Week 17 - Asuncion Paraguay - Mariano Roque Alonzo

Me, Hna. Stagg, and the two other sisters who were in our zone before the change: Hna. Messina(left) and Hna. Jara (right)

Hey Family!!

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend! I´m not gonna lie, I was feeling pretty homesick, especially yesterday as I thought about all of you hunting for Easter eggs and all that fun stuff. It just wasn´t the same here in Paraguay. The Semana Santa continued with Last Supper Thursday, which is like the Paraguayan equivalent of Thanksgiving. During our morning studying, Hna. Stagg and I got to hear all the pigs being slaughtered. All day we could smell them roasting, and we got almost no lessons in that day because everyone was too busy eating pork with their extended families. No idea why they eat pork. I´m pretty sure Christ didn´t eat pork during the Last Supper, but I could be wrong. :) 

Then Friday was Good Friday, of course. It was really strange. The custom is to not go to work, to eat no red meat (or no meat at all, or nothing, depending on which Catholic you talk to) and to be as quiet as possible. There´s no such notion as noise pollution here, so usually Hna. Stagg and I have to try to ignore all the American rap music blaring in the streets as we go teaching. On Friday, though, it was amazingly tranquil. Everyone was holed up in their houses watching movies about the Crucifixion--uplifting flicks such as Passion of the Christ (judging by what the kids were telling us about that movie later, I´m SO glad I´ve never seen it). We hardly got any lessons in that day, either. Many people we contacted were all appalled that we were working that day, and that we weren´t fasting. Our explanations about how we worship a living Christ and fast once a month and keep the Sabbath day holy every week didn´t change their minds about us being heathens. 

And then yesterday, nobody did anything at all. It was just a normal Sunday with everyone out playing sports, blaring their American rap music... We didn´t even sing Easter hymns or talk about the Resurrection at all in Church! It was very weird. Kind of sad, really. But that´s just how it is here. (Eat some Cadburry eggs for me!)

So, crazy question: Amanda, what´s your new address going to be? I can´t believe you´re going to have your own home address. So bizarre! Also, Mom, could you please e-mail me the recipes for peach cobbler and lemon bars? I feel like the only thing we ever bake around here is brownies, and while Paraguayans love them a lot, I´d like to blow them away with some real cooking. :)

Things are going really well here in Mariano Roque Alonso B. The mission work has been so much more enjoyable lately. Every morning when I wake up I think, "Wow. I´m waking up AGAIN??" The days are flying by. I still have tendencies every now and then to think, "Do we HAVE to go to work?" but once we get out of the house, I´m just so happy to be doing the Lord´s work. It´s so fun to meet new people, visit friends, and teach people how they can be happier and overcome all their trials because they´re children of God. Hna. Stagg and I have been getting along a lot better lately, too. We never actually fought or anything, but she always had her way of doing things and I felt like I couldn´t contribute anything, and then I felt like she was mad at me for not helping at all. Now, though, we´ve been practicing teaching together--she´ll teach a concept, I´ll testify and teach another concept, she´ll testify and teach another concept, etc. Our lessons have been a lot better and it´s all just been a lot more enjoyable. We chat a lot more and I feel like we´re actually friends, not just companions. The language is also a lot better, now, too. I can understand everything almost perfectly. Speaking is still a challenge, but usually because I overthink what I need to say. Hna. Stagg always tells me to just look people in the eyes as I talk and the words will come. It´s true. The less I think about myself, the more I think about what people need to hear, the easier the language is.

It rained again a lot on Saturday. It kind of caught us unawares. I´d left the house thinking, "Yay, it´s finally cold enough to wear a sweater!" but by the end I was really wishing I´d worn more. My shoes and sweater were soaked, and with the wind it was really quite cold. But we were far away from our house and there was work to do, so we just dealt with it. It was really fun to trek through the streets of San Luis, which are really rough and formed pretty little waterfalls for us to enjoy as we tried not to lose our shoes to the mud or get tangled in the long grass. "Sheesh," I said at one point, "It feel like we´re trekking through some jungle swamp somewh--oh wait, that´s exactly what we´re doing." 

