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!
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