), and I don´t know what kind of shindig he´s running at his house, but his yard was filled with indigenous people. When we went in asking for Cleto, they all wanted us to shake their hands, and then Cleto had us share for all of them. There were seriously like twenty people, some out in the yard with us, others listening with rapt attention from inside the house. I´m not sure how many of them understood Spanish, but I was reminded of those meetings for the early Latter-Day Saints--just a big group squished into a little house listening to the prophet. We´re not prophets (not even close), but it still felt cool to bear our testimonies about Christ. I totally forgot to practice my Guaraní on them! I was so mad at myself afterwards--I´ve been practicing my testimony in Guaraní for weeks!--but who knows? Maybe the gift of tongues was in affect back there. :)

I´ve been studying Guaraní with a lot more diligence lately. I read a talk from April conference about how we should receive chastisement as a great learning opportunity, and how we should be constantly self-correcting (but not hard on ourselves, necessarily). As a result, I´ve decided to re-read my whole Spanish book just to re-learn the rules and perfect anything i haven´t perfected yet. I´m also trying to ask members about Guaraní a lot more. Hna. deVries is really getting into it, too, and it´s becoming lots of fun.

Meanwhile, we´re still teaching English. This week our class was really cute. We tried to teach them English sounds, but they didn´t have the patience for that, so we taught them how to ask for things instead. We want to teach them really useful phrases. Last week we taught them to approach and introduce themselves to a native English speaker, and this week we taught them to ask, "May I have a cookie, please?" "Thank you." By the end of the class, we were able to go sit off to the side with a plate of cookies, and they came up one by one and did a whole dailogue with us. It went like this:

"Hello."

"Hello."

"How are you?"

"I´m fine, thank you. How are you?"

"I´m fine, thank you. My name is ____. What is your name?"

"My name is Hna. Springer/deVries."

"Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you, too."

"May I have a cookie, please?"

"Yes you may."

"Thank you."

"You´re welcome."

"Goodbye."

"Goodbye."

Now they´re totally prepared to ask strangers for cookies! :) 

We had some really great experiences teaching people this week. I´m sad that I´ll only be able to tell about a few of them in the time that I have to e-mail today. First of all, when we were visiting a long-time investigator, she told us that her neighbor´s been asking her to have us go visit him. We excitedly went to meet him after teaching her, and met a man named Benjamin. He seemed like a really nice guy, and we immediately invoked the Spirit by singing a hymn and saying a prayer, and listening to him tell us about his hospitalized brother. We testified of Christ´s power to heal us, and he thoughtfully said, "Oh...so you believe in Christ?" "Yes..." we said, and we told him about how He is the head of the church and we do all that we can to follow Him. He sat there for a while, then went into this shpeal about how Jehovah´s Witnesses don´t believe in Jesus Christ. He´d said at the beginning that he sometimes read the Bible, but then he started quoting verses and flipping to verses all about Christ. As he went on, we realized that he was actually a pastor for a church in the neighborhood, and that he´d been prepared to Bible bash with us, thinking that we were Jehovah´s Witnesses. We got out of there gracefully, but he had seriously been prepared to try and convert us to his church. We probably won´t go back there very often, if at all, but I´m just SO GLAD that we talked about Christ and rejoiced in Christ and proved ourselves to be Christians right at the beginning. Now, whatever he may think of us, at least he can´t say that we´re not Christian. We were really happy with ourselves after that experience.

One of the inactive members in the branch had a really tragic week. (McConkies, you may not want to read this next part out loud to the kids). Just hours after we´d left her house on Tuesday night, one of her sons came home very drunk, got into an argument with her other son who´s a drug addict, and brutally stabbed him to death. You can only imagine how devestated she was--one son dead, the other a murderer, and not even the assurance that her son is now resting in the paradise of God. We visited her several times over the next few days, but she was never in a state to talk. We mostly just sang and prayed. Saturday, though, we went there, and she asked us why death is necessary and how we can know that there really is life after death. I was so happy for my knowledge of the gospel in that moment. We used the scriptures to explain the Plan of Salvation. She asked, "How do you know that that´s really true?" I testified that I know, because a prophet told us so. I believe in the prophets, and therefore I have the assurance that there is life after death. And I´m very, very grateful for that.