The dhengue (sp?) situation isn´t improving much. In literally every house we´ve been to, someone either has a relative who has had dhengue, or they´ve had dhengue themselves. Everyone´s outside with their machetes trying to get rid of the tall scrub brush that harbors the mosquitos. We´ve been told that over 90 percent of mosquitos are now carriers. We´re subsequently using tons of repellant. The natives don´t use repellant much, though. They´re just very sensetive to mosquitos landing on them, and it´s like whack-a-mole every time we´re teaching a lesson outside. I´ve come to be pretty good at detecting them, too. But that may just be because they´re the size of hummingbirds here. 

Veronica got to go home for Easter weekend. She was very happy to have her family let her come home, and we were, too, except it means that we have to push her baptism back a week and we haven´t gotten to teach her since last Sunday. Aside from her and Mariela we really don´t have many progressing investigators. It has a lot to do with the fact that this was a big traveling week so all of our golden investigators were off with relatives the whole time. Elber is enjoying reading the Book of Mormon. We´re excited to find his brother-in-law someday. We still haven´t done so, and Elber tells us he´s on page 200 and loving every word. He and Elber are so cool about defending us "Mormons" to their friends. Elber always tells us about how his friends say we don´t believe in Christ or something, and he´ll pull out the Book of Mormon and be like, "Look. Right here. Another Testament of Jesus Christ." Edguardo´s been off with his relatives a lot since the baby was born. Mariela is doing great, except we just received sad news yesterday. The ward wants to change our mission areas so that we have a more even number of priesthood-holding men in each section. It´s a great idea. We´ll get lots of new streets to explore. But the part that the Elders are taking from our area includes the street of the Fma. Gomez. We. Are. Sad. The line goes right down their street. We keep joking that we should just have them cross the street and visit their member neighbor so we can still hang out with them sometimes, but it probably won´t happen. I´m not sure if that would be breaking mission rules or what.

Something that really made my day this week, though, was when we went out to find Romina. She hasn´t been doing a super good job of coming to church because the Gonzalez family hasn´t been coming to church lately, and if they don´t go, she won´t. Her mom isn´t being supportive, and she tries to keep Romina from talking to us as much as possible. But on her street there´s this unowned lot with abandoned cars in it, and Romina, her member sister Jessica, and their ten or so girl friends are always playing there. They´re all under ten years old and very, very adorable. This week to get a with-member lesson, we briefly sang and said a prayer with them in the car lot. They loved it. Afterwards, we happened to pass by there again and we found that Jessica was teaching them all to sing "Soy Un Hijo de Dios." It was so precious.

Something we´ve been taught lately as a mission is that the members´ involvement is very, very important. Before, the missionaries were driving all the work themselves, and they had about 100 baptisms a month. Now we´re trying to do the work with the members helping us, aiming for 200 baptisms a month. But the end goal is to have it all work how it should, with the members driving the work--fellowshipping their friends, inviting them over to FHE, and asking us to come teach the doctrine. If that were to happen, we could (and should) have 400 baptisms a month. I think it was David O McKay (or Spencer W. Kimball? I can´t remember) who said that every member of the Church should do all they can to convert at least one person EVERY YEAR. I certainly want to do that even outside of the mission, and I hope you all do, too. Talk to your friends about the Gospel. Have FHE with your neighbors. Do your visiting and home teaching. Give references to the missionaries. Volunteer to go teaching with the missionaries. Feed the missionaries. Do something whenever you possibly can to build the Lord´s Kingdom, and I cna guarantee you everything will be so much better.

Well, I´m out of time again. This computer is stupid and won´t upload my pictures within the hour that I have. GRRRRR!! 

I love you all so so so so much!!

---Hna. Springer

Week 16 - Asuncion Paraguay - Mariano Roque Alonzo

April 18, 2011

Hey everybody!

