May 23, 2011
Dear Family,
Thank you so so much for all of your letters telling me all about Amanda´s wedding. It sounds like it was amazing, and I´m so happy that everything went perfect for my sister on the most important day of her life. Thank you Grandma Springer, Mom, Ashley, and Dad (and Teresa and Laurel, whose letters I haven´t read yet). Thanks for the pictures (who was the guy holding the light reflector disk? He did an amazing job!), and thank you Goompa for the letter and article you sent me in the mail. It was really, really inspiring and I think about it all the time as I go about my day as a missionary. P.S. Pouch mail is indeed faster, as that letter got to me in only two weeks. Laurel, I just heard that I got a package yesterday but I won´t get it to open it until tomorrow. I´m sure I´ll love whatever it is, though, so thanks a million! :) You all make me feel so special. I love you.
Hna. Stagg and I are so uptight today. We should be getting the call about Changes any minute now. Hna. Stagg is sure that she´s gonna leave--she wants to, anyways. She´s been in Mariano since November. She wants to get sent out into the campo. I´m pretty sure I´m gonna stay, but I´m nervous that now, after planning on staying all month, they´re gonna call me and send me away. Either way I should be getting a new companion soon, and I can only pray that she´ll be as awesome as Hna. Stagg and that I´ll love her just as much.
I love Mariano. I really do. I hope i don´t get sent away yet. We didn´t have any investigators in church yesterday, despite our best efforts, but for the first time since i´ve gotten here, the chapel was full. All of the menos activos who I´ve come to know and love were in attendance. Mariela was there and is like our best friend in Relief Society. A woman named Hna. Benitez hasn´t come to church in YEARS because she´s afraid of leaving the house (she has a personal shopper and everything) but yesterday she came! Also, her sister and little eight-year-old niece who´s been pushing them both to come because she wants to get baptized. I just felt so much love in the chapel yesterday. I was surrounded by friends and I´m going to be devastated to leave them. Even though we haven´t had many people join the church, I feel like we´ve made the Mariano branch a better branch. And now we have a new ward mission leader--an eighteen-year-old named Julio--who, like most of the youth in Mariano, is more than willing to listen to our advice and do all that he can to help us with the Work. With the members becoming more active and more involved, I´m sure that Mariano is going to see a lot more success in the future, whether I´m here or not.
Sadly, Verónica wasn´t baptized this weekend. She went home for Mother´s Day, and when she came back she told us she was never ever ever ever ever getting baptized. She says that she owes Maria her life because of some miracle in her childhood, and she can´t believe that the true church of God would add, "Thou shalt not drink coffee" to the 10 Commandments. I´m 100% positive that her family guilt-tripped her and fed her anti-Mormon propaganda. Before, she told us that her childhood miracle thing was no big deal for her and she didn´t believe in idol worship, and when we taught the Word of Wisdom she didn´t like being told not to drink coffee, but she was still willing to try it. Now... No, I have faith that she´ll make the right decision. She´s really, really smart, and she knows that we´re teaching the Truth. Hna. Stagg and I have both born our testimonies to her, and the Spirit was undeniable.
Hna. Sanchez won´t be baptized until the middle of June because of health problems and missed church attendance due to a visit to her uncle in prison. She wants to get baptized, though, and I know she´ll follow through. We´re also teaching a woman named Clementina, a sister of a menos activo, who has a solid testimony of the Book of Mormon and is well on her way to baptism. So no, we didn´t have any baptisms this month, but we´ll have at least two next month, and numbers really don´t matter. When I look back on my mission, just the past few months even, the actual baptisms aren´t the highlights. They´re important and wonderful, but the lessons and the church attendance and the discussions about the gospel of Christ are what touch my heart and remind me that I´m doing a great work here in Paraguay. So yes, Sarah, I guess mission work is like "The Errand of Angels" sometimes, but I LOVE it. Every day my testimony gets stronger as people try to tell me I´m in the wrong and I remember all the good I´ve seen in my life through the gospel. That´s the key to happiness and success in all aspects of life, really--focusing on the goodness of God and moving forward with a perfect brightness of hope.