We successfully earned the trust of our Ward Mission Leader, Osmar, this week. Before, he would often give us references, but he never would really strive to help us out or find time to talk with us. We´ve been trying to get his little girl baptized for ages. The other night, we went over there to visit her yet again, and Osmar basically said, "Look, this is YOUR responsibility. She doesn´t understand baptism, and that´s YOUR job--to make her understand so that she´ll want to get baptized." I kind of bristled at that, but instead of getting angry, we taught probably my best lesson on baptism we´ve ever given. We explained how baptism is a cleansing--it´s like washing yourself free of mudstains before entering a clean, white house. We explained how it´s like entering into a race to win a prize--you can´t win a prize if you´re just watching on the bleachers--you need to enter and run and THEN you´ll earn the prize. After that, Fiorella was easily able to explain back to us why baptism was important. The Spirit was strong, she accepted a fecha, and Osmar now loves us.

I know he does, because on Friday he called us in the middle of lunch to ask us to go meet his friend, Ruben. We dropped everything and went, of course. Ruben is 28 and he´s met with the missionaries a ton before in the past, but he´s had problems with basically every addiction in the book and admitted to destroying a copy of the Book of Mormon one time. Our lesson with him was AMAZING. We taught about the Gospel of Christ and brought the Spirit, and Ruben showed to us that he really is so humbled by his past mistakes and so ready to change everything around. He bore his testimony of the Savior and practically begged us to baptize him and expressed sincere wishes to be free from guilt. We used the scriptures so much and reassured him so much, and in the end he solemnly reached into his pockets and pulled out his packs of cigarettes. I just silently reached out my hand, and he silently handed them over (I promptly destroyed them as soon as we got back home to finish lunch). I know he´ll probably have lots of issues before he´ll get baptized, and who knows if I´ll even be here for that, but I will never forget that lesson. In the end, he said, "This has been the best day of my life. I never want to lose the Spirit that I feel now." We gave him a new Book of Mormon and invited him to read it whenever he has free time, so that the Spirit will be with him all the time. I´m really grateful that Osmar introduced us to him, and now Osmar is doubly impressed with us. I feel like a real missionary with a real ward mission leader now.

Well, time to go. I hope you´re all having a wonderful week getting Christmas decorations up and putting presents together. I discovered this week that instead of putting up a Christmas tree, most Paraguayans make hand-made little "stables" out of reeds and such and put little ceramic nativity pieces inside. Some people have huge collections of them. I´ll try to get a picture to send you. They´re really cute, and look much more authentic than the plastic pine trees we´ve seen every now and again.

I LOVE YOU ALL!! Thank you for everything! I hope to hear from you again soon!

---Hna. Springer

Week 48 - Asuncion Paraguay - Villa Hayes

Dear Family,

I am very envious of your cool autumn weather. Today is the fourth scorching hot day in a row without a single drop of rain. There´s barely a cloud in the sky. Before, when it got scorching hot, it was always followed by a rainstorm. On Saturday I was POSITIVE it was going to rain Sunday morning (just in time for church, of course). I was glad when we weren´t rained out, but now it continues just being blistering hot. The ground is getting drier and drier and it reflects the heat so much that even with an umbrella for shade I feel like I´m roasting. 

But anyways, I´m glad you all had a fun Thanksgiving weekend. Thank you so much for the photos and the encouragement. As you can imagine, our Thanksgiving wasn´t quite the joyful American tradition we were used to. It was kind of weird, really, how the day came and went without any real significance to it. Hna. deVries and I, at the end, were just like, "Huh...the world kept spinning and life went on in Paraguay without Thanksgiving..." As I predicted, we DID just eat the usual guiso for lunch (guiso being rice or noodles with chicken or beef and potatoes). Our friend Fabian had promised to make us a yummy Chilean meal he learned from his mission, but he let us down. No matter. We missed the usual foods, but at the end of the day we threw together an apple pie to make up for it. We also spent the day teaching others about gratitude, and in the morning and evening at home I listened to "A Thanksgiving of American Folkhymns." I also looked up every scripture I could find about gratitude. It was very inspirational. 

I´ve received quite a few bouts of random inspiration this week. I´ve been reviewing my zone conference notes every day, as they invited us to do, and it really has helped me a lot. One of the principles that they really emphasized was that success isn´t in our control--success is a gift from God. All we can control is how hard we work and how positive we are as we do so. If we have success, we need to just be grateful. If we don´t have success, we can´t be upset, because we don´t really deserve it anyways, "unprofitable servants" as we are. :) 

Another thing that has really helped us this week is our leaders´ counsel to always plan our days with PEOPLE in mind, not numbers. It´s so easy to get caught up and say, "Well...we should visit this menos activo person, but we need a with-member lesson instead so we´ll wait until next week." To avoid that, all this week we´ve been trying hard to put the needs of the people before our own. Strangely, that´s made us bolder about teaching the Restoration. We thought we were working our way into the hearts of the people by teaching something generic like faith or finding purpose in this life, but really that was just for our own comfort. If we really love these people, we´re going to boldly declare repentance through the restored gospel of Christ, even if it means that we get rejected and lose half of our numbers.

