HAPPY FATHERS DAY!! I was thinking about all of my wonderful father figures yesterday and feeling so grateful. I looked up a bunch of scriptures about fathers during personal study to celebrate the occasion, and the favorite verse I found was Proverbs 6:20-23. To sum up, it says that if we take our parents' (but just apply this to fathers for now...) commandments and put them in our hearts, they will guide us in every aspect of our lives. Because their commands are the way of life. I love that! It's so true. I'm so grateful for the guidance of Dad and my Grandpas and uncles and everybody. Mothers change the world so much, but a righteous father really does work miracles. Hence our mission's focus on baptizing Priesthood-age men. Men make or break the success of the Church. I also realized that one of the titles for Jesus Christ is the Everlasting Father. I found lots of verses about how God is father of the fatherless, and how He will never leave us orphans. It's nice to know that all the orphans and missionaries very far away from their fathers can always have an Eternal Father right by their side through it all. Without my Heavenly Father to guide me, the mission would literally be impossible.
Anyways, last week wasn't actually as interesting as I promised that it would be. We're still working with the Meza family. Stay tuned. :) But their little daughter Mercedes adores the Children's Illustrated Book of Mormon. We took it for FHE last week and she was so absorbed in it that we couldn't bear to ask for it back. We just gave it to her as an early baptism gift, and she's been reading it hungrily. Better, she's actually understanding, pondering, and asking about it. The other day she asked us why the Holy Ghost would tell Nephi to kill Laban. That's such a deep question coming from a seven-year-old. I'm sad she's too young to baptize, but I'm sure she, too, will be a great strength in the church someday. She's already loving Primary and being a good example to the kids there.
Hna. Goimarac and I have made it our companionship goal to be sure and get at least one with-member lesson a day--to have a member come with us to teach an investigator at least once a day. It's such a challenge around here, as we can only ask people with motorcycles to come meet up with us, and we have very few people who match the demographic of our investigators and have free time to help us. We thought that on Saturday it would be impossible to get a with-member lesson, but we were determined. I felt inspired to ask a recent convert named Carolina Urbieta to come with us. We weren't sure how it would go, and we were a little stressed when she showed up with her husband and youngest child instead of alone like we'd planned. We were only going to visit young single mothers that afternoon, so we thought it would be awkward. But the Lord knows better. Carolina's husband, Federico, has such a strong testimony, especially about the Book of Mormon. Carolina on her own is a little shy, but with Federico there they were a great tag-team. They were so natural about sharing their testimonies and offering to help the women come to church and everything. They showed them that members are normal (one of our investigators was all shocked that Carolina was a baptized member because she was wearing jeans--she thought that once you were baptized you had to wear skirts every day like us missionaries! Members are so essential!), and we had a great turn-out at church yesterday thanks to their help.
The weather was a lot warmer last week after the rain, and now it's all rainy again but not cold. We're not sure if it's winter yet or not. :) When the weather had just barely turned warmer after lots or rain, the mosquitos were insane. I wore repellent, but towards the end of the night we were in a house by a little stream, and I thought I was doing a good job of swatting the skeeters away, but the next morning I found that I'd failed. I won't traumatize you with the pictures, but my legs looked like they belonged to a dalmation with chicken pox. Hna. Goimarac wasn't any better off. We used lots of benadryl that next day, and took our bottles of repellent with us for multiple re-applications. By a MIRACLE we don't have dengue. We feel like we dodged a bullet. :)
This weekend Paraguay is celebrating a national holiday called El Dia de San Juan. All I know about it is that they eat lots of traditional Paraguayan food like chipa and sopa and mbeju, and that they play traditional games. One of the games they described to me is where they put some valuable prize at the top of a tall metal pole covered in grease. Whoever can climb the pole and retrieve the prize gets the keep it. They say many people break arms or worse in the attempt, yet they keep doing it every year. I think it'd be hilarious to watch, but I'd never let my kids play. Not without some kind of harness like you'd use rock climbing. :)
Man I'm out of time already. The days are feeling so much shorter what with the sun setting so early and the weeks passing by in a blur. I don't know how any missionary can claim to be able to slack off towards the end of the mission. If anything, I feel more pressure than ever. I have so much to do to prepare to leave--send out letters to all my gente, go through my stuff to decide what to take home and what to give away, prepare Hna. Goimarac to go on without me... I both feel like yeah I have tons of time to do all that, but at the same time I only have P-Days to dedicate time to that, and I only have four P-Days left! Psycho! It's stressful. But I know that this last month is going to be awesome, especially with the Meza family's baptism to look forward to.
Thank you Sarah, Ashley, Dad, Mom, McConkies, Grandma and Grandpa Springer, Goompa and Nana, and Hna. Tua'one for writing to me! I know it seems less important, since we'll get to talk face-to-face soon, but I still need those letters and I love them! :)
I LOVE YOU ALL!!
---Hna. Springer
I actually don't have as many as I promised, but here are a few of last P-Day by the river
---Carly
---Carly
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