Wow. 52 whole weeks already. Can you believe that?? I remember last Christmas so well--it´s hard to imagine that I've been in Paraguay for ten whole months and only have seven more to go. The time is going to fly by so fast. April Conference is going to be upon us in only three months, then Easter, then Mother´s Day (and another Skype chat! Yay!), then I´ll almost be home! It´s going to go by so fast. Seriously. Months seem like weeks to me now. I definitely need to strive to make the most of it.
This morning Hna. deVries and I were talking about that--about using our time wisely. We´d just read that talk in the Conference Liahona "A Time to Prepare," and I told her about how this year has probably been the most fulfilling, rewarding year of my entire life, yet last year I was a total bum and I have little to show for it. I could never just waste years to come because this year was so awesome. It doesn´t work like that--you´ve got to make the most of every day. God´s given us options of how to use our time. We´re going to be accountable to Him one day for what we chose to do with it.
Anyways, I´m glad to hear that you had an excellent Christmas. I haven´t gotten any of your packages or cards or anything yet, but I´m sure they´re on their way. :) Thank you so much for your letters and everything. Thank you Grandma, Mom, Dad, Goompa, Laurel, Ashley, and Amanda. And Hna. Messina, if you happen to be reading this, thank you for your letter, too! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas at home!
My Christmas was a pretty typical holiday--a whole lot of hype leading to a relatively anticlimactic day. All week we´d been hearing, "Oh, la Navidad! I love the Navidad! We´re going to have such a blast! You´re going to get fed so much great food and see what Paraguay is all about!" I was really, really excited. But then when the actual holiday came, we saw nothing happen. Turns out they celebrate Christmas by having a big dinner starting at 9:00pm Christmas Eve and then shooting off fireworks at midnight and getting drunk and everything, only to sleep all day Christmas Day. So...we got no food (we had to go home before any food was ready to eat), hardly anyone wanted to talk with us because all their family was over or they were traveling, and we had a TINY amount of people come to church, even though it was only one hour this week to accomodate them. But honestly, I didn´t expect much else. :) I´m used to this by now.
I just felt bad for my poor companion, who´s fresh from the States (relatively) and was probably expecting something awesome to take her mind off of Christmas at home. I´m so unthoughtful. I didn´t do anything for her for Christmas. I was kind of trying not to think of Christmas at all so I wouldn´t get "trunky." She got to talk to her family on Christmas Eve, thankfully, but I could tell that on Christmas she was pretty bummed. So today, I made up for that. I called the Elders to come hang out with us today. We had a mini (late) Christmas feast at the chapel. We brought a cake, some deviled eggs, and sweet potatoes. The Elders brought drinks, and were supposed to bring some baked chickens. Turns out all the usually-reliable chicken stands were closed today, so we had hamburgers instead. :) It was pretty fun, though it was a lot more filling than I expected it to be. I think I´ve lost my ability to overeat. We had a lot of leftover food. We watched The Testaments, too, which made me cry, as usual. Hna. deVries had never seen it, if you can believe that!
Oh, P.S. I´m still with Hna. deVries in Villa Hayes! I was SO SURE I was going to get Changed, but nope. This will be the longest I´ve ever been with one companion, and we´ll get to spend almost the whole summer in one of the hottest Hermanas areas. How lucky are we? :) God was really nice to us, though, and gave us a perfectly wonderful overcast, drizzly Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It felt SOOO nice after all the hot, restless nights. Our air conditioning hasn´t been working very well. We bought some new fans and we sleep with our frozen water bottles. Then when the water bottles melt, we dump them all over ourselves in the middle of the night. You were right--it works! We´re going to be moving soon, though, turns out. Our landlady wants to switch us places. She lives in the house next-door on the second floor, and wants to move to our house because her husband recently had surgery on his knee and can´t climb the stairs very easily. She promised us a new air conditioner if we agreed to the new contract. DEAL!!
I feel bad, though. Our house kind of has some problems. We have the one room still without a light bulb, our shower head still doesn´t work, and now we have a mouse problem. The stupid thing ate half my bag of popcorn kernals! We bought a trap the other day. The thing snaps so violently whenever I so much as nudge it, and yet for five nights in a row the mouse has escaped unscathed. Last night, the bait was half-eaten and everything! We´ve never actually seen the thing. Maybe it´s a rat so big that one time it got caught in a trap but was so big that it wasn´t killed, and now it knows better than to touch our enticing peanut-butter-and-popcorn-kernal bait. We´ll see. I want that thing to die, though. Before, I used to be all for humane traps. Now, after it´s smelled up our house and eaten my beans and popcorn, I want it OUT! :)
But anyways, this was definitely a Christmas that I´m forever going to remember. It was definitely lacking on the whole charitable, Christian, peaceful feeling. Most of the people we shared with on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were listening to loud rap music and could have cared less about the birth of our Savior. But the messages that we shared sure touched MY heart. We used Luke 2 the most. I love the part where the angel comes to the shepherds. They´re afraid, but the angel tells them not to fear, because he brings good news that will be for all people--that the Savior has come! So many people here see God as something to be afraid of--someone who, if they don´t recite "Padre Nuestro" every night, will rob them of their basic necessities like health, work, and daily bread. But the coming of our Lord wasn´t something to be afraid of--it was something to give us hope and joy! The birth of Christ was the moment when God, out of infinite love for us, sent His Son to redeem us from our sins. With the members, we shared out of 1 Nephi 11 (I think...) where Nephi is learning the interpretation of Lehi´s dream. When he wants to know what the Tree of Life stands for, the angel shows him the birth of Christ. Nephi is so moved by the vision that he recognizes that the Tree of Life is the Love of God. Showing him Christ´s birth was the angel´s best way to show Nephi the love of God. We should all see it that way, too.
On Friday we had a little mission party at the Mission Office. We got an amazing lunch, of course, and then we watched those video clips that apparently they showed at the Christmas Devotional this year. They were really brilliantly well-done. Are they making a full-length New Testament movie from those or are they purely online clips? I just bought the interactive Doctrine and Covenants study guide DVDs from the office, and they´re so great. I love the videos on that, too. I´ve learned so much already. Anyways, after watching the videos, we went to the huge, scary public hospital to sing. I never wanted to set foot in there, but it was much better without the fear of actually being worked on by a Paraguayan doctor. It was nice and cool in there, too. The patients really loved our caroling. Several people were moved to tears. I love that our mission presidents had us go do service to celebrate Christmas instead of just partying at the office or something. It was really nice.
Well, I´ve got to go now. Merry Christmas again, and never forget to have Christ in your hearts all year round! I LOVE YOU!!
---Hna. Springer
Hey family! I know you just saw my beautiful face and all, but here are more pictures of me from this week. It was SOOOO good to talk with you this morning! I´m so happy. :) I LOVE YOU!!
1-The Elders with the stockings we gave them for Christmas (those are the fishing lines that I bought when I was with the latinas--we won't ever use them again probably.)
2-We had a mini-party last Tuesday where the Elders gave us whatever gifts they found on the way to the church. Ha ha!
3-One of the many adorable nativities in the neighborhood.
4-Caroling in the hospital on Friday.
5-Me trying to cool down before another loooooong hot night.
6-Our little Christmas feast
7-Another picture of our Christmas dinner
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