Week 48 - Asuncion Paraguay - Villa Hayes

Dear Family,

I am very envious of your cool autumn weather. Today is the fourth scorching hot day in a row without a single drop of rain. There´s barely a cloud in the sky. Before, when it got scorching hot, it was always followed by a rainstorm. On Saturday I was POSITIVE it was going to rain Sunday morning (just in time for church, of course). I was glad when we weren´t rained out, but now it continues just being blistering hot. The ground is getting drier and drier and it reflects the heat so much that even with an umbrella for shade I feel like I´m roasting. 

But anyways, I´m glad you all had a fun Thanksgiving weekend. Thank you so much for the photos and the encouragement. As you can imagine, our Thanksgiving wasn´t quite the joyful American tradition we were used to. It was kind of weird, really, how the day came and went without any real significance to it. Hna. deVries and I, at the end, were just like, "Huh...the world kept spinning and life went on in Paraguay without Thanksgiving..." As I predicted, we DID just eat the usual guiso for lunch (guiso being rice or noodles with chicken or beef and potatoes). Our friend Fabian had promised to make us a yummy Chilean meal he learned from his mission, but he let us down. No matter. We missed the usual foods, but at the end of the day we threw together an apple pie to make up for it. We also spent the day teaching others about gratitude, and in the morning and evening at home I listened to "A Thanksgiving of American Folkhymns." I also looked up every scripture I could find about gratitude. It was very inspirational. 

I´ve received quite a few bouts of random inspiration this week. I´ve been reviewing my zone conference notes every day, as they invited us to do, and it really has helped me a lot. One of the principles that they really emphasized was that success isn´t in our control--success is a gift from God. All we can control is how hard we work and how positive we are as we do so. If we have success, we need to just be grateful. If we don´t have success, we can´t be upset, because we don´t really deserve it anyways, "unprofitable servants" as we are. :) 

Another thing that has really helped us this week is our leaders´ counsel to always plan our days with PEOPLE in mind, not numbers. It´s so easy to get caught up and say, "Well...we should visit this menos activo person, but we need a with-member lesson instead so we´ll wait until next week." To avoid that, all this week we´ve been trying hard to put the needs of the people before our own. Strangely, that´s made us bolder about teaching the Restoration. We thought we were working our way into the hearts of the people by teaching something generic like faith or finding purpose in this life, but really that was just for our own comfort. If we really love these people, we´re going to boldly declare repentance through the restored gospel of Christ, even if it means that we get rejected and lose half of our numbers.

But so far, we haven´t been rejected more than usual. Maybe it was just because everyone had pity on us being out in the sun all day, but we got in LOTS of houses this week. We also currently have three people who are on the brink of getting baptized, and one more who is well on his way. That man, Cleto, who Hna. deVries found in the bus, had already been taught all the lessons earlier this year, and he came to church on Sunday, so he has all the attendance required before baptism. The thing is, he speaks a lot of Guaraní, so I won´t feel comfortable baptizing him until I get a Guaraní-speaker in there to assure his understanding and his devotion to Christ. The others all just need permission from their parents and a few more points of doctrine taught, then they´re good to go. We found out the other day that the situation with Fiorella, the daughter of our ward mission leader, actually isn´t as complicated as we thought. He was all telling us that he would love to baptize her, but his wife didn´t want it. Turns out, he´s never even talked to his wife about it, and he´s never told Fiorella that she should be baptized. No wonder she was so hesitant about it! They´ve had a serious lack of communication since she turned eight, apparently. So our new goal is to just talk with her mom ourselves and see what her attitude about baptism really is. Hopefully she´s fine with it. 

Fiorella and a few other kids have really impressed me this week. I never appreciated Christ´s admonition to "become like a little child" until I came to Paraguay. They really are so underrated by the adults here. I wish all would be like their kids. I´ve seen examples of selfless service and love from kids all throughout my mission, but this week my heart especially went out to them. 

First, after the rain we got earlier last week there were tons of puddles in all the intersections throughout the city. We were in a rural area with really deep gutters, and we were having a hard time navigating our way through the streets. At one point we reached a huge puddle with a single log half-floating in the middle. To cross, we would have to jump onto the shaky log without losing our balance, then jump onto the other side. Hna. deVries made it okay, but I was seriously doubting my ability to balance that well. I went for it, and somehow managed to reach the log, but I was about to lose my balance and go plunging into the swamp water. Out of nowhere came this little boy, who jumped off of his bicycle, kicked off his shoes, and rushed to my side. Waist-deep in water, he reached up and took my elbows to steady me and helped me cross without falling. It was so adorable. I couldn´t stop thanking him. I would have been okay had I fallen, but that boy was just such a pure example of "see the need, do the deed." You can bet we got his name (Elias) and address (more or less) and we´ll be finding him again.