 

How´s it going in the US of A? With Easter coming up I think about you all a LOT, and about all the awesome family traditions we have. Did you get the letter I sent by snail mail yet? And Dad, I guess I could just take a picture of my written letters and e-mail it to you... Sadly it takes forever to upload pictures and wouldn´t you know it, I forgot to bring my camera today so I´m sorry you´re all starving for pictures. Someday I´ll send you so many that you´ll miss the days when you just got little tastes of my life.

 

Amanda, your wedding sounds like it´s going to be amazing. Don´t worry, I´m really not mad at you. I´m so so happy that you´ve found your eternal companion already and that you´re making the incredibly important choice to be sealed together in the temple. I´m writing you a long letter with all my thoughts. No idea when you´ll get it. Nor your present. If I get around to buying it. :) P.S. That picture you e-mailed me of you and Chase was like a gazillion megabytes so it was kind of hard to see it all at once. But your eyes look incredible!! P.P.S. BROOKE QUINN is getting married?? Details!!

 

So here in Paraguay (and possibly in all of South America, I´m not sure) they celebrate the whole week before Easter, the "Semana Santa." Yesterday was Palm Sunday, and literally everyone out on the streets was carrying a woven palm branch as they headed to church for the first time since Christmas. Hna. Stagg and I felt like we stood out even more than usual as we went around empty-handed. We had to explain to a lot of investigators that we only celebrate Easter Sunday, because they kind of think we just don´t celebrate the end of Christ´s mortal life at all. Anyways, I´m not sure what else they do the rest of the week. Good Friday...something Saturday, and then Easter Sunday... No sé. All I know is they´re going to eat a lot of chipa and sopa paraguaya this week. I like both so that´s cool, but I´m sad that we´re not really doing much else this week to celebrate. I kind of miss all that Easter bunny stuff, you know?

 

But Hna. Stagg is reading Jesus the Christ this week to think about the Savior more in-depth, and I asked her what we should be thinking about on this Monday of the Semana Santa. She reminded me that it was on Monday that Christ cursed the barren fig tree, and I was thinking about that during personal study this morning. How often are we like the fig tree--putting out lots of pretty leaves but not producing any real fruit at all? It´s amazing to think of how easy that is to do--just doing good things isn´t enough. That´s just leaves. You have to serve with love for it to make any difference and produce fruit for yourself and for those you serve. Just a thought.

 

We got another incredible rain storm this week. It´s been blazing hot the rest of the time. It was Friday morning, which is when we have daily planning, so it had come and gone before we needed to leave the shelter of our house, anyways. You seriously wouldn´t believe how much water comes down. Arizona has monsoons, and I thought I´d seen a lot of water before, but here it just POUNDS for hours and hours. We were dealing with the after-effects all through Sunday, as at around 9:00 Friday morning the wind started blowing in our direction and pushed water underneath our doors. There was nothing we could do except get everything off the floor. It smelled like frogs. I understand now why nobody in Paraguay has carpet. Nothing was ruined and it made it a lot easier to mop this morning, but it was still a pain to slosh through water all weekend. We trust that God will understand and forgive us for not doing kneeling prayers those two days before our floor dried out.

 

Sarah asked me last week what the food is like here. I´ve raved about the fruit enough, but really that´s pretty much the extent of what´s really great here. They have great chipa and the chicken is good, too, but just a tip: never EVER buy beef in Paraguay. Beef here is not that nice t-bone steak stuff. They use whatever part of the cow that has meat on it. It´s tough and fatty and really, really gross. Last week Hna. Stagg and I had to buy chicken to cook with a member in the branch, and I got a good look at the butcher shop for the first time. It was a sight I wish I could remove from my memory. They eat cow stomach here. And cow feet. And liver. And tongue. And pretty much anything that doesn´t resemble meat. Their noodles, too, aren´t like we´re used to, and I´m not very fond. Sadly, the most common meal we´re fed is noodles topped with beef. That´s why I stick with fruit as often as possible. :) But as I mentioned before, Hna. Stagg and I cooked for a member in the branch this week. We made chicken tacos, which she and her family thought were hilariously strange. I chowed down. It was so nice to eat something familiar for the first time in over a month. :)

