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