In other news, the world didn´t end on May 21st, though I did see two shooting stars that night. :) Where did that come from, anyways? I thought we were all agreed that the world is going to end in 2012? I was so confused when everyone here was going off about how some American pastor (many thought he was an LDS pastor) had interpreted Isaiah 13:6 to mean that May 21st, 2011 signals the beginning of the end of the world. Not that it changed anyone´s way of life around here, but we did get some pretty cool lessons with people who were worried about their salvation.
I discovered this week, too, that even the lies spread across the internet about the Church have some purpose in the eternal scheme of things. On Saturday night, Hna. Stagg and I were frantically looking for two more new investigators to complete our daily goal. It was 8:30 and we were in the same area that we always contact at that time of night because it´s close to our house and everywhere else is risky after dark. I was positive that we weren´t going to find anyone, and I was really tired and just wanted to call it a night. But Hna. Stagg felt impressed to knock on one last door. A young couple came out to tell us that they already attend the Iglesia Universal. We could have just said, "Well, you´re invited to church..." but Hna. Stagg was determined to teach a lesson with them. So she started giving a summary of the gospel. Suddenly, the man said, "Oh! You´re from the Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Ultimos Dias? My friend was telling me about that church the other day, and I got really curious. I looked you up online and heard some weird stuff. Can you tell me about...?" And it just went amazingly from there. He invited us in and we taught him about the Restoration and cleared up his questions about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. He was so fascinated, and so smart about the fact that the internet is full of lies. He didn´t like promise to change his religion or be baptized or anything, but we showed him how to find the official church website and bore our testimonies about the greatness of the gospel, and it was just amazing. He´s the kind of person who has been looking for the truth in his life but just never knew where to find it. He´s very devoted to his church, but he also shows a lot more devotion to GOD than his pastor, which is a big deal for Paraguay. I´m so excited to begin teaching him more in-depth.
I´m reading the Bible during personal study. I´m not sure if I told you about that last week or not. Anyways, I am absolutely loving it. I´d tried to read the Bible before in my life, but I thought it was so boring. But that was before I realized that there are footnotes and the Joseph Smith Translation. How did I not see that before?? The Bible is so amazing to me now. With the Joseph Smith Translation, it all makes so much sense. The nature of God and the truths of the gospel are so clear, and I can see how much the Old Testament is still so important for us to learn from. I especially loved reading about Enoch, Abraham, and Joseph. It´s so sad how Enoch only has two lines about him in the King James Version of the Bible, and yet he was a great prophet who opened a new dispensation and prophesied of our day and helped a city become so righteous that they were translated! It´s so so sad that the rest of the world has no idea about that. I´m so grateful for the Pearl of Great Price, for Enoch´s story and for Abraham´s. Abraham was so much like Joseph Smith--recognizing the distortion of the truths and doing all he could to learn from God. And of course I love Joseph of Egypt´s prophecies and history. I´m getting into Exodus now, which is where in the past I stopped reading because I found it boring. But I also used to think that Second Nephi was boring, and I love that now, too. There are a lot, a LOT of laws and things to wade through, but all of them carry the same central message--put God first at all times and in all things and in all places, and love your neighbor as yourself.
I hope you all read Preach My Gospel as a family, at least occasionally. There are so many things about the gospel that I´d always been taught but never really understood until I started thinking like a missionary. And all members are so important in building the Kingdom of God. All callings are essential and come from the Lord. I can´t believe how much time I wasted and how many opportunities I passed up in the past. If you see a chance to help someone, whether with their temporal needs or with building their relationship with the Savior, seize the day!
Again, no pictures, and I feel like this letter is a lot shorter than the others, but know that I love you and think about you all the time. I love Paraguay, and I try not to think about how fun it will be to be with you all again and share my experiences in person. If you have anything you´d like to hear about, please ask me. I love having a topic to write about. :) And don´t forget to write. I love hearing from you, even if you think you have nothing to say. Tell me about what you´re learning from the scriptures or what service you´ve done or how you´ve seen God´s hand in your lives lately. You´re not just my awesome family, you´re fellow Latter-Day Saints, and when I hear your stories it makes me all the more excited to give similar experiences and opportunities to the lovely Paraguayans.
Take care everyone! I love you!!
--Hna. Springer
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