I got your package! Thank you so much Mom, Dad, Sarah, and Ashley for sending me so much stuff! You sent me everything I asked for! I was so happy. How did you know that I needed hand sanitizer and midol? :) I LOVE the skirt. I got tons of compliments when I wore it the other day. And of course the pistachios and jelly beans and cherry-chocolates were a very welcome touch. Those reminded me a lot of Christmas at home. I sent a picture of me with my spread of goodies. Let me know if you see anything missing, because there was a big hole in it taped over with "Paraguayan Mail" tape. I got my debit card and the thumb drive just fine, and it didn´t look like anything had been taken, but it was hard to tell.
With my new handkerchiefs (THANK YOU!!) I am now completely geared up for Paraguay every day. I´ve got my sunglasses to protect my eyes from the glare of the road, my handkerchiefs to wipe my sweat without making zits, my umbrella to keep the freckles away, my hand sanitizer, my candies to give to little kids, my bug spray to prevent dengue, and my water bottle. Sounds more like a camping trip than a day teaching the gospel, huh? :) Carrying water around is proving more and more crucial. I´m seriously considering spending my Christmas money on a huge thermos bottle, because our nice filtered water bottles get so hot so fast. And water is becoming scarce here with the summer heat. No idea why, but from 1:00 to 5:00, the city pipes run completely dry. We have to live off of bottled water or the hospitality of those who were smart enough to collect water in the morning before it ran out. It´s a pain. You´d think with a river literally blocks away, water wouldn´t be a problem. Go figure.
With the help of the Benjamin Elders, we moved from our cute little pink house to the yellow house on the second story next door. I think I walked up those stairs about 100 times today. The men did most of the heavy lifting, but we got our share of hard labor in there. I´ll miss our own house, but I kind of like the new one better. It´s got a nice big balcony and the windows are all open and breezy and best of all, we got a brand new air conditioner in there! We´ve been sleeping poorly the last few nights from the heat, and today when they invited us into the bedroom to test out the air conditioning, we both just went, "AHHHHHHHHH." It felt SO GOOD. I can´t wait to sleep tonight. :) All our things are all disorganized, though. I hate moving. The rat is no longer our problem, though! I actually think it´s been gone for a long while. We never got to put our cool trap to use. I was kind of disappointed. What we did was put a stick over an open bucket of water, with a plastic bottle in the middle of the stick. The idea was to put something yummy on the bottle, and then when the rat went for it, it would slip on the easily-spinnable bottle, fall into the bucket, and drown. Sad, I know, but I had a lot of fun making the trap. :)
Anyways, we´re cleaning house figuratively as well as literally. Hna. deVries and I made a list of all the promises our mission president has made if we do certain things, then we decided which ones we need to work on. We came to the conclusion that we´re wasting too much time visiting people who give us numbers but have never shown interest in the gospel or kept any commitments. It´s been a harder week, subsequently. We´ve had hardly anyone to visit. But we´ve done a ton of contacting and we´ve met a lot of new people. Also, since that incident with the Germans in Asunción, we have been a LOT more bold in our declaration of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. We teach the Restoration at every visit, adapting it to the needs of the investigator as the Spirit directs, but not moving on to the other lessons until we´ve established the Restoration and the Book of Mormon. As a result, we´ve had the most satisfying week I think I´ve ever had on the mission. I have no doubt that´s why God taught me that lesson in Asunción. I´ve already become such a better teacher since then. It was a good wake-up call.
I had a cool spiritual experience this weekend that made me feel that maybe I am doing okay heeding the promptings of God. We had a baptism this weekend of a little girl who´s mom is an inactive member. She´s a shy little girl who comes with her older sister. She has tons of friends in the primary but is mostly overlooked by the adult members. It was pretty much just her family and neighbor friends at her baptism. The baptism started out being really impersonal. The branch president and primary president aren´t very close to Magali (the girl who got baptized) or her family, so their messages were really short and impersonal. All the little kids were getting impatient for the brownies we´d brought. I was directing the meeting at the branch president´s request, and at the end I felt the distinct impression that I should as Magali´s mom to bear her testimony. Her mom always seemed kind of cold towards the church, and I wasn´t sure if she even had a testimony. I thought maybe she´d be irritated at the request and say something rote. But I acted on the impression (having learned in Asunción...), and the mom seemed surprised but she agreed. When she got up to speak, her eyes immediately filled with tears. She bore a wonderful testimony of how her life has been better since she joined the church, how her children have been blessed, and how she knows it is true without a doubt. It was so powerful. It drew the Spirit into the meeting, settled the kids down, and made Magali cry. I was so reassured that Magali will forever remember that special day in her life, thanks to her mom´s testimony.
Rubén couldn´t come to church this Sunday, so we may or may not have his baptism before I leave Villa Hayes. I pray every day that I can see his baptism. He is so amazing. We see him several times a week and the Spirit has been working with him so much. We´re working on trying to give him a vision of what he can become. He´s a little hard on himself, and he´s dealing with people judging him for his past more than seeing his present goodness. We may have a miracle, though, and get our baptismal goal this month after all! After MANY ups and downs, a man named Cleto is saying that he wants to get baptized this weekend. He´s been prepared for a long time, so we´re gonna go for it. It really is a miracle. We were thinking we were never gonna have another baptism in Villa Hayes.
Sorry, I haven´t had time to read any of your e-mails yet today so I won´t be sending out any individual letters. But I can´t wait to read all that you´ve written me. I hope everything´s great with you. Thank you Grandma, Laurel (and Shelli), Bishop Crittenden, Blair Family, Dad, Mom, Sarah, Amanda, and Ashley (and Jersey and Leo) for writing to me this week. You make me feel so loved.
On an ending note, I was reading Jacob 5 the other day. I´ve always loved that chapter and found something new every time I´ve read it. I especially love the part about the servants helping the Lord of the Vineyard with the Final Harvest and receiving joy from that. But something I noticed that I hadn´t ever before was the part where the Lord says (to paraphrase), "Now for the last time we´re going to nourish this vineyard. We´re going to save all the good branches and destroy the bad. BUT, because the good branches are so small, we have to wait until they´re strong before we can take away the bad ones. Otherwise the whole tree will die." It was an interesting concept. The message I got from it? BE STRONG, MEMBERS!!
Eso no más. :)
I LOVE YOU ALL!! Have a wonderful week (hopefully filled with lots of snow. What I wouldn´t give for a snowfall right now...)
---Hna. Springer
1-A bunch of girls playing volleyball before the baptism (guess which one got baptized. Ha ha!)
2-Adorable little "lamanitas"
3-Me with my AWESOME Christmas package!!
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