I hope you all had a wonderful New Year´s! Thank you for telling me all about your festivities. Our New Year´s was pretty quiet. Well, not literally. We were woken up at midnight by a half-hour´s worth of fireworks, and I managed to sleepily mumble, "Feliz Año Nuevo" to Hna. deVries, but other than that, we didn´t actually do any celebrating. :) Paraguay is crazy about their parties, though. They celebrated all weekend with lots of beer and fireworks. Their fireworks are pretty weak compared to ours--just bombs, really--but they can´t get enough of them. All day long, little kids are outside setting them off. And I mean LITTLE kids. I´ve quickly learned not to freak out when I see a group of three-year-olds setting matches to little fosforitos. Their parents always provide them and sometimes lazily watch them set them off. That whole "parental supervision" warning is kind of lost to them. Another observation about fireworks, and fire in general, is that they never actually do any damage here. I don´t know if it´s the humidity or what, but things never catch on fire. People burn their trash just out in their yards or in a field somewhere, and all the trash burns but it doesn´t spread to the rest of the field or their houses. Nobody supervises them at all. I don´t understand why. They all think it´s weird when we explain that we can only set off fireworks twice a year due to fire hazards. Forest fires are nonexistent here. It´s so strange.
But anyways, to make up for our lack of Christmas Eve festivities, our branch president´s family had us over for dinner on New Year´s Eve AND last night. We also had an end-of-year party at the chapel on Thursday night. It was a good way to get the menos activos to the chapel again--it´s a long-standing tradition apparently. We ate lots of baked chicken (SUCH a nice change from beef) and rice salad and something called chipa wasu. We got lots of leftovers and didn´t have to spend hardly any money on our own groceries this week. :)
I can´t believe that it´s been a full year already. I don´t know why, but it just hit me the other day that it´s been a FULL YEAR since I was in the MTC, barely able to speak any Spanish. So much has happened since then. It´s kind of freaky. But honestly, 2011 must have been the most rewarding year of my entire life. I´ve never felt so satisfied with my time before. Nothing is as gratifying as serving the Lord with all your time and energy all year long. I think last year was the first time ever that I actually met all my New Year´s Resolutions.
But I still have a lot to learn, as I figured out this week. We had to go to Asunción to sign Hna. deVries into the country. When we walked in there, a huge group of young Elders and we Hermanas, we overheard a group of German men talking about us in English. Two of the men were straight from Germany, and the other had lived in Paraguay for a while, I guess. The new ones asked the veteran who we were, and he explained, "They´re missionaries. They come here for their church. The Mormon church. It´s like the Catholic church, only smaller. It´s new." "Why would they come do that?" one of the men scoffed. "They don´t know better," said his friend. "They´re brainwashed." It made me cringe to hear that, but I didn´t say anything. Our group sat around the Germans. Hna. deVries and i were behind them, and when they weren´t discussing their business venture or whatever, one of the men was looking up "Mormons" on his iPhone. We were there for a half hour, and yet none of us said a thing to them about what the Church was REALLY about and why we were REALLY there. Then it was time to go, before any of us had worked up the courage. We felt so ashamed of ourselves afterwards, especially me--the most senior missionary in the group. I realized, after reading Elder Perry´s conference talk later, that I let fear overcome my faith. Usually that doesn´t happen, but because the men were wealthier, more educated, English-speakers, I froze up. What am I gonna do in the States in the future, then? I need to overcome ALL fear. And I realized later this week during my lessons, that it´s really not that scary to speak up. Really, people are genuinely curious. All we´ve got to do is let them know who we are. If we do, even if they snub our beliefs, at least we´ll be satisfied with ourselves. If we don´t, we´ll just beat ourselves up about it. Take it from someone who knows. :) My New Year´s resolution is to never let that happen again.
Rubén is doing well, but he didn´t make it to church this week, so we don´t know when he´ll get baptized. All of our other prospects are unraveling, too, sadly. But we had the Elders come give Rubén a blessing on Tuesday. They very sweetly taught him about the Priesthood and how God has prepared a calling to the Priesthood for Rubén if he only does what he needs to to accept it. The blessing was very powerful and very sincere. Rubén was close to tears. I hope that he´s felt an increased resistance against temptation. We haven´t heard from him much this week due to all the festivities.
But good news! We were in church yesterday when we noticed these two little girls who always come to church by themselves. We knew that one of them was a recent convert, and that most of her family are WAY inactive members, but we didn´t know much about her little sister. So we asked, and she was like, "I´m eight, and I never got baptized!" We immediately verified with the President, and with the girl´s mom, and sure enough there was some misunderstanding back in June when her baptism was supposed to be. President thought the mom didn´t want her to get baptized, and the mom thought that President was having trouble putting the baptism together, and it just got put off indefinitely. So, long story short, we´re having a baptism this Saturday! It won´t count as a convert, since her mom is a member, but still! Por fin, a baptism in Villa Hayes!!
Anyways, Hna. deVries has been giving me some awesome insight this week. First of all, she pointed out that our calling is to have baptisms in quality AND quantity. As a companionship, we´ve been doing well with the quantity part, when it comes to lessons, but the quality of them has been lacking for sure. So this week we´ve been striving to make sure to make each lesson awesome, or to not count it at all. Apparently we´ve got the best numbers in the zone, but obviously we have no baptisms to show for it. We want to change that.
Secondly, she mentioned the other day how EVERY time she reads the Book of Mormon (and she reads it several times a day), she ends her studies by praying to know if it´s true. No matter how many times she´s received that witness, she prays after each reading. I´ve always noticed how spiritual she is, so I´ve decided to give that a try, and honestly it makes such a difference. I read looking for a principle to pray about, and the answers of the Spirit I receive after praying fortify my testimony day-by-day. It´s amazing.
We made a new rat trap using pioneer methods. Sadly I´ve run out of time and can´t explain it very well, but stay tuned next week to see if it works!
I love you all! Take care! You´re the best!
---Hna. Springer
Hey fam! Sorry I don´t have lots of photos to send you this week. It was all pretty ordinary. But here´s a picture of my new and improved rat trap (read all about it in this week´s e-mail), and a little doodle that an adorable little girl drew me in sacrament meeting.
I LOVE YOU!! Take care!
---Carly
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