Thank you so so so much for all the many birthday wishes! Thank you Dad, Mom, Amanda, Sarah, Ashley, McConkies, Jenkins, Andersons, Jefferies, Grandma and Grandpa Springer, Bishop Crittenden, Bishop Tinker, and President Ballard for your notes. You´re all so sweet. And thank you Goompa and Nana for the birthday money. I´m going straight to work spending it, and I´ll send you a picture of what I buy. :) (P.S. Yes, Laurel, I got your e-mail last week, and I loved it. Thanks!)
Honestly, it hasn´t really hit me that I´m almost 22. I´ve been saying, "Tengo 21 años," for so long that it will be weird to switch. And there has been pretty much no indication at all that it´s October--no Fall colors, no excess of candy, and no black cats or jack-o-lanterns. If anything, it feels like June to me. Summer is coming on full force.
Sorry I don´t have time to respond to all of your individual e-mails today. May I just say that sounds like the Springers had a fun Fall Break, and I´m SO JEALOUS that you went to Yellowstone! Those pictures literally made my jaw drop and my heart break from how pretty it is there in the Fall.
Today we had a zone activity with all of the Elders from Remansito, Benjamin, and Mariano, along with Hna. Tua´one and Hna. Estigarribia, of course. It was lots of fun. We walked from the Mariano side of the bridge over the Paraguay river all the way to the Villa Hayes side. It was quite the walk, and VERY WINDY. We Hermanas ended up with our hair impossibly tangled, and all the other Hermanas were walking half bent over the whole time, trying to keep their skirts down. I was very grateful that I wore my longest skirt today. :) Unfortunately, the refreshing wind made me forget that I hadn´t applied sunscreen this morning (we had to rush out the door and it slipped my mind). Now I am completely burned. So much for all that careful sunscreen application and umbrella-holding. Anyways, it was good to catch up with our mission friends, and we all had lunch in Mariano and felt very rejuvinated. Next Monday we´re planning on having a Halloween activity.
Seriously, though, it´s ridiculously hot. Even the Elder from Panama was complaining today. We are constantly sweaty. I get out of the shower, dry off, then later wonder, "Wait...why am I still wet?" Then I towel off again, and again...and again! I can never get dry! Who needs steam rooms? All of Paraguay is a steam room! We carry umbrellas to escape from the sun, eat lots of cold watermelon at night, and LOVE our twice-a-day cold showers. Our electric shower heater actually broke a few weeks ago, but now we don´t even care. Cold water works just fine. :) It´s the closest we get to a refreshing swim.
I´ve pretty much experienced all that Paraguay has to offer. I just have to survive the summer, get robbed, eat cow stomach, and fall really hard. Everything else, I´ve done, including get bit by a dog. This week I went to give a woman besos and totally didn´t see the little dog under her chair. I stepped right on its tail and it bit me on my calf. It didn´t even break the skin, and the dog was really sweet so it wasn´t that big a deal--just a misunderstanding. :) But now I can mark that off my list of things I need to do to be a full-fledged Paraguayan missionary.
Hna. deVries and I are getting the hang of cooking in Paraguay. We´ve found a bunch of great veggie vendors around town and we´re stocking up every week. Also, all of the trees are getting heavy with LOADS of mangos. I´m so excited for when they´re ready to eat. I hear it´s ridiculous how many mangos there are--just piles and piles of them in the streets because people can´t eat them fast enough.