But so far, we haven´t been rejected more than usual. Maybe it was just because everyone had pity on us being out in the sun all day, but we got in LOTS of houses this week. We also currently have three people who are on the brink of getting baptized, and one more who is well on his way. That man, Cleto, who Hna. deVries found in the bus, had already been taught all the lessons earlier this year, and he came to church on Sunday, so he has all the attendance required before baptism. The thing is, he speaks a lot of Guaraní, so I won´t feel comfortable baptizing him until I get a Guaraní-speaker in there to assure his understanding and his devotion to Christ. The others all just need permission from their parents and a few more points of doctrine taught, then they´re good to go. We found out the other day that the situation with Fiorella, the daughter of our ward mission leader, actually isn´t as complicated as we thought. He was all telling us that he would love to baptize her, but his wife didn´t want it. Turns out, he´s never even talked to his wife about it, and he´s never told Fiorella that she should be baptized. No wonder she was so hesitant about it! They´ve had a serious lack of communication since she turned eight, apparently. So our new goal is to just talk with her mom ourselves and see what her attitude about baptism really is. Hopefully she´s fine with it. 

Fiorella and a few other kids have really impressed me this week. I never appreciated Christ´s admonition to "become like a little child" until I came to Paraguay. They really are so underrated by the adults here. I wish all would be like their kids. I´ve seen examples of selfless service and love from kids all throughout my mission, but this week my heart especially went out to them. 

First, after the rain we got earlier last week there were tons of puddles in all the intersections throughout the city. We were in a rural area with really deep gutters, and we were having a hard time navigating our way through the streets. At one point we reached a huge puddle with a single log half-floating in the middle. To cross, we would have to jump onto the shaky log without losing our balance, then jump onto the other side. Hna. deVries made it okay, but I was seriously doubting my ability to balance that well. I went for it, and somehow managed to reach the log, but I was about to lose my balance and go plunging into the swamp water. Out of nowhere came this little boy, who jumped off of his bicycle, kicked off his shoes, and rushed to my side. Waist-deep in water, he reached up and took my elbows to steady me and helped me cross without falling. It was so adorable. I couldn´t stop thanking him. I would have been okay had I fallen, but that boy was just such a pure example of "see the need, do the deed." You can bet we got his name (Elias) and address (more or less) and we´ll be finding him again.

The other kid who I love this week is Araceli, a little seven-year-old girl. We´d seen her a few times as we walked next to the really busy road. We always walked on the opposite side of her house, but she never failed to spot us and shout, "¡Hola, Hermanas!" We always waved and said hello back, but we didn´t know who she was, and we were always too far away and too in a hurry to investigate. This week, though, we passed her place and she said, "Hermanas! When are you going to come visit us again?" There wasn´t too much traffic and our other lessons had fallen through, so we finally crossed over to her place and met her. Turns out, she´s the neighbor of a menos activo that we had no idea existed, and her mom used to meet with the missionaries before. We´ve had several lessons with the mom since (her name is Noelia), and she is so wonderful. She only stopped meeting with missionaries because she moved to a different city, but she still has that curiosity about the church and we´re doing all we can to lead her in the right direction. Without Araceli´s kindness in saying hello every day, and her enthusiasm for talking with the missionaries again, we probably never would have gone to those houses along the ruta and found those families. I LOVE little kids.

I´ve been reviewing the April Conference issue of the Liahona this week, highlighting all of the commandments and promised blessings that I find. It helps me a lot to see what the prophets are telling us to do, make goals for myself to keep those commandments, and find hope in the promised blessings. I have tons I could talk about, but I´ll just stick with one thing: I re-read that story about the man looking for gold who overlooks all the specks looking for the big nuggets, and I realized that that can totally apply to mission work. Sometimes we´re so caught up in looking for the "golden investigator," and we miss all the wonderful little opportunities to serve, and the little joys in sharing the gospel. If we appreciate the little things, we´ll accumulate a great wealth of mission "gold." 

I´m also re-reading my journals, for various reasons. I love remembering my pre-mission lifestyle and attitude, the refiner´s fire that was the MTC, and my enthusiasm to be where I am now. It´s fun, and it helps me to see those flecks of gold and just be grateful for all the great things that have happened to me on the mission.