 

Everything´s all cleared up with Mariela (Victoria´s Mom). We´d thought at first that she was harboring some resentment, but we got a chance on Tuesday to talk with her alone and she is still amazing. She doesn´t hate the church or anything, and she thanked us so sincerely for all that we´ve done to help her family. She keeps telling us how special we are to her, and she´s really come to be one of our best friends in the branch. Sadly, she said she doesn´t want to go to Relief Society or Sunday School until she´s married. She knows the church is true and she really likes us, but she feels uncomfortable in the more intimate classes where everyone knows that she´s new and unmarried. She´s still coming to Sacrament Meeting, though, for which I´m grateful. We´ll get her to come back to the other classes soon, I´m sure.

 

So guess what? For the first time since I arrived in Paraguay, Hna. Stagg and I passed by to take an investigator to Church yesterday, and THEY ACTUALLY CAME WITH US! I was like, "Whoa. Wait, what? You´re really coming? People really DO come??" I was so excited. Especially because it was Veronica who came! She is so amazing. After our awesome in-depth talk with her on Sunday when we first started teaching her and she accepted a fecha, we´ve gone back and visited her almost every day this week. Each time, she´s followed through with her reading commitments and understood everything and reaffirmed that she wants to get baptized. She loved church, and was so talkative during the class for investigators. She knew the answers to every question and she didn´t feel out of place at all! I´m so excited for her to get baptized. She´s seriously so great.

 

The sad thing is, though, that her family isn´t supporting her. She lives with her cousins, inactive members (I think I mentioned them last week?), and hasn´t seen her parents or siblings since Christmas. She was so excited to go see them this week during the Easter break, and was crushed when they said maybe it wasn´t a good idea for her to come back. She was really worried that maybe something is going on with them that they´re not telling her, and she´s been calling them all week trying to figure out how to visit them. Then on Sunday they called her during church. When she called back and told them where she was and that she wants to get baptized, her mom told her that now she´s not allowed to come home for Easter as punishment for changing her religion.

 

I feel so bad for her. She was crying as she told us. It would devastate her if her family really disowned her like that. I´m not sure how serious they are, but it sounds to me like they have unresolved problems besides difference in religion anyways. And I trust that Veronica will make the right choice. We talked with her for a long time about it, and whenever she mentioned her convesation with her family, she kept saying, "They were angry that I WANT to get baptized", not, "...that I WANTED to get baptized." That´s a start. I just can´t wait for her to read the Book of Mormon. We weren´t able to give her a copy until yesterday because we´d run out, and when we finally handed her her first copy, it was such a reverent moment. Normally we just dish them out like candy, but with her we´d been telling her about it all week, promising her further insight and assurance, and when she took it in her hands for the first time you could just feel how moved she was to be gifted with her very own copy to study. And she will study it. I have no doubt about that. She´s already read all the pamphlets we gave her, and she loves to learn.

 

We´ve been spending a lot of time with the Familia Granados this week because their daughter Jessica comes with us to visit Veronica sometimes, Hna. Granados feeds us lunch on Saturdays, and Hno. Granados is in the district presidency. They´re like our foster family here in Paraguay. We love them so much. Hna. Granados is so motherly. When she says, "Sit down, Hermana," or "Have second helpings, Hermana," I just say "Yes, ma´am." The way she looks at you when she tells you to do something, you know she doesn´t take no for an answer, no matter how in a hurry youare or how full your stomachs are. Anyways, we had Noche de Hogar with them on Thursday night, and while two of the other people we´d invited didn´t show up (we´re trying to invite lots of people to lots of activities to strengthen the ward), an inactive older man named Filimon came. He´d never come to a Noche de Hogar before and he loved it so much. He´s so sweet and wants to do all he can to share the gospel. We´re trying to get him to the temple to be sealed with his family.

 

Out of time. Sorry. I love you all!!!