The other kid who I love this week is Araceli, a little seven-year-old girl. We´d seen her a few times as we walked next to the really busy road. We always walked on the opposite side of her house, but she never failed to spot us and shout, "¡Hola, Hermanas!" We always waved and said hello back, but we didn´t know who she was, and we were always too far away and too in a hurry to investigate. This week, though, we passed her place and she said, "Hermanas! When are you going to come visit us again?" There wasn´t too much traffic and our other lessons had fallen through, so we finally crossed over to her place and met her. Turns out, she´s the neighbor of a menos activo that we had no idea existed, and her mom used to meet with the missionaries before. We´ve had several lessons with the mom since (her name is Noelia), and she is so wonderful. She only stopped meeting with missionaries because she moved to a different city, but she still has that curiosity about the church and we´re doing all we can to lead her in the right direction. Without Araceli´s kindness in saying hello every day, and her enthusiasm for talking with the missionaries again, we probably never would have gone to those houses along the ruta and found those families. I LOVE little kids.

I´ve been reviewing the April Conference issue of the Liahona this week, highlighting all of the commandments and promised blessings that I find. It helps me a lot to see what the prophets are telling us to do, make goals for myself to keep those commandments, and find hope in the promised blessings. I have tons I could talk about, but I´ll just stick with one thing: I re-read that story about the man looking for gold who overlooks all the specks looking for the big nuggets, and I realized that that can totally apply to mission work. Sometimes we´re so caught up in looking for the "golden investigator," and we miss all the wonderful little opportunities to serve, and the little joys in sharing the gospel. If we appreciate the little things, we´ll accumulate a great wealth of mission "gold." 

I´m also re-reading my journals, for various reasons. I love remembering my pre-mission lifestyle and attitude, the refiner´s fire that was the MTC, and my enthusiasm to be where I am now. It´s fun, and it helps me to see those flecks of gold and just be grateful for all the great things that have happened to me on the mission.

Thank you so much Grandma, Laurel, Sarah, Ashley, Dad, and Mom for your e-mails this week, and for the pictures. You´re all so gorgeous. :) I hope you have a wonderful week full of Thanksgiving leftovers (both the food and the appreciation for things). Christmas is almost here! Weird.

I LOVE YOU!!

---Hna. Springer

P.S. I just learned that if you send anything to Paraguay that´s worth over $100, I have to pay 400 mil (another $100 about), to pick it up. No idea why, but let´s avoid that if we can. I´m not sure if they warn you of that in the States before you send anything, but if not, be warned. :) 

1-Me in my birthday shirt from Grandma

2-Thanksgiving! 

Week 47 - Asuncion Paraguay - Villa Hayes

¡Hola mi familia! 

HAPPY THANKSGIVING (in three days)!! I'm so happy that you're all going to be together in Utah in the snow chowing down on turkey and mashed potatoes. I just realized, this will be the very first year of my life where I go without eating turkey and mashed potatoes. Weird! Anyways, I hope you're all being super grateful for all of our wonderful blessings. I just got the December Liahona this week (I read the whole thing already), and I took the challenge to write a list of 100 things I'm grateful for. It gives topics to help brainstorm, and I honestly could have kept writing hundreds more things if I'd had sufficient paper. :) Sarah, I keep thinking about how special we made last Thanksgiving, and if you're looking for suggestions for this year, I would really encourage you to make a list of 100 things, too. It really opens your eyes to all the beauty of the earth around you and this time that we live in and the blessings of the gospel that we have.

It's so strange to me how we went from a weak Halloween season to Christmas season without Thanksgiving to bridge the gap. Already people are wanting to sing Christmas hymns and they're hanging strings of lights on their porches. They even put up pine trees, which look REALLY out of place when we're walking around the campo sweating to death. I kind of figured they would just use palm trees or something. :) The other thing they've been doing is eating and selling tons of fruitcake. We went to the supermarket on Monday, and instead of the array of chocolate oranges and candy canes, they just had aisles and aisles filled with fruitcake. Hey, I guess it was popular in the States at one time, too, right? 