Thank you so much Grandma, Laurel, Sarah, Ashley, Dad, and Mom for your e-mails this week, and for the pictures. You´re all so gorgeous. :) I hope you have a wonderful week full of Thanksgiving leftovers (both the food and the appreciation for things). Christmas is almost here! Weird.

I LOVE YOU!!

---Hna. Springer

P.S. I just learned that if you send anything to Paraguay that´s worth over $100, I have to pay 400 mil (another $100 about), to pick it up. No idea why, but let´s avoid that if we can. I´m not sure if they warn you of that in the States before you send anything, but if not, be warned. :) 

1-Me in my birthday shirt from Grandma

2-Thanksgiving! 

Week 47 - Asuncion Paraguay - Villa Hayes

¡Hola mi familia! 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING (in three days)!! I'm so happy that you're all going to be together in Utah in the snow chowing down on turkey and mashed potatoes. I just realized, this will be the very first year of my life where I go without eating turkey and mashed potatoes. Weird! Anyways, I hope you're all being super grateful for all of our wonderful blessings. I just got the December Liahona this week (I read the whole thing already), and I took the challenge to write a list of 100 things I'm grateful for. It gives topics to help brainstorm, and I honestly could have kept writing hundreds more things if I'd had sufficient paper. :) Sarah, I keep thinking about how special we made last Thanksgiving, and if you're looking for suggestions for this year, I would really encourage you to make a list of 100 things, too. It really opens your eyes to all the beauty of the earth around you and this time that we live in and the blessings of the gospel that we have.

It's so strange to me how we went from a weak Halloween season to Christmas season without Thanksgiving to bridge the gap. Already people are wanting to sing Christmas hymns and they're hanging strings of lights on their porches. They even put up pine trees, which look REALLY out of place when we're walking around the campo sweating to death. I kind of figured they would just use palm trees or something. :) The other thing they've been doing is eating and selling tons of fruitcake. We went to the supermarket on Monday, and instead of the array of chocolate oranges and candy canes, they just had aisles and aisles filled with fruitcake. Hey, I guess it was popular in the States at one time, too, right? 

This week we had the wonderful opportunity to go to Asuncion and have Zone Conference again. It's like General Conference only much more frequent and much more one-on-one. The talks by President and Hermana Madariaga were so inspiring, we got lots of tips from our nurse on how to keep our backs healthy and drink lots of water, and we were treated to lots of delicious food. Presidente Madariaga talked about how we need to have vision in order to make good plans and teach with determination (seems like Villa Hayes isn't the only branch struggling around here). He encouraged us to have the same vision as God--not to save every single person around us (that would rob them of their agency), but to give them the opportunity to hear and accept the gospel. God does have a perfect plan to carry out that vision, and we are a part of that. All we must do is obey His commands, forget our own visions of schooling or hobbies or whatever, and find the joy in service. 

We also listened to Elder Holland's MTC talk again--the one he gave while I was at the MTC. That's the second time President has used it since I've been here. I feel so honored to have been in the MTC to hear that talk in person. It really is so powerful and makes me cry every time. Every time I hear it, I catch something new. What I'm especially moved by every time, though, is when he admonishes us to leave our nets FOREVER. When Christ told His apostles to leave their nets and follow Him, He didn't mean until He left--He meant until the end. That's what we must do as missionaries. We can't just leave our selfish, worldly desires behind for two years or eighteen months. We must leave them behind--become Christ's disciples--forever. That's my focus for the rest of this Change and hopefully for the rest of my mission. I'm SO GRATEFUL, Mom and Dad, that you sent me that picture of Christ telling Simon Peter and Andrew to leave their nets. Could that have been any more perfect??

Everything's been pointing me lately to forgetting about the little things and just enjoying the work. Hna. deVries and I re-read "The Fourth Missionary" during companionship study this week, and it's the exact same thing. We're allowed to be sad. We're allowed to not DELIGHT in working out in the rain or sun. But we must obey with a cheerful heart, not because we're being forced to, but because we know it's the only thing that will bring us true happiness. "He who finds his life shall lose it, but he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." (I don't have the scriptures with me--don't judge me if I just said that wrong. :) ) 

I still struggle to really jump into contacting, but thankfully I have an awesome companion who really applies everything she learns and works with full determination. On the bus ride back from the Zone Conference, we were standing next to these two old guys, and I was thinking, "Oh shoot, I should contact them. I should contact them. It's so awkward..." A few seconds later, Hna. deVries started talking with them about the church. Turns out, one of those men was an old investigator from the area book that we'd been looking for this week! If she hadn't talked with him, we may have never found him!