 

---Hna. Springer

Week 15 - Asuncion Paraguay - Mariano Roque Alonzo

Hey everybody!

Can you believe I´ve been gone for 15 weeks already? I certainly can´t. And I´ve now officially been in Paraguay for one whole change! Crazy! We got our changes this morning and turns out nothing´s changing at all for me. I´m staying with Hna. Stagg here in good old Mariano Roque Alonso B for at least six more weeks.

For a lot of reasons I´m both sad and happy about that. There are some days where I just want to go somewhere else. I feel like I´ve been rejected by every single person in our neighborhood and I´d like nothing else than to start over in an area where I don´t know what the people are like. But at the same time, we have so many great people who I would be devestated to leave. And I really do love being with Hna. Stagg. She can be pretty blunt sometimes, but she´s a great teacher and a wonderful companion. I feel like I grow to love her more and more every day. 

Thank you everyone for your letters. I´m soryr I haven´t been very good at responding. I sent a snail mail letter last week. Let me know when it gets to you. I think from now on I´m just going to write my weekly e-mail, send some pictures, then print off your e-mails and snail mail my replies to them. Sorry, but I really REALLY want to reply to everything and that just doesn´t work without snail mail being involved. :) Also, I´m trying to find a thumb drive so I can send you all my pictures in the mail, along with a present for Amanda (it may or may not get to you before your wedding, Manfred).

This week was so much better than the last one, numbers- and quality-wise. First of all, we had a baptism! YAY!! After a lot of drama involving her Anglican grandma, nine-year-old Victoria Gomez was finally baptized on Friday. We´ve been visiting her almost every day for the past two weeks, teaching her all we know at the request of her dad. It´s been really fun. I love her family. Her dad is a member but he hasn´t been active for years. He isn´t married to Victoria´s mom because, wouldn´t you know it, he´s married to someone else. But he wanted to see his little girl living the gospel so badly that he´s now reactivated and after a 10-year struggle he should be getting a divorce this May. We really hope that after they´re married, Hna. Gomez will get baptized, too. 

The actually baptism started off being a nightmare. Hna. Stagg and I got up really early and walked way out to the chapel to clean the font and all the rooms and get everything pretty. We wanted everything to be perfect, not only for Victoria but also for her non-member family members who were probably going to compare everything with the grand, ceremonial way of doing baptisms in other churches. As we were cleaning we discovered that all of the baptism clothes were missing. Not good. We made a lot of calls and our ward mission leader, Cesar, promised to take care of it for us. We went the rest of the day unworried. Then at 6:00 we went back to the chapel to make last-minute preparations before the 7:00 baptism. At 7:00 the Gomez family showed up. At 7:05 the branch president, who was going to do the baptism, called to say he couldn´t make it. We were obviously very upset, and I did all I could to keep the family happy as Hna. Stagg called every priesthood holder we know. Sadly, there are only about 20 worthy priesthood holders in the whole branch. Cesar showed up at 7:30 and said he could do the baptism, and we were relieved until we realized that we still needed two priesthood-holding witnesses. Also, he had only been able to find one jumpsuit for the baptism,. THANKFULLY Victoria happened to be wearing a white dress, so Cesar could use the jumpsuit and she could use her own dress for the baptism. More phone calls and a lot of prayers later, at 8:00 we were finally ready to do the baptism. We´d sung songs and eaten our refreshments already to keep everyone entertained. There still weren´t many people there, but Hna. Stagg and I were trying to be as tranquila and optimistic as possible.

Then we opened the divider to the font. 

It was empty.

At 7:15, to entertain Victoria, Hna. Stagg had taken her to look at the font. Victoria is a bit afraid of water and so she wanted to see how much there was. Hna. Stagg saw that it was a little too full, so she started to drain it a bit. After this morning we knew that it drained very slowly, so she was planning on just turning it off right when the baptism started. But after all the drama with the clothing and the priesthood holder and the fact that very few people had turned up to support Victoria, by 8:00 when we were ready to go, the font had completely drained. Hna. Stagg felt SO BAD as you can imagine. We apologized to the family a thousand times over, and we finished the rest of our food and sang more songs to wait as the font refilled.

