Hola familia!
I´m sorry I don´t have time to read all your letters today. I´ll read them tonight and respond to them next week. But how´s everything going in the States? We´ve been hearing scattered rumors about Japan being wiped out by a tsunami?? Please send details soon. All I´m hearing are snatches about "El fin del mundo!!" It´s both relieving and irritating that I don´t hear about world news here. Paraguay is so sheltered.
Mom and Dad, have you gotten my CD of pictures yet? I´m going to try to send some with this e-mail but I still need to know if and when I can delete the pictures on my camera. Also, just so you know, I´ve heard that packages are actually pretty reliable here. Hna. Stagg has gotten every package her family has sent her, and has successfully sent stuff to her family. Just FYI.
So things are going really well here. The weather is SO NICE today. On Saturday, no joke, I thought I was going to die. It was hotter than I can even describe. I had no motivation at all to leave our air conditioned house. I had to walk around with my umbrella for shade but even that wasn´t nearly enough. I drained my water bottle, then bought another one, then bought ice cream, then accepted fruit punch from a member we visited. My stomach was so full but I couldn´t get cool enough. (By the way, helado and punch here is amazing. You wouldn´t believe the fruit flavors they have here. I´m definitely not missing any of that artificial stuff back home). But then yesterday it was all overcast and windy, and I was SHIVERING! It was bizarre, but I was so grateful for the reprieve. And now today it´s sunny again but it´s cooled down a lot. I´m so glad I got here at the end of summer. I´m not looking forward to next summer. I hear it´s awful. The people here know how to stay hydrated. Each person carries around a big jug of water and a cup filled with this herb they all love and metal straw. The jugs, cup, and straw are all personalized and have designs on them. They sell them like they´re cell phone covers or something.
The people are great. Flora was confirmed yesterday and the Spirit was so strong. We weren´t able to get anyone to attend church with us, though, and neither were the Elders from the other two areas who go to our ward. We were more than a little sad. But Hna. Stagg and I have some awesome investigators, and we for sure have two baptisms lined up for next month. We found two young girls, one eight and one nine. One is from a nonmember family and the other is from a part-member family. They´re both so sweet and so excited to be baptized. They´re probably just doing it because their friends are, but hey, that´s pretty much why I got baptized at that age and look how I turned out!
The rest of our investigators are being really good about reading the Book of Mormon and praying, but getting them to church is a pain. The chapel is kind of far away and it´s always hot. Plus lots of people here are getting dhenge. Denghe? I don´t know how to spell it. It´s transferred by mosquitos and makes you bleed from every orifice. Gross. I have like a zillion bug bites despite my preventative measures, and I seriously hope I don´t get it. Anyways, many people have to take care of their family members in the hospital who are sick, because hospitals here are pretty much pointless. They´re just a place for sick people to not get other people sick. So that´s a problem. We´re trying to get the members to come to church, too, not just investigators. A lot of people join the church just for the help. They expect the church leaders to give them what they can´t or won´t provide for themselves. And the ward is so spread out that it´s seriously hard for people to get together. There are so many inactive members here. Hna. Stagg and I bought this huge map from the municipalidad (whatever that means in English) and are using it to find all the inactives and chart where our investigators are. Nobody uses street names here. We have to draw a map to everyone´s houses when we fill out our area book. So we´re trying to get the few active members to be friends with the inactives so that we can have more church attendance and more friends for our investigators to have if and when they show up.
I seriously love the investigators we´re working with now, though. We have way too many for me to write about them all, but here´s just a sample:
There´s this 23-year-old girl named Olga who has been investigating the church for a long time but hasn´t been able to progress much because she´s too obsessed with her boyfriend. I didn´t meet her until this weekend. Her family would lie about where she was or they would say she wasn´t in the house when she totally was. So I was really excited to meet her when we finally found her sitting in her front yard. It turned out not to be a happy visit, though. Olga was in tears. Sobbing. Crying harder than I´ve literally ever seen a person cry in my life. She´d caught her boyfriend with another girl, and when she confronted him he threw her to the floor and hit her. Hard. She kept clutching at her heart and could not stop crying as Hna. Stagg and I just hugged her. I was crying, too. I´d never seen someone so completely miserable in my life. She was heartbroken and betrayed and confused, and she kept begging Hna. Stagg to just hold her. We obviously weren´t able to teach a lesson, but we had her kneel with us to pray, and her prayer to God for comfort and guidance was the most sincere, heartwrenching prayer I´ve ever heard. I felt so much love for her, and for a moment I got a glimpse of how God must love her, His lost daughter. I know we were sent to her to be here for her at this hard time in her life.
Anyways, Olga decided that she´s had enough of her problems here and is moving to Brazil this week. I´m sad that she won´t be continuing with us, but it´s better than her ending her own life as she was wanting to do earlier. And I have faith that she´ll continue to turn to the church in Brazil. We´re sending the missionaries there to her house. But now her sister, Justina, is investigating the Church with us because she saw how much good we did for Olga and she noticed how Olga would read the Book of Mormon when she was depressed. We´ve had two lessons with Justina so far, and both times she´s said she feels so good around us. She´s also accepted a baptismal date.
Next there´s Eduardo. He´s highly entertaining to talk to. He has a young wife who is going to have a baby next week, and he´s very eager to find the truth of the gospel so he can be a good father. He loves to learn from us, but he´s a very logical person and he loves to talk A LOT. We never teach an organized lesson with him because he goes off on the most random things like how the Church leaders are organized and why God sends angels to the earth and stuff like that. He´s always said what we teach makes sense and nothing we´ve said is against what he believes, but Hna. Stagg and I are a little worried that he´ll miss the mark. He´s going to learn every single thing there is to know about the Church, but we´re not so sure that he´ll really BELIEVE it, you know? We´ll see. First we need to get him to church. Right now he doesn´t trust any church, so he has his family come over and they have their own church time together.
Finally there´s Clarice and Luz. They´re cousins, and they´re Catholic but not whole-heartedly devoted to Catholicism. I´ve come to learn that there are three types of people here: people who are Catholic and won´t listen to a word a non-Catholic says, people who are Catholic but don´t know why and are willing to listen, and people who hate Catholics and are willing to listen to anything anyone says that is against Catholic teachings. Clarice and Luz are in the middle. They both loved the story of the Book of Mormon and were touched to learn that Christ visited the Americas and loves all His people, not just the Jews or the Catholics. Sadly, Clarice called us last week to tell us that Mormonism wasn´t for her, and Luz told us she´d talked to her father about us. We think there may be a correlation there. But now Luz AND Clarice know about the gospel, and they´re still super nice and always receive us. I know they know we´re bringing truths to their door, and I expect that they´ll both come to accept the gospel of Christ. Maybe not during this change, but someday, they will.
Well, I want to figure out how to send pictures so I have to end this letter here. Please write me a lot. :) I love you all and I can´t wait to tell you more next week. Stay safe and be strong and remember to be missionaries wherever you are. You´re the best!
Love always,
Hna. Springer
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