Hola familia!
Thank you so much for the many e-mails and ranch pictures! Thank you for your support and encouragement Grandma Springer, Sarah, Dad, James, and Laurel. You guys are seriously the best, and I love hearing how you´re doing just as much as you say you love hearing about me. :) And Maddy, I got your graduation announcement! You are such a babe. Thanks for thinking to send one to me.
We´ve had a good week this week. Knowing that it may very well be out last week together (Changes AGAIN?? Sheesh!), Hna. Tua´one and I have been sure to take lots of pictures and do lots of bonding at the end of the day. Our district has been so cool this Change. I´m going to miss how it is right now. Today the Elders finally invited Hna. Tua´one and I to a P-Day activity. Apparently they play cards and/or ping-pong and/or go out to lunch together every week. So nice of them to invite us after I´ve been here FOUR MONTHS. We gave them a lot of grief about that, then fed them Hna. Tua´one´s Red Vines just to ensure that they invite us again next time. :) Today we played "Scum" in the chapel for a bit, then went to a nice restaurant "downtown." I had no idea there were restaurants like that in Mariano--with actual menus and decorations and waiters. It was nice. We had a really good time.
Griselda´s baptism went great. The youth in our ward ran the show, as they awesomely tend to do, and there were no set-backs at all. We´d had a scare earlier that day, though. While Hna. Tua´one helped Griselda wash some dishes, she had me go get her mom´s signature, because she needed her guardian´s permission to be baptized. After chit-chatting a bit, I asked, "So, Griselda has your permission to be baptized, right?" and my heart plummeted when her mom´s smile faded and her eyes darkened and she said, "Griselda´s already baptized in the Catholic church." After months of teaching, all I could stammer was, "She hasn´t talked with you about this at all??" She said, "Well, yeah, but I thought she was kidding!" I was so scared. SO scared. I thought after all of our hard work, after the jovenes had already planned everything for that night, her mom was gonna say no. Turns out, though, that her mom just didn´t understand baptism and wasn´t too keen on rewarding Griselda with anything because she was being disobedient earlier that week. But I explained to her that baptism is a covenant with God and a new beginning with Griselda, and her mom was really happy to hear about the rules about dating, alcohol, and respecting parents. We got her consent and it all went fine. More than fine. Griselda has a member cousin who was there, and who brought her to church the next day. I´m so grateful for that cousin. It´s so nice to not have a recent convert depending completely on us missionaries to stay active in the church or to walk with them to church every Sunday. I know Griselda´s in good hands, and I can rest easy.
This week we´ve been doing a lot of finding, now that our two golden investigators are baptized and confirmed and mostly in the hands of the ward. We´ve been working farther and farther away from our house, hoping to find people who have had contact with the missionaries before but not so much that they´ve hardened their hearts already. Earlier this week we found such an investigator. His name is Mario and he´s a great guy, but it´s very challenging to teach him because he can´t hear. Thankfully he can read or I don´t know what we´d do. We teach him by playing charades and writing and giving him scriptures and pamphlets to read. He´s already been taught by the missionaries a LONG time ago. His nephew was actually baptized. But he always felt like he can´t go to church because he can´t hear. We´re trying to teach him that the Spirit doesn´t teach us through our ears, but through our hearts. The poor guy´s got kind of a sad history, and I want him to feel the fellowship and love of the church so much. First when he was in the army (or something--it´s kind of hard to communicate the details between us) he underwent some kind of psychological torture that took his hearing away, then his sister dumped his nephew on him, and he raised him like his son, only to have the sister come take him away again, and now the church next-door is claiming his property as theirs and trying to evict him. It´s so sad.