This week we had the wonderful opportunity to go to Asuncion and have Zone Conference again. It's like General Conference only much more frequent and much more one-on-one. The talks by President and Hermana Madariaga were so inspiring, we got lots of tips from our nurse on how to keep our backs healthy and drink lots of water, and we were treated to lots of delicious food. Presidente Madariaga talked about how we need to have vision in order to make good plans and teach with determination (seems like Villa Hayes isn't the only branch struggling around here). He encouraged us to have the same vision as God--not to save every single person around us (that would rob them of their agency), but to give them the opportunity to hear and accept the gospel. God does have a perfect plan to carry out that vision, and we are a part of that. All we must do is obey His commands, forget our own visions of schooling or hobbies or whatever, and find the joy in service. 

We also listened to Elder Holland's MTC talk again--the one he gave while I was at the MTC. That's the second time President has used it since I've been here. I feel so honored to have been in the MTC to hear that talk in person. It really is so powerful and makes me cry every time. Every time I hear it, I catch something new. What I'm especially moved by every time, though, is when he admonishes us to leave our nets FOREVER. When Christ told His apostles to leave their nets and follow Him, He didn't mean until He left--He meant until the end. That's what we must do as missionaries. We can't just leave our selfish, worldly desires behind for two years or eighteen months. We must leave them behind--become Christ's disciples--forever. That's my focus for the rest of this Change and hopefully for the rest of my mission. I'm SO GRATEFUL, Mom and Dad, that you sent me that picture of Christ telling Simon Peter and Andrew to leave their nets. Could that have been any more perfect??

Everything's been pointing me lately to forgetting about the little things and just enjoying the work. Hna. deVries and I re-read "The Fourth Missionary" during companionship study this week, and it's the exact same thing. We're allowed to be sad. We're allowed to not DELIGHT in working out in the rain or sun. But we must obey with a cheerful heart, not because we're being forced to, but because we know it's the only thing that will bring us true happiness. "He who finds his life shall lose it, but he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." (I don't have the scriptures with me--don't judge me if I just said that wrong. :) ) 

I still struggle to really jump into contacting, but thankfully I have an awesome companion who really applies everything she learns and works with full determination. On the bus ride back from the Zone Conference, we were standing next to these two old guys, and I was thinking, "Oh shoot, I should contact them. I should contact them. It's so awkward..." A few seconds later, Hna. deVries started talking with them about the church. Turns out, one of those men was an old investigator from the area book that we'd been looking for this week! If she hadn't talked with him, we may have never found him!

That man is an interesting character. He's the president of some association for the native Paraguayans, and he lives with this huge group of native families. We visited them yesterday, and they seem like really humble people. Two of them were old investigators we'd seen in the area book before. One of them randomly came up to us and handed each of us a huge canine tooth that he claims are jaguar. I believe him. Not sure what to do with mine. Is that bad to think it's totally awesome that I have the tooth of an endangered animal? Maybe I can tell all the environmentalists who hate me for it that I got it from a jaguar dentist who was pulling wisdom teeth for charity out in the chaco. That's totally believable, right? 

Speaking of huge teeth...Man, I'm still conflicted about telling you about this, but here goes--I almost got attacked by a dog the other day. We went up to this house looking for a reference and there was this huge brown dog in the doorway. It kind of started growling as we got closer, but I figured if I just acted confident and unthreatened, it wouldn't do anything. But then when I clapped, it got REALLY aggressive. It charged at me, so I stuck my closed umbrella between us. I didn't run or do anything to seem like a target, but it snapped at my umbrella, snarling really menacingly, and I was starting to think that I was about to feel what it's like to get mauled by a predator. It was so big and so obviously not scared of me that I thought if I tried to hit it with my umbrella it would just fight back. Thankfully, just as I was about to panic, I remembered the "secret code word" that always works to deter dogs here in Paraguay. I yelled at Hna. deVries (who was freaking out behind me), "THROW A ROCK AT IT!" She confusedly but obediently bent down to pick up a rock (something I didn't dare to do with those teeth too close to my throat already), and immediately the dog scurried away, along with all the other dogs that had gathered around to see what the commotion was all about. She didn't even have to throw it--they just bolted. Thank goodness for past experiences with dogs. That was WAY too close. 