It turned out to be really great, though. Victoria didn´t want a lot of water anyways, so we didn´t have to wait too long to get started. And by the time we did start, the youth (who are AMAZING here) had showed up for an activity and they put it off so they could attend, filling the previously-empty room. Victoria was beaming. She was never once upset about anything, and everyone in the branch who gave talks for her made her feel really special. It was really beautiful. Her dad cried, and her mom told us that she´d been very touched and almost cried, too. 

Hna. Gomez came to church yesterday to see Victoria confirmed. We were so happy to see her come. She´s always not liked the church before, but she´s so pretty and kind and just amazing that we´ve always wanted to see her there. We did all we could to make her feel welcome and happy. Her two-year-old daughter Sophie behaved herself perfectly the whole time, and when she was asked to give the prayer after Gospel Principles, Hna. Gomez gave a beautiful prayer thanking God for the Priesthood. It was lovely. 

Turns out, though, that someone in the ward talked to her while our backs were turned and told her that she couldn´t go to the regular class with her husband but had to go with us to the "special class" with us missionaries and our investigators. Then she was told rather bluntly that she couldn´t take the sacrament because she was living in sin. Now she doesn´t like the church again. Great. Thankfully she still loves Hna. Stagg and I, for which I´m very glad, but at the same time I need to do a lot of repenting for all the times i´ve been angry with the branch members.

Aside from the Gomez family, we have two other really great investigators right now who we love to teach because we can really see the gospel changing their lives and the lives of their families. One of them is Elber, who is still just GOLD! I absolutely love teaching him. He´s so fun to talk to and he believes what we tell him so readily. The other night, after he told us how he´d read the intro to the Book of Mormon and believed Joseph Smith´s testimony (yay!) we mentioned how we need to not drink. He was like, "Cool. I´ve always hated drinking anyways." Then we said he couldn´t smoke. "Oh no!" he said. We´d already seen him smoking, but we were so happy with how he reacted. The way he said it wasn´t the usual, "That´s it, I don´t believe you anymore. Get out." It was more like, "Oh no! That´s gonna be so hard to quit. I´ll have to get started on that." He is so awesome! 

Unfortunately, though, he mentioned how before his marriage the priest had told him he had to confess (he was complaining about the hypocrisy of the Catholic church at the time), and we now suspect he was married in the Catholic church. Which means he literally can´t get a divorce. GRRRR!! I´m not giving up, though. If nothing else we´re going to make sure that he gains a solid testimony and does all he can given the circumstances to live the gospel.

The other investigator we have is named Veronica. She´s the cousin of an inactive family we´ve been trying to reactivate lately. We´ve never talked to her alone before, but yesterday we had the opportunity. She´s only 17 and when we asked what she wanted most in life, she said, "I want a job so I can help other people. And I want to be with my family forever." Yeah. She´s gold, too. We had the most beautiful lesson with her on a beautiful Sunday morning, just talking in her front yard about how through the gospel she CAN have her family forever. She was so moved, and she sincerely expressed her desires to learn more. I can´t wait to get started teaching her.

We have a lot of big plans for the ward here. We need to reactivate so many families. There are at least 2,000 members in all of Mariano, but we only have about 100 come to church regularly. The branch president is getting us all excited to reactivate everyone so that we can have THREE branches here instead of just one. That way we can have more chapels and it will be easier for people to come. Funny how that works.

One last story before I have to go. Yesterday morning Hna. Stagg woke up with a gasp. It was the usual 6:30, except that we´d forgotten about Daylight Savings. We had no idea if it was 5:30 and we had another hour to sleep, or if it was 7:30 and we were going to be late for church. I was hoping it was 5:30 but since in the states it´s summer I figured we´d spring forward too and it was 7:30. We didn´t want to call anyone in case it was 5:30 and they would hate us, but we had to know. So Hna. Stagg called one of the Chicos, Flopi. She´s 11. This was their conversation.

