Week 74 - Paraguay - Concepcion

¿Mba'eichapa, mi familia?

Are you having a wonderful Memorial Day weekend? Today we're experiencing unusually hot weather, so I'm jealous of all your accounts of perfectly cool weather back home. 

I'm so glad that I get to write you today. We had a scare when all day the internet in all of Concepcion was down. It just barely came back on, so now we're all scrambling to write home before P-Day ends and we start working again.

This week was so great. So much happened, I wish I could just copy down my journal for all of you. Hopefully Hna. Goimarac will write about some things that I skip, so you can check out her blog to fill in the gaps.

First of all, we finally had a baptism in Rama 1! It was quite literally a miracle. The 10-year-old boy, Rolando, is the son of an inactive member and lives with his inactive member cousins. He has been ready for baptism for months, and he always comes to church, but one thing after another kept coming up so we kind of put his baptism on the shelf so the speak. Then last week the zone leaders called and told us that our mission is very close to meeting our goal of 100 baptisms in May, but that nobody had anybody left to baptize. We started a special fast, hoping to see miracles, and a half hour later we were at Rolando's house. Before we'd even taught the lesson, the grandma said, "Hermanas, Rolando's dad is going to be in town this weekend. Can we have his baptism while he's here?" We couldn't believe our ears! We quickly reviewed the baptismal questions with Rolando and of course, he was an expert on everything. So when we left the house I called our zone leaders again (hardly an hour had passed since they'd called us about the special fast). I said, "Hey, Elders. Just a question. Could you possibly come to our area tomorrow to do a baptis--" "YES!!" they said, "YES YES YES we absolutely can!!" They were so thrilled, it was hilarious. Sometimes the Lord takes a while to respond to our prayers, sometimes He answers immediately. :)

The baptism was beautiful for having been thrown together in under three days. There was a great big turnout, as most of Rolando's family is members, and many others in the branch showed up as well. We didn't have seats for everyone. They were all so excited to see a baptism for the first time since January, and they were all so sweet about welcoming Rolando into the branch. I gave a talk before the ordinance about the Holy Ghost, and explained that in order to feel the Holy Ghost, we have to be doing things worthy of His companionship. I then gifted him with the Book of Mormon that the Palo Verde Primary sent to me (the kids loved the picture of all the blonde little American primary kids), and I started crying when I explained to him that the primary had worked hard to send him something special. He seemed really touched by it.

Immediately after the baptism, Hna. Goimarac and I put on a special fireside. We were running around like chickens with our heads cut off on Saturday night, trying to bake desserts and confirm member participation and everything. To make it worse, the power in the whole city went out for a few hours that night, and we were panicking thinking that everything would be closed and we'd have nothing done by the Sabbath. But then the power came back on (and Hna. Goimarac made a comment like, "Wow! That was just like when the Church was restored after the long night of apostasy!" She's so cute!) and we were back in business.

The fireside went great. The theme was mission work, but instead of the usual, cane-dropping, "Come on, members, help us missionaries!!", we took the tone of, "Thank you so much, members, for all that you do. Check out what your small acts of kindness do for the world!" We showed a few videos about converts and church growth, one of them being that epic "The Gospel Rolls Forth" video with the dots appearing representing stake growth over the years. It had ME in tears, at least. And we'd asked several members to share their testimonies of how members had helped them in the church. I think the branch really liked it, and they all seemed pretty impressed with our efforts. We had printed programs and everything, and it helped that we had six investigators in sacrament meeting earlier that day. :) At one point, the power went off again, and I expected them to all bolt for the door, but I was so proud when instead they just opened the windows to let in a little moonlight, turned on their cell phone flashlights, and stayed put as if nothing had happened. This branch is awesome!

The members have been helping us so much this week. Now that they've actually met our investigators at church, they're a lot more willing to come do visits with us. We have three with-member visits already booked for this upcoming week, which is very unusual. I'm very impressed with our investigators as well. The Meza family (Juan Angel's family) couldn't come this week because of a family emergency, but they still have a solid baptismal date for June. Instead we had brand new investigators come, a few of them from very far away. I wasn't exaggerating before when I said that the Lord has been putting quality people in our paths. They say that in the States, if somebody lets you into their house, it's very likely that they'll be baptized. We have people let us into their houses no problem--it's getting them to church that marks their readiness or not, and we've been seeing so many in church lately! It's so great.

Juan Angel and his family really are so dedicated. That FHE that I mentioned last week went well. We showed up at the church at 7:00 with our recent-convert family, but the Mezas didn't arrive. I called them and they said that something had come up and they wouldn't be able to make it. We were bummed, but told them we'd just go visit them the next day. So we had a nice little FHE with the recent-convert family alone. At 8:00 we'd had the lesson, played the game, eaten some dessert and cleaned up. We were literally walking out the door when who should appear but the entire Meza family! As soon as they'd resolved their problem, they'd run as fast as they could to the church to see if they could catch the end of FHE. We were so impressed and touched that we just had the entire activity again--lesson, game, treat, and all! :) The recent convert family hit it off well with them, and the Mezas loved it. They're progressing well, and showing a great love for Christ. I can't wait to see their baptisms in June.

To end, I just want to remind you that the Lord works in funny ways, sometimes. This week we were working to contact a ton, as usual. We were tracting around in the city and it was awkward to just approach people on the sidewalk. We were coming up on this old couple sitting out in front of their house, and I was scrambling to think of what to say to make the contact natural. ("Uh...I like your shirt?" "...Your house is pretty?" "Whatcha doin'?") We were just at the point when I had to open my mouth to say SOMETHING in greeting, when out of the house came this little black weiner dog wearing a pink Hello Kitty sweater. It ran right up to us and greeted us with a friendly, wagging tail, for all the world as if we were already best friends and it had heard us coming. It was the most amazingly perfect ice-breaker as we went, "Awwwww!!" and rubbed its round little belly and were able to ask the couple about their adorable little dog. It was the most casual contact of the day, all thanks to a friendly little weiner dog. :)

I love Paraguay. I really do. I wish I could just clip a webcam to my nametag and let you in on all my amazing experiences. The Church is so true. Hna. Goimarac in her talk at the Fireside did a great job of talking about how she's gone to several countries for service projects before. She's helped people with their schooling and housing and business-sense, but in all her endeavors, she's never seen as much change in peoples' happiness as in preaching the gospel. I'm so glad that I chose to serve a mission. I want to do service projects in the future, too, but it's true. Nothing changes a person so much as when they learn that they are a child of God with a divine destiny and potential. 

I love you all!! Thank you Grandma (and Jenkins), Ashley, Amanda, Goompa and Nana, Hna. Tua'one, Mom, and Dad for your letters this week! 

---Hna. Springer

Hey! Here are some sweet pics from another great week in the Heart of South America!
1-Me and Rolando, who I gave my special Book of Mormon to from the Palo Verde Primary.
2-Us and Rolando, the newest member of Rama 1
3-Hna. Goimarac cleaning the font
4-Me cleaning the font
5-Hna. Goimarac breaking into the font from the front when we found that the door was jammed. :)

LOVE YOU!!

---Carly