Anyways...don't worry about me. I'm gonna keep plenty of rocks in my pockets from now on. :) 

Thank you so much Goompa for your letter about your past experiences with struggling branches. Thank you SO MUCH Grandma for the shirt you sent and your e-mail. Thank you Jenkins for your birthday cards in the mail. So cute! Thank you Hna. Stagg, Dad, Mom, Sarah, Ashley, and Amanda for your e-mails this week. I really hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving. I'll be thinking of you as I slurp down noodles and beef on Thursday. :)

Oh, and Dad, I withdrew $50 from my account this week. But you can't know why yet. It's a surprise.

I LOVE YOU ALL!! Don't forget to count your blessings. Eat some third and fourth and fifth helpings of Thanksgiving dinner goodness to make up for our lack down here, okay? :) Take care. Stay safe. Enjoy the snow. Read the scriptures and pray every day. The little things make the biggest differences. 

---Carly

P.S. Here's an update on my past companions: Hna. Stagg is home in Colorado and missing mission life. Hna. Alvarenga, sadly, went home as well. She got really sick and was in the hospital for about a month trying to recover before they finally decided to just send her home for further treatment (she still doesn't know what the problem is). Hna. Tua'one is done training. She's now in Loma Pyta with Hna. Brittner. Hna. Young is in Ypacarai with Hna. Rivera. It's funny how so many of my past companions are together, now. The world of the sister missionaries is pretty small. 

Week 46 - Asuncion Paraguay - Villa Hayes

Dear Family,

Wow, last week went fast. I barely know what to write about that you don´t already know! Plus we were in Asunción all day today, first trying to find new shoes for me and Elder Hobby, our district leader (I utterly failed to find anything above a size 10. Curse my size 10 1/2 feet!), then trying to find the Pizza Hut, which we were told was just a few blocks away but turned out to be a few MILES away. Now we´re all trying to cram our internet time in last-minute. The stress is killing me. I like being able to plan out my e-mails beforehand, but whatcha gonna do. 

I loved reading your e-mails this week, though. Thank you Goompa, Grandma Springer, Dad, Mom, Amanda, and Sarah for your letters. Oh, Grandma, I hear that I have another package waiting for me in the office, and I´ll be getting it on Thursday. Yay! I´m excited. Paraguay mail can be slow sometimes, but it´s never been MONTHS late, like some missions I´ve heard of, and I´ve never heard of anyone losing anything in the mail. Thankfully.

This week probably went by so quickly for me just because it was so exhausting. The heat just drains all energy out of me. I´m considering chopping all my skirts five inches shorter and possibly all my sleeves and my hair as well. :) We´ve been having a rainy weekend, though, which is refreshing but also not super fun to work in. Last night we actually went scurrying home a little early because the lightning was getting insanely close. I´m fine working out in torrents and heat, but lightning is just too scary sometimes. 

It´s so bizarre to me that your days are getting shorter and cooler while mine are getting longer and hotter. Sometimes it almost feels like it really is November, though, because lots of trees around here are covered in red and orange and yellow flowers that from a distance look like leaves changed colors. They´re really pretty. Today in Asunción there was lots of Halloween stuff leftover, so I guess there they celebrate it a bit, but here in Villa Hayes there wasn´t much going on. They had a sort of Día de los Muertos a few days later, but nothing close to the candy gluttony that happens in the States. As for Thanksgiving---that´s nonexistent. It´ll just be a normal Thursday for us. We won´t be eating turkey, probably. I´ve never eaten turkey, nor heard of anyone eating turkey around here. Lots of people have turkeys as pets, but they prefer their cow femur bone and dried fat chunks over nice roasted turkey. I´m sure Hna. deVries and I will make some mashed potatoes or...yeah, that´s pretty much all we could make around here that´s remotely Thanksgiving-ish. 

Anyways, this last week was also exhausting because we worked SO HARD. The quality AND quantity of our lessons has improved so much lately. We are now masters of getting in (we clap almost every open door or talk to anybody sitting outside doing nothing), getting straight to the point (instead of chit-chatting, which Paraguayans do with much more gusto than we do), sharing an inspirational scripture from the Book of Mormon (instead of the Bible, which we´d been doing--it proved to get us nowhere), and just setting the tone for the Spirit, being smiley and friendly and firm in our doctrine, and putting a return date. We felt so accomplished at the end of every day.

