May 6, 2011
Dear Family,
Wow this week went by so fast. I feel like I just barely wrote you, but I´m so happy for every opportunity I have to do it again. I love Mondays. :)
We´re going to see a baptism this week! Finally. We haven´t seen a baptism since the beginning of April if you can believe that. Despite a headache, Hna. Sanchez made it to church with us yesterday, and we got special permission to baptize her with only two asistencias. She´s so ready. She loved testimony meeting yesterday, and told us afterwards that she´d wanted to bear her testimony too but decided not to. Then she recited it for us right there in her house, complete with, "Good morning, Brothers and Sisters..." So cute.
We´re also seeing a lot of progress with Griselda Ibarra (I´m pretty sure I´ve mentioned her before). We thought for sure she wouldn´t be coming with us because on Saturday we went to her house to find her sprawled out on her bed with bad scrapes on her hip and ribs. But she´s such a trooper. She was all ready to go when we passed by for her yesterday morning, and she made fast friends with the young women in the ward. She also brought her six-year-old brother. It´s never too early to get them ready for baptism. :)
Griselda´s family is way supportive of us and the church. Not only do they have an active member cousin (who´s moving into our branch soon--yay!), but they´ve just grown to like us a lot. Griselda got those scrapes because she was with a friend who got drunk on wine and nearly got them killed out on the busy road. The friend made Griselda buy the wine because she looks like she´s 18 despite being only 13 years old, and Griselda feels like her fall is God´s chastisement. She didn´t drink any wine herself, because she remembered her cousin teaching her the Word of Wisdom, and her mom was really proud of her and grateful for the Church for teaching her daughter such standards while the 15-year-old friend is running around the freeway drunk.
We finally found and talked with Veronica again this week. She likes Hna. Tua´one a lot and basically admitted that she knows the church is true but is afraid to join right now. Her dad is coming to stay with them for a while and he really doesn´t like us, so she apologetically told us not to come around until he leaves. Sad day. But I still have hope for her. Talking with her this week was like chatting with an old childhood friend. I still love her a lot, and I know she loves us, too, deep down.
Mariela is doing loads better. Thank you all for your prayers. Apparently she had a long talk with Hno. Gomez and he immediately paid the judge to finalize the divorce. He apologized for taking so long, and now they´re scheduled to be married at the end of this month. Her baptism should quickly follow. I´m so happy for her. I hope I´m still in town to see that.
We had a hard week working with members. None of our part-member families were to be found, and none of the youth could go around with us. We had super low numbers. Saturday was the worst. We spent the whole morning just wandering around this one neighborhood. Everyone was home, but it was around lunch time so all the women were busy making the meal and all the men were busy watching TV in preparation for the meal. House after house after house we were turned away. Nobody was ever mean to us, thankfully, but we still just wanted to teach already. Finally we reached the far corner of our area, and Hna. T saw this little old woman a couple houses down. "Let´s go talk to her," she said. "I have a feeling we should go talk with her." So we did. It took us a while to find a way to her house because there were a bunch of yards and barbed wire in-between (it´s a less developed neighborhood), but finally we made it. The woman let us in (hallelujah!) and said, "I just talked with you missionaries the other day." We´d been hearing that a lot because the Jehovah´s Witnesses have been tracting around there recently, so we were like, "Nah, it wasn´t us." "No really," she said, "The day before yesterday, your hermanos were here." We were like, "Okay, sure..." Then she went into her house and came back with a pamphlet about the Restoration. Hna. T and I suddenly believed that sure enough, we missionaries had been there, but surely she was mistaken about WHEN we were there, because I couldn´t remember ever having been there before. So we turned the pamphlet over and saw--to our chagrin--the ELDERS names on the back. Those poachers! We didn´t stay long, not wanting to confuse the poor woman with two different sets of missionaries teaching her, but we planned on giving the Elders a chewing out and claiming her as our investigator ASAP. Later that night, the Elders called us. Apparently, they´d gone back to visit that woman again today, too! "Hey!" they said, "What´s with you stealing our investigator?" "Hey!" said Hna. Tua´one, "What´s with you being in our area?" There was silence for a second. "...Um...you see, it was dark..." They totally knew they were in the wrong. They hadn´t been positive about the area line, and they were hoping we wouldn´t notice if they were in fact trespassing. :) Poor, confused woman. She IS definitely in our area (we triple-checked the map just to make sure), and the Elders now know their place. It was just funny to realize how territorial we really are. We plan on leaving pamphlets with our names on them in every house along the edge there from now on just so the Elders don´t make that mistake again. :)
I saw my first pet monkeys this week at Hna. Sanchez´s. It was really bizarre and very cool. I´ve only ever seen monkeys like that in the zoo before. I´m so sad I didn´t have my camera. Hopefully I run into them again on a P-Day.
Hna. T and I are having fun this week psyching people out. On Friday we had like five people stop us in the street just to ask Hna. T about me, "What nationality is she?" It was getting so annoying that we decided to have some fun with it. Now when people ask, "What nationality is she," I say in my best Paraguayan accent, "La Hermana Tua´one? Oh, she´s from the States. She doesn´t speak Spanish yet." Then Hna. T pretends like she really has no idea what we´re saying. It trips people up so badly when the blonde is the one talking and the darker girl is quiet. I´m so sick of being stereotyped as a foreigner who can´t understand a word of Spanish.
It´s getting a lot colder here. We can see our breath now, outside. But I´m fine in a coat and scarf, and at night we have lots of blankets and a heater. The heater wasn´t working before, nor our hot water, but when Hna. T came our landlords fixed everything up. Now we have hot showers every morning and long, warm nights. Hna. T is also addicted to hot chocolate in the mornings and our study is lit up with Christmas lights and the only CD we have when my iPod is dead is a Hillary Weeks Christmas album, so it feels a lot more like December than June. (By the way, that Hillary Weeks CD is awesome. I may just have to buy it someday.)
I´m so glad that you got my package in the mail. Now I´ve received a package from you and you´ve gotten one from me, I think it´s safe to say that mail to and from Paraguay is pretty secure. Thank you Mom for sending me all those addresses, and thank you Grandma and Grandpa Springer, Teresa, Laurel, Mom, Dad, Amanda, Sarah, and Ashley for your e-mails this week. I hope you´re all having a wonderful start of summer. It´s weird having opposite seasons here. I can´t imagine you out in the sun when my sky is cloudy and cold. :)
An observation I´ve just made this week is that the difference between those we teach who progress and those who don´t progress at all is their desire to learn. Society, families, the church, and everything depend on our desire to learn more about God and what we can do to be better people. Those who accept the Book of Mormon here in Paraguay are those who get excited to learn that there is more scripture than just the Bible. The rest are those who say, "A bible, a bible! We have got a bible and we need no more bible!" (I always want to read that part in 2 Nephi but it´s never the right time...) Reading the Bible, I´ve found so many references to lost scripture and prophecies that haven´t been fulfilled yet. Anyone who really searches and wants to learn from the Bible and wants to learn more about God will embrace the Book of Mormon as more words from more prophets. I´m really excited for more scripture to be revealed. We have the prophets giving us more every time the Ensign comes out, but I wonder if someday we´ll have the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and something else. I wonder what that would do to the Church--how many people would embrace new scripture and how many testimonies would fail... Just food for thought. :)
Well, have a wonderful time at the ranch and wherever else you´re going this summer. Don´t forget to write me. :) I love you all!
---Hna. Springer
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