That man is an interesting character. He's the president of some association for the native Paraguayans, and he lives with this huge group of native families. We visited them yesterday, and they seem like really humble people. Two of them were old investigators we'd seen in the area book before. One of them randomly came up to us and handed each of us a huge canine tooth that he claims are jaguar. I believe him. Not sure what to do with mine. Is that bad to think it's totally awesome that I have the tooth of an endangered animal? Maybe I can tell all the environmentalists who hate me for it that I got it from a jaguar dentist who was pulling wisdom teeth for charity out in the chaco. That's totally believable, right? 

Speaking of huge teeth...Man, I'm still conflicted about telling you about this, but here goes--I almost got attacked by a dog the other day. We went up to this house looking for a reference and there was this huge brown dog in the doorway. It kind of started growling as we got closer, but I figured if I just acted confident and unthreatened, it wouldn't do anything. But then when I clapped, it got REALLY aggressive. It charged at me, so I stuck my closed umbrella between us. I didn't run or do anything to seem like a target, but it snapped at my umbrella, snarling really menacingly, and I was starting to think that I was about to feel what it's like to get mauled by a predator. It was so big and so obviously not scared of me that I thought if I tried to hit it with my umbrella it would just fight back. Thankfully, just as I was about to panic, I remembered the "secret code word" that always works to deter dogs here in Paraguay. I yelled at Hna. deVries (who was freaking out behind me), "THROW A ROCK AT IT!" She confusedly but obediently bent down to pick up a rock (something I didn't dare to do with those teeth too close to my throat already), and immediately the dog scurried away, along with all the other dogs that had gathered around to see what the commotion was all about. She didn't even have to throw it--they just bolted. Thank goodness for past experiences with dogs. That was WAY too close. 

Anyways...don't worry about me. I'm gonna keep plenty of rocks in my pockets from now on. :) 

Thank you so much Goompa for your letter about your past experiences with struggling branches. Thank you SO MUCH Grandma for the shirt you sent and your e-mail. Thank you Jenkins for your birthday cards in the mail. So cute! Thank you Hna. Stagg, Dad, Mom, Sarah, Ashley, and Amanda for your e-mails this week. I really hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I'll be thinking of you as I slurp down noodles and beef on Thursday. :)

Oh, and Dad, I withdrew $50 from my account this week. But you can't know why yet. It's a surprise.

I LOVE YOU ALL!! Don't forget to count your blessings. Eat some third and fourth and fifth helpings of Thanksgiving dinner goodness to make up for our lack down here, okay? :) Take care. Stay safe. Enjoy the snow. Read the scriptures and pray every day. The little things make the biggest differences. 

---Carly

P.S. Here's an update on my past companions: Hna. Stagg is home in Colorado and missing mission life. Hna. Alvarenga, sadly, went home as well. She got really sick and was in the hospital for about a month trying to recover before they finally decided to just send her home for further treatment (she still doesn't know what the problem is). Hna. Tua'one is done training. She's now in Loma Pyta with Hna. Brittner. Hna. Young is in Ypacarai with Hna. Rivera. It's funny how so many of my past companions are together, now. The world of the sister missionaries is pretty small. 

Week 46 - Asuncion Paraguay - Villa Hayes

Dear Family,

Wow, last week went fast. I barely know what to write about that you don´t already know! Plus we were in Asunción all day today, first trying to find new shoes for me and Elder Hobby, our district leader (I utterly failed to find anything above a size 10. Curse my size 10 1/2 feet!), then trying to find the Pizza Hut, which we were told was just a few blocks away but turned out to be a few MILES away. Now we´re all trying to cram our internet time in last-minute. The stress is killing me. I like being able to plan out my e-mails beforehand, but whatcha gonna do. 

I loved reading your e-mails this week, though. Thank you Goompa, Grandma Springer, Dad, Mom, Amanda, and Sarah for your letters. Oh, Grandma, I hear that I have another package waiting for me in the office, and I´ll be getting it on Thursday. Yay! I´m excited. Paraguay mail can be slow sometimes, but it´s never been MONTHS late, like some missions I´ve heard of, and I´ve never heard of anyone losing anything in the mail. Thankfully.