And yet, we are doing so poorly with finding new investigators and progressing investigators. We only found TWO new investigators this week, and pretty much none of our long-time investigators are keeping their commitments. I´m not sure what we can do to find news. As I said before, we´ve been working hard in that respect. As for progressing, I guess we need to teach them better the importance of keeping commitments, but their main stumblingblock is church attendance. Even when it´s not raining and all of their Sunday tasks are re-planned or whatever, we still can´t get anyone in to the chapel, and we´ve pretty much concluded that it´s because of the members.

I don´t know what it is about this branch, but not even the members want to attend church. If it wasn´t for the American family and the President´s family, who pretty much run all aspects of the church, the chapel would be empty. NOBODY arrives on time, and NOBODY stays until the end. It has been getting so frustrating, and I don´t know--maybe we need to stop focusing on new investigators and such and focusing more on re-activating the members. 

We´ve been doing lots with that lately. On Thursday we held our first informal English class to offer service to the members and get to know them better. Since we decided kind of last-minute to do it this week, we only had two pupils, but it was a fun, cute lesson. We taught them how to introduce themselves in English, then taught them body part vocabulary and taught them "Head, shoulders, knees, and toes." It was fun. I never thought I´d be an English teacher, but here in Paraguay at least it´s pretty fun.

We´ve also taken Relief Society into our own hands. After two full months of showing up at 8:00, waiting a half hour for the President´s wife to show up, waiting in vain for the Relief Society President (or ANYBODY else) to show up at all, and then holding a short, hodge-podge lesson, Hna. deVries and I decided to show this branch how it´s done. We got there at 7:50 and set up the classroom with the Relief Society motto (thank you, Mom and Dad) and an agenda written on the board. At 8:00 sharp we commenced the lesson, just us two, with a song and a pray and a recitation of the motto. Then we took turns reading to each other and explaining a lesson out of the manual. As the President´s wife and daughters came in one by one, we didn´t stop to greet them or anything. They were forced to sit down quietly and listen to the lesson. It was a LOT more spiritual than usual, and hopefully they´ll want to come on time next time. We brought a few brownies just as positive reinforcement--just enough brownies for those who showed up first. 

Yesterday, it was Hna. deVries´ and my task to give talks in sacrament meeting. It rained cats and dogs, and so nobody showed up except the American family, the President´s family and President´s counselors. The microphone stopped working two minutes into Hna. deVries´ talk, so people stopped paying attention quickly and were either having whispered conversations or sleeping during her wonderful talk about the importance of reading the Book of Mormon every day. That irritated me so badly that when I got up to give my talk on the importance of church attendance (to the tiniest congregation I´ve seen in Villa Hayes yet), I pretty much just ditched what I´d planned to say and just laid out what I was feeling. I didn´t get mad or anything, but I was almost on the verge of tears as I explained that our investigators don´t want to come to church, this branch is like one of the dying olive trees in Jacob 5, and I KNOW that this branch could be so much more amazing. I don´t know if they were paying any more attention to me than they were to Hna. deVries, but whatever. I said what I had to say, and now we´re gonna work as hard as possible to re-teach about the Book of Mormon and church attendance every time we visit members until it finally gets through their heads. 

Sorry, I´m not trying to be bleak or anything. I haven´t given up or gotten discouraged with this area, but the mission isn´t always fun and games all the time, you know? 

So, a funny story to lighten the mood :)--on top of our water heater not working (which is actually REALLY NICE with how hot and sweaty we get), the lightbulb in our study room died. We haven´t had time to go search out a new one. We tried to live by sunlight during the day, but at night it proved a problem. Thankfully, we have an extra room with practically nothing in it, so we dragged our desks and moved all of our stuff into that room to study in. For a whole week we were fumbling through that dark front room every night to reach the study room and having other little issues with it...Then suddenly it hit Hna. deVries-- "Uh...why don´t we just exchange the study room lightbulb for the one in the spare room?!" Wow, we´re smart. :) 

I love you all SO MUCH!! Have a wonderful week, thank you for your letters, and never stop being awesome. :)

---Hna. Springer


Photos from Week 46


1-the teeniest frog I´ve ever seen in my life
2-"Fall colors" (actually just red and orange flowers)
3-Me by the river
LOVE YOU!!

---Hna. Springer

Week 45 - Asuncion Paraguay - Villa Hayes

Hey everybody!