We´re sí o sí (that means "for sure") gonna have a baptism this Saturday! Fabiola is so ready to become a member of the church. She and her boyfriend are really great people and so humble and willing to do all that it takes to follow the Lord. They´re very willing, they just need to learn a few key doctrines. Specifically about marriage. Fabiola´s boyfriend, Cesar, is actually now her husband. They eloped a few weeks ago because their parents were trying to prevent them. Cesar knew that civil marriage only counted "until death do you part," and knew there was a "time and all eternity" option, but he thought that that was just a wedding held in the chapel. He´d seen a civil marriage before someone´s baptism and thought THAT was what it meant to be married in the church. He had no idea about temples. He also thought that to sleep together before a marriage in the church was breaking the law of chastity. So they basically had no wedding ceremony with their families and no honeymoon. Their faces when we explained that were priceless. Fabiola just laughed and gave Cesar a look like, "...seriously?" We´re going to throw them a great big party for Fabiola´s baptism to make up for their lack of public wedding. I´m just proud of them for being so willing to wait on the Lord. :)
We found another golden investigator this week who just may be our next baptism. Her name is Andrea, and we found her when she was helping us find her cousin´s house. Her cousin was one of the kids doing a school project about the church, and as we walked I kind of tried to bring up the fact that we were missionaries, but then SHE asked US, "Can you come back on Saturday and teach me? I´m really looking for God in my life right now and I´d like to share with you." We said OF COURSE, and went back on Saturday as promised. She is such a lovely girl. She used to be Catholic but found that the teachings never seemed to really apply to her situation, and that none of the members there were really willing to help her. She also has a friend who´s addicted to drugs, and she´s very aware of the need for being spiritually in-tune. We haven´t taught her much yet, but our first visit was very spiritual as we bore testimony of God´s love for her, and told her that we would do all that we could to help her out. I have a lot of hope for her. She´s a wonderful person.
One thing I´m struggling with, though, is confidence in the members. Andrea was all complaining about how gossipy the women in the Catholic church were and how they didn´t seem interested in helping newcomers, and I honestly couldn´t say that we don´t have that in the Church of Jesus Christ. It´s just so sad to me how we really shouldn´t have problems like that, yet they still spring up and chase newcomers and even old-timers away. We´ve talked with so many inactive members this week. We´ve been striving to teach them as if they were investigators, helping them remember (or learn for the first time) doctrines that they may not really know. It just breaks my heart how many of them don´t even know that the Book of Mormon was translated by Joseph Smith, not written by him. And yesterday we were talking with a member named Bernardo who, after he was baptized, was a member of the district presidency, the ward mission leader, the Elders Quorom president, helped the Elders baptize 70 people (!!!)....and then went inactive. The church has its ups and downs, obviously, but I feel like this little branch of Villa Hayes is in one of its worst ever slumps. We´re gonna do all we can to help people go to church for themselves and for God, not for any of the members or for the missionaries. Only then can they fell the Spirit there and become strong in the gospel.
This week we had good attendance, though, thanks to a Primary program. I wholeheartedly believe that of such is the kingdom of heaven. These little kids are so strong in their faith. Many of them come on their own to church while their inactive parents stay home. Quite a few of them managed to beg their parents to come yesterday, and we had a great spirit of friendship in the chapel. So many friends were reunited after who knows how long, and the childrens´ singing was so sweet and pure.
Anyways, that´s all for this week. I hope you´re all doing all you can to stay strong in your own faith and helping build the faith of others around you. Remember that while we missionaries are out in the field full-time, the work really all depends on you, the members. Without you supporting newcomers or inactives, sharing your testimonies and being a friend, nothing we missionaries do will last very long. I´m happy to hear about all the campaigning that´s being done by the members all around the world. We really are undertaking a great work, but it´s so worth it. The church WILL flood the earth. Christ WILL come again. It all depends on how hard we work to make those things happen.
I love you all so so much. Thanks again for all of your love and birthday wishes. I´ll write all about my birthday next week, though I doubt there will be much to report. :) Take care!
---Hna. Springer
Here´s a bunch more--most of them are from that one time when you didn´t get my weekly e-mail because i had photos attached. :)
1-Hna. deVries, Hna. Tua´one, Elder Castillo, Hna. Estigarribia, y Elder Collura on the Puente Remanso
2-Me and Hna. deVries on the bridge (before the sunburn)
3-Me with Justo, his mom Sonia, and Miguel.
4-Me and some cool trees in Mariano
5-Hna. Tua´one and some gorgeous little kids we taught in Mariano. Whenever they saw us coming they´d come running screaming, "HERMANAS!!!"
6-Me and Teodocio
LOVE YOU!!
---Carly
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