Hola mi familia!!
I love Mondays. I love getting to write to you and read your e-mails and hear about life outside of Mariano. Thank you Grandma Springer, Dad, Mom, Sarah, Ashley, and Amanda for your e-mails this week. You make my weeks so happy.
Not that life isn´t awesome here in Mariano. Seriously, it´s been amazing lately. First of all, as I predicted, I´m still here with Hna. Tua´one! Yay! I knew I wouldn´t leave. Everyone kept telling me I would but I never felt like it. Now i get six more fun-filled weeks with my awesome companion. Then, yeah, I´m pretty positive I´m out of here. Funnily enough, nobody changed in our whole zone. Everything is exactly the same. It´s kind of weird, but luckily we all love each other.
We had SUCH a great week, the two of us. We made goals for this new Change and we put all our effort into achieving them this week. For the first time in my history as a missionary, we met our goals every single day. It was so hard but so worth it in the end. Today we got to report our numbers to President and feel like a million bucks.
There were two days in particular where everything just went perfect. First was Wednesday. We´d been going from investigator to investigator all afternoon and they all lived far apart. We were dead tired, but we still needed to find two new investigators to meet our daily goals, and we only had about an hour to do it before our next cita. Finding news is SO hard and often very discouraging. And at the time we were in one of our least friendly areas. So Hna. Tua´one said, "Alright, if you feel like we need to go to a certain house, go for it." We´d only been walking for a few minutes when she suddenly veered off the road and clapped at the only house with an open door. The woman inside was Catholic but ended up being really humble and polite and said we could come teach her anytime. One new down, one to go. It was my turn to do the finding. We wandered around a bit more, not really sure where we were headed. Then we passed a house with a little salon in the front. There was a little kid playing in the yard, and it was the first sign of life we´d seen on that street. I felt compelled to go and clap it. I wasn´t sure if I was allowed to contact a business, but I made myself clap before I talked myself out of it. Hna. Tua´one confirmed, "You can´t clap here! It´s a business!" but then the woman who came out, as soon as we told her who we were, opened her gate and said, "Bienvenidos!" with a warm smile. She was so great. She loved our singing. She loved our pamphlet. She loved the fact that we´d given up school and such to come serve in a strange country. She loves God. New investigator number two found. We only clapped two houses, and both were exactly what we were looking for.
Then there was yesterday. After all of our hard work with a record nine progressing investigators, it POURED rain Saturday night and Sunday morning. Paraguayans don´t go to work or school when it rains, let alone to church with virtual strangers, so all of our investigators (and most of the members) flaked out on us. All of our attendance goals failed and our baptism dates fell (they need to come at least three times before baptism), so we were bummed. I was especially sad because I gave a talk yesterday. I spoke about families--our mortal family unit, our branch family, and the human family, and how we all have an important role to play to help all of our spiritual brothers and sisters make it back Home. I enjoyed preparing for it, and I was sad that hardly any of my branch friends were there to hear it.
Anyways, after church everything went great. The rain stopped (RIGHT after church, of course...) and left a beautiful blue sky in its wake. We got a member friend to come do visits with us and ALMOST get all of the nine with-member lessons we needed to meet our weekly goals. We got five lessons in only two and a half hours. It was awesome.
We only had two and a half hours to go teaching because tonight there was an activity with all the ward missionaries (aka, the youth). It was such a great evening. The youth split into three groups and each pair of us missionaries taught them key doctrines from Lesson 1--The Restoration. Hna. Tua´one taught about the Book of Mormon and prayer. The youth in this branch are so amazing. Almost all of them are converts, and they have such a light about them as they enthusiastically talk about the gospel. We had some fun practices with them, and with the last group we had a mini-devotional. One boy asked why we need a Mediator when God knows everything about us. The Spirit was so strong in the room as we explained how Christ will be by our side during Judgment and be our Advocate with the Father if we´ve repented. The same boy later asked why God blessed Hna. Tua´one and I with the gospel from birth but left the Paraguayans to find the Truth for themselves. We had a powerful discussion about how there are no coincidences in life and how God sets all of us up to be amazing. We commended them for being so much stronger than us--for changing their lives to live the gospel instead of just doing what their parents or friends did. I think they were just as touched as we were.
This week I studied the New Testament a bit. I love reading the Joseph Smith translations, especially in the Sermon on the Mount. There are so many plain and precious things taken from Christ´s teachings. It´s sad. But I´m so grateful that I can read those missing scriptures about how God always gives personal revelation and how we are commanded to be perfect, not just obedient.
Our deaf investigator Mario still won´t come to church with us, and it frustrates me so much because he keeps saying, "You two understand me, but nobody else will." I try to tell him that we´re just REPRESENTATIVES of the Church. We´re just a teeny tiny piece of the love and understanding to be found in the Kingdom of Christ on the earth. If only he knew that there´s a whole family of kind, wonderful people in the Mariano branch, waiting to accept him with open arms, hearing or no hearing.
We just got word today that we missionaries won´t be allowed to go to the huge expo going on this month. It´s something i´d heard a lot about from past missionaries, but apparently President Madariaga changed the rules about it when he came. It´s probably a good thing. We hear a lot about how people go into the expo, buy something awesome, and get it stolen from them before they even make it back out the door. I was hoping to blow my money on some souvenires, but it´s probably not the best place for some obviously-well-off American girls to be hanging out.
Just another random observation before I sign off--reading the Book of Mormon every day of your life is seriously vital if you want to stay active in the church. It truly is the keystone of our religion, and if we can´t feed our testimony about it, the Adversary will have a much easier time of convincing us that we´re wrong. I try to encourage every member, inactive or no, to read the Book of Mormon every day. Every inactive member we talk to tells us that they don´t read anymore, and I have no doubt that there´s a correlation there.
After being disappointed so many times by inactive members, I´m determined to stay strong in the gospel and always be there to support my leaders and my family. Each member is so important. I just read a passage of scripture about that in the Bible the other day--how the head can´t live without the feet, etc, etc. So true. We need to be strong together.
Thank you so much for being such a solid family and an unconditional support for me. I love you all so much. Sounds like you´re having a great summer, and I´m happy that everything´s going well with you. Don´t forget to write, and read the Book of Mormon every day. :)
I LOVE YOU!
---Hna. Springer
P.S. No nasty bug stories this week, and I can finally wear my boots again now that the sand fly nest is gone. Yay!
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