How are you all doing this fine week? I loved the pictures you sent of your adorable Halloween costumes, and I hope you´re enjoying the snow. That´s so surreal to me, especially right now. I´m sweating so badly. It feels like 150 outside.

I have a lot to write about this week, so I thought I´d shake things up and just write about my week day-by-day instead of trying to make all my random topics connect. :)

On Monday, right after e-mailing you guys last time, Hna. deVries and I had a fun time exploring the main road through Villa Hayes and seeing what each store had to offer. I found some really cool souvenires that I´ll have to go back for around Christmas. But I did buy a Paraguayan flag and a cool belt thingie that´s supposedly really traditional Paraguayan. I also found a bag that´s made out of an armadillo. As much as I love armadillos and think making them into bags is sad, it´s just so cool I may have to buy it someday. :) Don´t judge me. 

That night, we visited a lady named Ninfa, who we´d visited before and discovered is really cool. She has kind of a free-wheeling lifestyle, but when she´s home with her teenage son they love to study the Bible together. I´ve never met a Paraguayan like her before--someone who really searches the scriptures for truth. Naturally we gave her the Book of Mormon to study as well as a pamphlet about the Restoration. She´s read them both and agreed that when she comes to a conclusion about it, she will most definitely be baptized. Whenever we visit her, we´re able to testify freely, and the Spirit is always so strong. She told us on Monday that she´s visited with missionaries a few times in the past, but with us she really feels good and wants to change to be more like us. That made me so happy. :) 

On Tuesday at district meeting, I found a very large, very heavy box waiting for me. Yes, my package finally reached me! I tore it open as soon as I got home, and family, you are SO SWEET!! I loved it! I loved the balloons and the noisemakers and the tiara. I absolutely adore the photos, especially the poster of the Gilbert temple. I almost teared up looking at them. They´re all hanging up in my bedroom now. We made the cake that night and had a big old second birthday party for me. We especially had fun trying to take timed photos of the both of us blowing our noisemakers. I sent you the least embarrassing one. :) But seriously, I love everything you sent. The "feel the love" card warmed my heart. And how did you know that I needed a new toothbrush, make-up, pencils, and shower gel? Seriously, so perfect. I felt so loved. Oh and the candy is a wonderful added bonus, of course. :) 

Wednesday, Hna. deVries and I initiated a "re-activate the menos activos" project/Christmas present for the Villa Hayes branch. We´re gonna give each member, no matter their activity, a piece of paper for them to write their names, when they learned about the church, why they got baptized, a favorite scripture, and their testimonies of Jesus Christ. We´re really excited about it. Not only will it help us to get to know the members, we´re hoping it will help everyone remember their spiritual experiences and want to come to church more frequently. 

Also on Wednesday we met a cute kid named Dario who came to church with our branch mission leader last Sunday. He´s such an adorable kid with a big white smile. He´s super polite and grateful and he loved church. He lives kind of far away, but we´re gonna visit him as often as possible.

There´s not much to report about Thursday except for a fun food story. We were meeting with Aurelio, this old recent convert man who diligently comes to church every Sunday despite not being able to hear well or read. We were teaching him about the Plan of Salvation, and suddenly out of nowhere he started talking to us about his favorite food. I forgot the name of it, but when he brought it out to show us what it was, I decided that it was one of the grossest foods I´ve ever seen. He brought out this big bowl of what looked like walnuts, and a jug of salt. Turns out it wasn´t walnuts, it was strips of dried cow fat cut up into chunks. He just dumped salt on it and chowed down. He brought spoons for us to join him, but we firmly declined. I always heard about how the native americans never wasted any part of the buffalo and all that, but I never thought people still followed that rule now in the 21st century. 

Friday was short and boring thanks to weekly planning, and on Saturday it rained. I wasn´t feeling super well, and I was REALLY tempted to just stay in until the rain stopped. But then I decided that that was stupid--it was just drizzling. What if the Lord had somebody out there who at THIS MOMENT needed a visit, and I stayed home because of a little rain? I knew it would be hard to go contacting because people really do hole up when it rains, but Hna. deVries and I decided that we were going to clap every open door we saw, or talk to anyone we saw sitting out on their front porch. It led to a LOT of rejections, predictably, but we were still satisfied with ourselves at the end of the long day. 