This week probably went by so quickly for me just because it was so exhausting. The heat just drains all energy out of me. I´m considering chopping all my skirts five inches shorter and possibly all my sleeves and my hair as well. :) We´ve been having a rainy weekend, though, which is refreshing but also not super fun to work in. Last night we actually went scurrying home a little early because the lightning was getting insanely close. I´m fine working out in torrents and heat, but lightning is just too scary sometimes. 

It´s so bizarre to me that your days are getting shorter and cooler while mine are getting longer and hotter. Sometimes it almost feels like it really is November, though, because lots of trees around here are covered in red and orange and yellow flowers that from a distance look like leaves changed colors. They´re really pretty. Today in Asunción there was lots of Halloween stuff leftover, so I guess there they celebrate it a bit, but here in Villa Hayes there wasn´t much going on. They had a sort of Día de los Muertos a few days later, but nothing close to the candy gluttony that happens in the States. As for Thanksgiving---that´s nonexistent. It´ll just be a normal Thursday for us. We won´t be eating turkey, probably. I´ve never eaten turkey, nor heard of anyone eating turkey around here. Lots of people have turkeys as pets, but they prefer their cow femur bone and dried fat chunks over nice roasted turkey. I´m sure Hna. deVries and I will make some mashed potatoes or...yeah, that´s pretty much all we could make around here that´s remotely Thanksgiving-ish. 

Anyways, this last week was also exhausting because we worked SO HARD. The quality AND quantity of our lessons has improved so much lately. We are now masters of getting in (we clap almost every open door or talk to anybody sitting outside doing nothing), getting straight to the point (instead of chit-chatting, which Paraguayans do with much more gusto than we do), sharing an inspirational scripture from the Book of Mormon (instead of the Bible, which we´d been doing--it proved to get us nowhere), and just setting the tone for the Spirit, being smiley and friendly and firm in our doctrine, and putting a return date. We felt so accomplished at the end of every day.

And yet, we are doing so poorly with finding new investigators and progressing investigators. We only found TWO new investigators this week, and pretty much none of our long-time investigators are keeping their commitments. I´m not sure what we can do to find news. As I said before, we´ve been working hard in that respect. As for progressing, I guess we need to teach them better the importance of keeping commitments, but their main stumblingblock is church attendance. Even when it´s not raining and all of their Sunday tasks are re-planned or whatever, we still can´t get anyone in to the chapel, and we´ve pretty much concluded that it´s because of the members.

I don´t know what it is about this branch, but not even the members want to attend church. If it wasn´t for the American family and the President´s family, who pretty much run all aspects of the church, the chapel would be empty. NOBODY arrives on time, and NOBODY stays until the end. It has been getting so frustrating, and I don´t know--maybe we need to stop focusing on new investigators and such and focusing more on re-activating the members. 

We´ve been doing lots with that lately. On Thursday we held our first informal English class to offer service to the members and get to know them better. Since we decided kind of last-minute to do it this week, we only had two pupils, but it was a fun, cute lesson. We taught them how to introduce themselves in English, then taught them body part vocabulary and taught them "Head, shoulders, knees, and toes." It was fun. I never thought I´d be an English teacher, but here in Paraguay at least it´s pretty fun.

We´ve also taken Relief Society into our own hands. After two full months of showing up at 8:00, waiting a half hour for the President´s wife to show up, waiting in vain for the Relief Society President (or ANYBODY else) to show up at all, and then holding a short, hodge-podge lesson, Hna. deVries and I decided to show this branch how it´s done. We got there at 7:50 and set up the classroom with the Relief Society motto (thank you, Mom and Dad) and an agenda written on the board. At 8:00 sharp we commenced the lesson, just us two, with a song and a pray and a recitation of the motto. Then we took turns reading to each other and explaining a lesson out of the manual. As the President´s wife and daughters came in one by one, we didn´t stop to greet them or anything. They were forced to sit down quietly and listen to the lesson. It was a LOT more spiritual than usual, and hopefully they´ll want to come on time next time. We brought a few brownies just as positive reinforcement--just enough brownies for those who showed up first. 