"...hola?" "Hola Flopi!" "...Hermana? What happened?" "Nothing, nothing! We just have a question. What time is it?" "...no sé, Hermana." "Could you go check, please?" "...*yawn* Sí.....It´s 5:00, Hermana." "Thanks, Flopi! Go back to sleep!" "Uh huh..."

It was so funny. :)

Well, time´s up again. I hope you´re all doing well and that you enjoy the pictures! I love you all! Never forget that no matter what your circumstances or your sorrows, the solution is always to do what God says, and then everything will turn out perfect. Take care!

---Hermana Springer

Week 14 - Asuncion Paraguay - Mariano Roque Alonzo

Dearest Family,

Thank you so much for your letters.

I really really really want to answer all your questions.

I feel like we do have the most success with the younger people for exactly that reason--they´re not trapped in sticky divorce situations and they´re trying to figure out their lives. The older people are SUPER nice here, but they think that everyone who´s Christian is going to make it to heaven so why worry. The mission president hasn´t really said much about who we´re supposed to focus on. I think the philosophy is just that everyone´s a child of God so focus on everyone. :) We do a lot of contacting but not really tracting. We just go from one appointment to another and talk to people in the streets as we go. Our members and investigators are so spaced out that we do a lot of street contacting.

It´s not actually impossible to get a divorce anymore. The government used to be ruled by teh Catholic church, and in Catholicism it is literally impossible to get a divorce. Now it´s just super super expensive. People are becoming more open-minded and the Church is doing a lot of petitioning to let people get their marriages and families figured out.

I did get to watch all of Conference, in English even! My Spanish is coming along pretty great. Only if someone talks really fast or in a weird accent can I not understand, usually. Replying is always more difficult, but está bien. I watched in English so that I could get the most out of the message, and so that I could hear the familiar voices of our beloved church leaders. It was weird not watching from home and having to run around and find people before, after, and between sessions. But I loved it, of course. I learned so much about what I need to improve in my life as a missionary and as a whole. I´m excited for the future. I really am.

What has surprised me the most about the people, their culture, the environment, the language, the work, etc? I was surprised to learn that the people don´t hate Americans. When I first showed up they kept telling me not to speak English or I´d get robbed, and not to do anything American-ish like refuse second helpings or I´d offend everybody. As a result, I barely spoke at all those first three days and I stuffed myself to where I physically couldn´t eat anymore. It was not very fun. Now I´m totally at ease, though, and really most people assume we´re Germans.

As for their culture, it´s just crazy how social they are, how much they love to talk, and yet how much they learn. It´s like they have two mouths and one ear instead of the opposite. People are just so ignorant sometimes, it drives me nuts. They love to watch TV, sit outside and gossip, talk on their cell phones, and claim that they love Maria, but none of them actually DOES anything. They work, then they come home and sit around and do nothing. It´s sad. It really is. I know the church can help them so much, but many of the people we talk to just want hand-outs. Stupid government.

The environment is HOT. Everyone was telling me it only got to 80 degrees but it felt like 100 degrees. Liars. It feels like 200. I have to carry an umbrella around for shade because sunblock does almost nothing and I sweat like a pig. The rain´s fun, though. Last week it was overcast almost the whole time with a brief downpour once a day. Loved it.

The language is easier to understand than I expected. Guaraní uses a lot of sounds that English uses but not Spanish, so people here actually speak really bad Spanish with accents closer to English than I expected. They´re fairly easy to understand. Except they use bad grammar that threw me off at first, like ¨Me voy a casa¨ When in reality there is no such verb as irse.

The work is difficult but I find something to be grateful about every day. I think I expected to feel the Spirit a lot more than I actually do. That´s bad, I know. It´s totally my fault. If I don´t have the Spirit, I can´t do anything, and I´m trying really really hard to let it guide me. This first month I´ve mostly just been trailing behind Hna. Stagg trying to learn everything. Whenever I speak, though, I rely on the Lord to tell me what to say. I´m learning to be more bold in speaking with people and meeting their eyes. I got in a bad habit of just letting Hna. Stagg dominate every conversation until people forgot I was there. I´m changing that, though, don´t worry. I know I´ve already grown so much and done a lot of good here. I´m gonna continue to be the best missionary I can be.