By Sunday, we had only found two new investigators all week--Dario, and Ninfa. They were quality news and all that, but it was still a pretty sad outcome for such a long, hard-working week. But on Sunday morning I was fine with it. Hna. deVries and I had been praying all week to know what to do to find more news, and we decided on Sunday morning that maybe God hasn´t been making it obvious because we´re supposed to study it out and work hard and learn and grow by ourselves a little bit. We decided not to beat ourselves up about our numbers and just be happy with our efforts. Then Saturday afternoon, a member asked if he could come help us with our visits. With his help, we met our goals for with-member lessons and found two more new investigators. I could have hugged him was it allowed. Instead, I just thanked God for letting us see some success after all. :)

Paraguay continues to get more and more beautiful to me. One night this week Jupiter and Saturn were really bright in the evening sky. I love it when you can see the planets. It makes you realize how big the universe really is and always helps me to think more about Heavenly Father taking care of it all. And when it was raining on Saturday we discovered these teeny tiny little frogs that, I´m not kidding you, were the size of my pinky nail. We also saw vibrant yellow and black frogs with bright red feet, which we decided not to touch. You should look them up and see if they´re poisonous for us, just for future reference. :)

I´m reading the end of the Book of Mormon now. Mormon and Moroni´s words always make me kind of sad, but I´m happy knowing that both are surely very happy living with God right now. I loved how in Ether, Moroni adds an experience where he was lamenting to God how he´s so weak in writing and surely nobody will believe his words. Our Heavenly Father lovingly tells him that it´s not his problem--he did everything that God commanded him, and because he did so well, he can die happy without the sins of the people on his head. Moroni did his absolute best, and the salvation of those who read the Book of Mormon depends on them and only them. Moroni can be at peace. I hope we can all say that at the end of our lives (and that I can say that at the end of my mission)--"I did my best. I´m gonna rest easy now."

Thank you Nana, Hna. Stagg, Dad, Mom, Ashley, Amanda, Grandma Springer, Goompa, Laurel and Shelli for your letters this week. It´s so WEIRD to me that you´re Christmas shopping and stuff. I´m charging my iPod right now. I think it´s time for us to start listening to my Christmas playlist. :) 

Well, I´ve got to go, but seriously thank you so much for the birthday wishes and package, and for your many prayers on my behalf. I´m praying for all of you, too, and I love hearing about how the Lord is blessing you while I´m away. I won´t go into details, but really I´ve seen so many instances where things I´ve been praying for have come true. It makes me so happy to see how the Lord really does take care of a missionary´s family. Never forget to count your blessings, and to work harder expecting more to come. Hna. deVries´ and my new motto is "Pray like it all depends on the Lord, and then work like it all depends on you." 

I LOVE YOU ALL!! Talk to you next week!

---Hna. Springer

Here´s your weekly dose of Paraguayan goodness. LOVE YOU!!

---Carly

1-One happy misionera

2-22nd Birthday Take 2

3-Party!!

4-Cows right outside our window

5-Me in the forest with a Paraguayan flag. :)

Week 44 - Asuncion Paraguay - Villa Hayes

Hey Family!

Sorry if this e-mail is a little earlier than expected. We have exactly one hour in this ciber because they close at noon, and we think we may be doing a Halloween zone activity later so we´re just rolling out the e-mails quickly today. So if you didn´t get to send anything yet, sorry. But thank you so much Sarah, Dad, Mom, Clay & Pam, Bro. Jenson, Goompa and Nana, Andersons, Grandma Springer, and Ashley for your e-mails this week. 

I did have a very good birthday, thanks. :) Honestly it wasn´t very spectacular. We still got up at 6:30am. Hna. deVries made me an awesome French toast breakfast with dulce de leche on top (which is basically just straight caramel). We studied until noon, then went to a member´s house for lunch. They had forgotten our lunch cita so they just fed us a quick, tasteless soup with spaghetti noodles and a chunk of cow femur in it. Then we went to work as usual out in the heat, trying to stir up the members to a remembrance of their covenants and teaching the doctrine to new people. I got lots of handshakes and besos in congratulations for my birthday. In the evening I got torta de leche from the Gonzalez family, which was really sweet of them and very yummy. At the very end of the day Hna. deVries and I got lomitos to celebrate. I received lots of calls from my mission friends and from the mission presidents, which was nice. 

