Week 72 - Paraguay - Concepcion

Dearest Familia,

Happy Mother's Day yesterday, or tomorrow if you're in Paraguay. :) 

Also, Happy Paraguayan Independence Day today! 

And Happy Anniversary Amanda and Chase! 

There are a lot of holidays this week. Concepcion was founded on May 31st, so that day will be a holiday, too. Basically everyone's out of school and working a lot less this month than most other months. Right now the streets are so quiet. Everyone's with their families. We did have a branch activity, though, at the chapel. They made a bunch of grilled meat and played soccer and chatted. It was nice and relaxing. As far as we can tell, though, there aren't many traditional ways to celebrate these holidays. On the 31st they're gonna have a big parade. The marching band practices every morning, passing right by our house and making it quite impossible to study. By the time it's actually time to DO the parade, nobody in town's going to want to go see it. We've already heard it a bazillion times. :) 

This has been a seriously excellent week. Skyping was a blast, of course. It came and went way too fast, but it was great to be able to see my parents and my two youngest sisters again. I'm glad to hear that everything's still normal back home and everyone's happy. Dad noticed that I was both very excited to talk about the future and very sad. The end is coming way too fast and I don't like thinking about it too much. Thankfully, Hna. Tua'one is helping me with that by writing to me every week. She sounds kind of bored not being a missionary anymore, so that helps me to not picture non-missionary life in too exciting of a light. 

As I mentioned last week (I think), Pte. Madariaga gave us all the challenge to get 75 contacts each this week. That means introducing ourselves as missionaries to 150 complete strangers in seven days. That used to be pretty nerve-wracking for me. At the beginning of last week I was dreading this challenge, but that was just Satan trying to get me to focus on all the possibilities of rejection. In reality, we didn't get rejected too hard at all, and now contacting seems SO much easier and more natural. Not only that, but Pte. Madariaga's promise came true! He said that if we got 75 contacts a week, we'd find a new golden investigator before the end of the week. 

I can definitely say that that's true this week! I don't even have time to tell you about all of the amazing people that we've found this week! It really has been miraculous. For sake of time, I'll just mention a few. They're all pretty new investigators so I can't guarantee that they'll actually get baptized, but our visits with them have been so spiritual and amazing, and I'm so grateful that God let me meet them.

First of all, there's Bernardina. We were out contacting as usual and when we couldn't find this one man we'd met a few days ago, we went across the street where we'd seen some people walking around. We clapped the house, and some little kids ran to get an adult to come talk to us. Bernardina came out looking like she'd been dragged out of bed and had a migraine. She was kind of short with us, so we explained quickly who we were and what we were doing and asked if we could share with her. She was like, "You want to come in?" I said, "Um...well...yes?" thinking she was going to turn us down flat, judging by the skeptical look on her face. But she said, "Alright, come on in." 

We sat down on her porch and met her adorable little girls, Mireia and Dalba, and we chatted a bit to get Bernardina to open up. At first she kept on being kind of curt, like she'd talked with missionaries a thousand times before and thought we were wasting her time. Then we kept asking inspired questions and Bernardina started to soften up. Hna. Goimarac is especially good at coming up with thought-provoking questions, and from that we learned that Bernardina had actually been looking for Truth ever since she was a teenager. She started listing all of the churches and religions she'd checked out before, then told us all of the things that she'd found unsatisfactory about them all. "Basically," she said, "I tried them all. I didn't find what I was looking for. So now I'm back to the catholic church. It's what my parents raised me in, I guess it's good enough." The way she said it, she sounded so genuinely upset by it, like she was really hungering for something more. "The only one I haven't tried," she said, "Is yours. I've never talked with you missionaries or gone to your chapel before." 

As soon as I heard that, the Spirit was so strong. I wish I could describe the amazing feeling of having the Spirit just flood your body and help you to know exactly what to say. Feeling on top of the world, I told her, "Bernardina, I promise you that if you try the Church of Jesus Christ, you WILL find what you're looking for. This is the truth that you've been wanting, and God has sent it to you now." 

At first she was still kind of skeptical, but as we went on testifying, she got really pensive. We explained the Restoration, and at the end she said sincerely, "I'm going to pray about this. I want this to be true. I want to find God's church."

And she did pray. She said she was filled with so much happiness, she started to cry without knowing why. She and her husband read and re-read the Restoration pamphlet to learn more, and they've been happily continuing to let us visit them. She is golden. I'll tell you more about her as things develop.

The other investigator is named Juan Angel. He's the friend and co-worker of a member, and he's had some hard struggles in his life with his family, alcohol, and lots of other things. The member friend, Alex, was so great to him during it all, that now Juan Angel is convinced that the Church is true. In our visits, he's so attentive and just feasts on the information. He asks amazing questions and is always so surprised and thrilled when we can answer his questions unlike any other pastor he's asked. 

We've already taught him most of the lessons, and in each one the Spirit works freely. He's incredibly sensitive to the Spirit and he's already come to the conclusion that everything we teach is true. When we taught him the Plan of Salvation, he told us that he wants to not only save himself, but his whole family, and he promised to bring them with him when he visited the church for the first time yesterday.

They didn't show up at 8:00. We were pacing the halls and Alex was calling him frantically. Then 9:00 came and went and our ward mission leader was like, "What happened to your investigators?" and made it clear that he was disappointed in our efforts. I was so sad when it came time for sacrament meeting and Juan Angel and his family still weren't there. When it was time for the sacrament, I just sat there and prayed for patience. I was pretty resigned to the fact that all of our success was out of our hands. I could plant, Hna. Goimarac could water, but the increase always comes from God. I prayed and prayed, basically telling the Lord "Thy will be done" and I would be okay if I never saw another baptism in the area as long as I knew that the Lord was pleased with my efforts. A great calm came over me, and I was grateful for that quiet moment in sacrament meeting.

Then the deacon offered me the sacrament, and when i looked up, there was Juan Angel and his family! They'd snuck in at the precise moment when I was surrendering my will to the Lord. I couldn't stop grinning all during the perfect sacrament meeting talks, and I kept praying, now thanking God over and over for such a wonderful surprise.

Well, that took way too long to describe, but just know that we are seeing miracles and I'm very very happy. The mission is amazing and the Lord is so incredibly merciful when we do our very best. 

I love you all. Have an amazing week and don't forget to thank the Lord every day for His gifts. 

---Hna. Springer

Here are a couple of photos I just snapped this morning at a ward activity.

Feliz Dia de la Independencia de Paraguay!

LOVE YOU!

---Carly