Yesterday, it was Hna. deVries´ and my task to give talks in sacrament meeting. It rained cats and dogs, and so nobody showed up except the American family, the President´s family and President´s counselors. The microphone stopped working two minutes into Hna. deVries´ talk, so people stopped paying attention quickly and were either having whispered conversations or sleeping during her wonderful talk about the importance of reading the Book of Mormon every day. That irritated me so badly that when I got up to give my talk on the importance of church attendance (to the tiniest congregation I´ve seen in Villa Hayes yet), I pretty much just ditched what I´d planned to say and just laid out what I was feeling. I didn´t get mad or anything, but I was almost on the verge of tears as I explained that our investigators don´t want to come to church, this branch is like one of the dying olive trees in Jacob 5, and I KNOW that this branch could be so much more amazing. I don´t know if they were paying any more attention to me than they were to Hna. deVries, but whatever. I said what I had to say, and now we´re gonna work as hard as possible to re-teach about the Book of Mormon and church attendance every time we visit members until it finally gets through their heads. 

Sorry, I´m not trying to be bleak or anything. I haven´t given up or gotten discouraged with this area, but the mission isn´t always fun and games all the time, you know? 

So, a funny story to lighten the mood :)--on top of our water heater not working (which is actually REALLY NICE with how hot and sweaty we get), the lightbulb in our study room died. We haven´t had time to go search out a new one. We tried to live by sunlight during the day, but at night it proved a problem. Thankfully, we have an extra room with practically nothing in it, so we dragged our desks and moved all of our stuff into that room to study in. For a whole week we were fumbling through that dark front room every night to reach the study room and having other little issues with it...Then suddenly it hit Hna. deVries-- "Uh...why don´t we just exchange the study room lightbulb for the one in the spare room?!" Wow, we´re smart. :) 

I love you all SO MUCH!! Have a wonderful week, thank you for your letters, and never stop being awesome. :)

---Hna. Springer


Photos from Week 46


1-the teeniest frog I´ve ever seen in my life
2-"Fall colors" (actually just red and orange flowers)
3-Me by the river
LOVE YOU!!

---Hna. Springer

Week 45 - Asuncion Paraguay - Villa Hayes

Hey everybody!

How are you all doing this fine week? I loved the pictures you sent of your adorable Halloween costumes, and I hope you´re enjoying the snow. That´s so surreal to me, especially right now. I´m sweating so badly. It feels like 150 outside.

I have a lot to write about this week, so I thought I´d shake things up and just write about my week day-by-day instead of trying to make all my random topics connect. :)

On Monday, right after e-mailing you guys last time, Hna. deVries and I had a fun time exploring the main road through Villa Hayes and seeing what each store had to offer. I found some really cool souvenires that I´ll have to go back for around Christmas. But I did buy a Paraguayan flag and a cool belt thingie that´s supposedly really traditional Paraguayan. I also found a bag that´s made out of an armadillo. As much as I love armadillos and think making them into bags is sad, it´s just so cool I may have to buy it someday. :) Don´t judge me. 

That night, we visited a lady named Ninfa, who we´d visited before and discovered is really cool. She has kind of a free-wheeling lifestyle, but when she´s home with her teenage son they love to study the Bible together. I´ve never met a Paraguayan like her before--someone who really searches the scriptures for truth. Naturally we gave her the Book of Mormon to study as well as a pamphlet about the Restoration. She´s read them both and agreed that when she comes to a conclusion about it, she will most definitely be baptized. Whenever we visit her, we´re able to testify freely, and the Spirit is always so strong. She told us on Monday that she´s visited with missionaries a few times in the past, but with us she really feels good and wants to change to be more like us. That made me so happy. :) 

On Tuesday at district meeting, I found a very large, very heavy box waiting for me. Yes, my package finally reached me! I tore it open as soon as I got home, and family, you are SO SWEET!! I loved it! I loved the balloons and the noisemakers and the tiara. I absolutely adore the photos, especially the poster of the Gilbert temple. I almost teared up looking at them. They´re all hanging up in my bedroom now. We made the cake that night and had a big old second birthday party for me. We especially had fun trying to take timed photos of the both of us blowing our noisemakers. I sent you the least embarrassing one. :) But seriously, I love everything you sent. The "feel the love" card warmed my heart. And how did you know that I needed a new toothbrush, make-up, pencils, and shower gel? Seriously, so perfect. I felt so loved. Oh and the candy is a wonderful added bonus, of course. :) 

Wednesday, Hna. deVries and I initiated a "re-activate the menos activos" project/Christmas present for the Villa Hayes branch. We´re gonna give each member, no matter their activity, a piece of paper for them to write their names, when they learned about the church, why they got baptized, a favorite scripture, and their testimonies of Jesus Christ. We´re really excited about it. Not only will it help us to get to know the members, we´re hoping it will help everyone remember their spiritual experiences and want to come to church more frequently. 