The best, though, was a little party that the branch president´s family threw for me. The oldest daughter, De Las Nieves, had just bought a new oven to bake with, and she wanted to try making brownies for me for my birthday. When we got there, we found that they had decided to double the recipe, stirring all the ingredients together in a full-out bucket. They tried to bake the batter in really shallow pans, and it was a fiasco. It all spilled over the sides, thoroughly dirtying her brand new oven. They tried multiple attempts while we were there waiting. Meanwhile President Rojas had asked another member to come over and look up a youtube Happy Birthday video for me. It was really silly but sweet of him. I felt bad when we had to leave their house at 9:00 before any brownies were even close to being done. I felt even worse the next morning when we went back and learned that her oven had EXPLODED because of all the burnt brownie and being overworked (or something). It´ll be easily fixable, they assure me, but after feeding us what little brownies they managed to produce, I´m sure they´re not gonna try that again for a long while. :) It´s the thought that counts. And Pte. Rojas made little wool prayer rugs for me and Hna. deVries so we can get rid of those callouses on our knees. I paid for them, but it was still nice of him to make them in time for my birthday. :)

I haven´t gotten any of your packages yet, but I´m told one of them arrived on Wednesday and is waiting for me in the mission office. Some of the Elders promised to pick it up for me if they head out that way today. I hope so. I´m excited. If they can´t pick it up, it´ll take a couple weeks for me to get it. I´ll let you know next week how that works out. :)

The best thing about my birthday weekend was Fabiola´s baptism. It all went so perfectly. It was held out in Benjamin because they have all their friends and Cesar´s relatives there, and we were pleasantly surprised to find that the Elders and the Benjamin branch (which is way bigger than ours) had already arranged everything. Aside from Cesar being nearly a half hour late, everything went super smoothly. The font was clean, the clothes were all there, the talks were great, they only had to perform the ordinance once, there were tons of people there to support her, and there were plenty of refreshments at the end. Even better, Fabiola´s non-member mom and sister were there. They were pretty wary at the start, but we sat by them and explained things and shared our hymn books with them. We all got a ride home from Cesar and really bonded during that 25-minute drive back to Villa Hayes. In the end we were all laughing like old friends and she´s invited us over for lunch tomorrow. It all made me really really happy.

In other news, Hna. deVries and I experienced our absolute worst weather day in the history of our missions this last week. The natives assure us that in the summer it doesn´t get too bad because even though the sun is super strong, there´s always wind. But we learned first-hand that when a rain storm is coming, there is no wind. And without wind, it is seriously like being in an oven. I´ve never sweated so hard in my life. If I hadn´t had my umbrella for shade, I think I would have fried up like an ant under a magnifying glass. It was so miserable. The rain that followed was refreshing but brought more problems, like flooded streets and such. The weather´s great now that the rain has cooled everything down, but I still dread those pre-storm hot spells. 

We´re appreciating the little things, though, like our prayer rugs and the baby birds in the nest on our front porch. We´ve been studying a lot about how to strengthen this ward and how we need to really prepare the world for Christ´s second coming. I´ve been reading Paul´s epistles lately, and I love them. I never quite understood the 13th article of faith where it says, "Indeed we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul..." But now that I´m actually studying Paul´s words, I get it. He is always so loving and personal in his letters to those he has taught. He is such a great example of missionary work, and he always encourages the members of the church to not be judgmental but love and support one another. I do want to follow his admonition better...

That´s pretty much all to report for this week. I can´t believe it´s November tomorrow. Joan and Hollis are back from their mission ALREADY, Goompa and Nana are done being temple presidents ALREADY. Wow. 

I love you all so much. Thank you for your letters this week and for your prayers and your strength. I really am so blessed to have a Royal Army behind me, ready to lift me up when I´m discouraged and keep me going strong. Just knowing that you´re out there being righteous and worthy gives me hope and confidence in the work. Thanks so much.

I LOVE YOU!!

---Hna. Springer

P.S. A random Paraguay fact for this week: In filling out Fabiola´s baptismal registro, we realized that people here have absolutely no way of sending written mail. They were so confused when I asked, "How do you get or send letters?" All of the members just get letters passed along by missionaries. Everyone else does e-mail or texting. I have no idea what they did before cell phones or computers.

My 22nd birthday, a cool shot of Paraguay from the bridge (note the complete lack of any semblance of landmarks), and Fabiola and her husband Cesar.