My favorite thing about Paraguay is the fruit. That´s a very temporal thing to love about a people and culture, but it´s true. The fruit is AMAZING. And the flowers. Everything just has so much color and life to it.

A typical work day...We get up at 630 am and do exercise for a half hour. I mostly do strength training and Hna. Stagg jogs in a tiny circle through our tiny apartment. At 700 we get ready for the day and I try to squeeze some journalling in. Then at 800 we do personal study. We´re starting to read Preach My Gospel cover-to-cover this month, 3 pages a day through June I think. You should do it too! Anyways, then at 900 we have companionship study where we do a practice and discuss what we learned during personal study, etc. At 1000 we plan our day and I study the language a bit. Then we usually have a lunch cita at 1200, so we try to throw in a lesson or two before that. But lunch is like dinner here. Everyone makes a big deal out of it. They come home from work, school lets out, and we almost never get anyone to let us in because they´re busy. So we usually really just work from 3:00 to 9:30. I think we have about 10 planned lessons a day, and when things fall through or we have extra time we go in search for new people to teach. Then it´s back home where we rendere our numbers, do some more journalling, and it´s straight to bed at 10:30.

Shoot, I just remembered I forgot to get some pictures started loading. Dang it! I´m so sorry. I try, I really do. Someday I´ll get a ton printed and send them in the mail. In the meantime, just use your imaginations, I guess... :/

This is ending up being my weekly letter because i´m running out of time. Sorry.

This week we had nobody show up to Conference. not a single investigator. I was extremely devestated, especially since all this week I talked to EVERYBODY about how the prophet of GOD was going to speak and how amazing it was going to be. We passed by for so many people, had so many people promise to come, were so certain that we´d have big numbers... nothing. And then as the prophet and apostles spoke, I heard something that every single one of our investigators could have really used in their lives. I was so sad. But we´ll get the Liahona in a month and I´m going to tell them all about how much they missed out.

This week also my digestive system finally started fighting back, after a month of strange food. It was horrible. I´d been secretly wishing for a break from everything, but when my insides started feeling like barbed wire, it was right before our trip to the temple and General Conference! I wasn´t going to miss out on that! So I let my mama give me some of her remedies and I was fine through all the important things. Afterwards, though. Blech. I hardly had to buy any food today for this week. I had no appetite at all and now I have a lot of food left over.

The temple was amazing. I listened to the sessions in Spanish and all the workers were from Mesa, Arizona! It was funny, I actually had a harder time understanding their Spanish than Paraguayan Spanish because theirs was so atrocious. Sorry, but it was. They were so sweet, though, and you could just see how much they love their job.

I´ll send pictures next week and write more about Conference when I have time. I´m actually thinking I¨m gonna try and send a letter home this week. You might get it in a month. :)

In other news, I finally had my first experience with ginormous bugs in the apartment. First was a humongous spider that looked very much like a baby tarantula. Thankfully it was half-dead already so I didn´t freak out too badly. Then last night I heard this creepy scuttling sound as I was studying before bed and turned to see a cockroach the size of a small sparrow skittering across our floor. It was heading to my bed so I soccer-kicked it into the bathroom, then flipped it over onto its back so it couldn´t run away as I searched for something to trap it in. I used a cereal box to evict it, but when I told Hna. Stagg about it this morning I realized how stupid that was. Now it´s probably going to come back. But I didn´t want to squish cockroach guts all over our floor. It was so huge.

Okay, I´m out of time. I love you all and I´m sorry I have so little time to write everything and send pictures and adequately express my love and appreciation for you and the Gospel. Know that I´m having a great time and I know that I´m doing a marvellous work here in Paraguay. Thank you for your prayers!!

--Hna. Springer