Also on Wednesday we met a cute kid named Dario who came to church with our branch mission leader last Sunday. He´s such an adorable kid with a big white smile. He´s super polite and grateful and he loved church. He lives kind of far away, but we´re gonna visit him as often as possible.

There´s not much to report about Thursday except for a fun food story. We were meeting with Aurelio, this old recent convert man who diligently comes to church every Sunday despite not being able to hear well or read. We were teaching him about the Plan of Salvation, and suddenly out of nowhere he started talking to us about his favorite food. I forgot the name of it, but when he brought it out to show us what it was, I decided that it was one of the grossest foods I´ve ever seen. He brought out this big bowl of what looked like walnuts, and a jug of salt. Turns out it wasn´t walnuts, it was strips of dried cow fat cut up into chunks. He just dumped salt on it and chowed down. He brought spoons for us to join him, but we firmly declined. I always heard about how the native americans never wasted any part of the buffalo and all that, but I never thought people still followed that rule now in the 21st century. 

Friday was short and boring thanks to weekly planning, and on Saturday it rained. I wasn´t feeling super well, and I was REALLY tempted to just stay in until the rain stopped. But then I decided that that was stupid--it was just drizzling. What if the Lord had somebody out there who at THIS MOMENT needed a visit, and I stayed home because of a little rain? I knew it would be hard to go contacting because people really do hole up when it rains, but Hna. deVries and I decided that we were going to clap every open door we saw, or talk to anyone we saw sitting out on their front porch. It led to a LOT of rejections, predictably, but we were still satisfied with ourselves at the end of the long day. 

By Sunday, we had only found two new investigators all week--Dario, and Ninfa. They were quality news and all that, but it was still a pretty sad outcome for such a long, hard-working week. But on Sunday morning I was fine with it. Hna. deVries and I had been praying all week to know what to do to find more news, and we decided on Sunday morning that maybe God hasn´t been making it obvious because we´re supposed to study it out and work hard and learn and grow by ourselves a little bit. We decided not to beat ourselves up about our numbers and just be happy with our efforts. Then Saturday afternoon, a member asked if he could come help us with our visits. With his help, we met our goals for with-member lessons and found two more new investigators. I could have hugged him was it allowed. Instead, I just thanked God for letting us see some success after all. :)

Paraguay continues to get more and more beautiful to me. One night this week Jupiter and Saturn were really bright in the evening sky. I love it when you can see the planets. It makes you realize how big the universe really is and always helps me to think more about Heavenly Father taking care of it all. And when it was raining on Saturday we discovered these teeny tiny little frogs that, I´m not kidding you, were the size of my pinky nail. We also saw vibrant yellow and black frogs with bright red feet, which we decided not to touch. You should look them up and see if they´re poisonous for us, just for future reference. :)

I´m reading the end of the Book of Mormon now. Mormon and Moroni´s words always make me kind of sad, but I´m happy knowing that both are surely very happy living with God right now. I loved how in Ether, Moroni adds an experience where he was lamenting to God how he´s so weak in writing and surely nobody will believe his words. Our Heavenly Father lovingly tells him that it´s not his problem--he did everything that God commanded him, and because he did so well, he can die happy without the sins of the people on his head. Moroni did his absolute best, and the salvation of those who read the Book of Mormon depends on them and only them. Moroni can be at peace. I hope we can all say that at the end of our lives (and that I can say that at the end of my mission)--"I did my best. I´m gonna rest easy now."

Thank you Nana, Hna. Stagg, Dad, Mom, Ashley, Amanda, Grandma Springer, Goompa, Laurel and Shelli for your letters this week. It´s so WEIRD to me that you´re Christmas shopping and stuff. I´m charging my iPod right now. I think it´s time for us to start listening to my Christmas playlist. :) 

Well, I´ve got to go, but seriously thank you so much for the birthday wishes and package, and for your many prayers on my behalf. I´m praying for all of you, too, and I love hearing about how the Lord is blessing you while I´m away. I won´t go into details, but really I´ve seen so many instances where things I´ve been praying for have come true. It makes me so happy to see how the Lord really does take care of a missionary´s family. Never forget to count your blessings, and to work harder expecting more to come. Hna. deVries´ and my new motto is "Pray like it all depends on the Lord, and then work like it all depends on you." 

I LOVE YOU ALL!! Talk to you next week!

---Hna. Springer

Here´s your weekly dose of Paraguayan goodness. LOVE YOU!!

---Carly

1-One happy misionera

2-22nd Birthday Take 2

3-Party!!

4-Cows right outside our window

5-Me in the forest with a Paraguayan flag. :)