Paraguay really is a sad place sometimes. I think about the curse on the Promised Land a lot--how when people set their riches down, they won´t find them again in the morning. EVERYONE gets robbed of their cell phones here. Nobody dares walk alone at night, and they all have huge walls around their yards topped with barbed wire, spikes, broken glass, and/or an electric fence. I´ve never felt threatened. Walking in pairs always helps, and our living place is really secure. Anyways, people just aren´t trusting here. There´s no such thing as service. Whenever we offer to help someone, they shriek, "NOOO!" because they think we´re either trying to butter them up to rob them or we expect to be paid later. We´ve also had a lot of menos activos asking us for money lately. So many here in Mariano were baptized thinking they would get a cash prize or something, and everyone tries to appeal to the blonde, rich American girl for money. Even the good members of the ward ask us for stuff, too proud to ask their neighbors or branch friends. We try to get them to help themselves, but it´s really hard when they live with such a messed up government. It certainly is a different world down here.
P.S. GBTV sounds awesome. "The Book of Mormon" musical? Not so much. Though, publicity is publicity, as I said about Sr. Torres a few weeks ago. And I´ve been reading in 1 Nephi a lot lately, loving Nephi´s vision about our latter-day history. I kind of stopped reading the Bible. It was really fun, but honestly, it left kind of an empty feeling. I need to find a balance between reading the Bible and studying the Book of Mormon, because if I´m not reading the Book of Mormon every day, I don´t have the same excitement to go out and teach. It truly is the best book in the world. Anyways, at first I was thinking I didn´t want to re-read all of Nephi´s stories because they´re what I´ve read the most in my attempts to read the Book of Mormon start to finish. :) But you can always find something new to learn from the scriptures. This time through, I loved reading how when Lehi told his sons about his vision, Laman and Lemuel just debated amongst themselves what Lehi was talking about. But Nephi turned to the Lord, pondering the things he´d heard and believing that the Lord could help him understand. Starting at 1 Ne. 15:8(?--I don´t have my scriptures on me) I really like Nephi´s response to his brothers about how we need to act. We can´t just have the scriptures in our hands, we need to study them. We can´t just believe that there is a God, we need to rely on His guidance in all things. And I love reading about Nephi´s vision of the history of the United States and the formation of the great and abominable church and how the Church of Jesus Christ is small but will flood the earth and eventually win. People can rail on us all they want, but we have the promise that our enemies will fall into the pits they dig for us. :)
Let´s see, what else... Hna. Tua´one and I check each other for lice a lot now. She still finds some in my hair now and again but it´s not too bad, and I use that tea tree oil stuff you gave me. Also, sorry, I don´t have pictures of the tarantula. I lent my camera to a couple in the branch who went to the temple to get sealed this week. And I never got a good look at it myself, but Hna. Tua´one tells me that yes, in fact, it WAS very fast and that it jumped (EEEWW!) and that it was so big she could see its eyes. That´s enough for me. Ew. I´m still kind of afraid of my closet. I throw open the doors half-expecting to see a spider in there again, and I´m sure to shake out all of my clothes really well before I put them on. :) There wasn´t anything in my laundry bag this time. When Martin delivered my bag I asked him if he´d double-checked, and he said, "No hay una araña. Una anaconda no más." Silly kid. :)
I got my wish. Last week I was complaining about the heat, and now it´s FREEZING. It feels like there should be snow, seriously. We bundle up really well every day, and at the end of the day we rush into our bedroom where there´s a heater and snuggle under our covers. Our room is really toasty (no Dad, I don´t need a sleeping bag. Even if I get Changed, every Hermana´s place has a heater, don´t worry), but the rest of the rooms are ice cold. We have to wear gloves when we study, and hot chocolate is our new best friend.
This week at district meeting we got the mail, and the office elders sent me back the big envelope of photos I sent you. Apparently there was a mix-up. NOW it´s on its way for sure. Sorry. I need to go develop a new batch soon, as none of those I sent are of this Change with Hna. Tua´one. Wow, June went by so fast. I can´t believe it´s gonna be July already. I hope you all have fun plans for the Fourth. We´re gonna try and have another district activity--preferably a barbecue. :)
Well, that´s all for today. Thank you so much again for your letters. I love you so much and I´ll be sure to send out more snail mail letters to show my appreciation. LOVE YOU!!
--Hna. Springer
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