Week 55 - Asuncion Paraguay - Villa Hayes

Querida Familia,

I don´t have much more time to write today because I just got done writing to a bunch of insistent relatives. :) But thank you Grandma, Dad, Mom, Sarah, and the Blair Family for writing to me this week. I love you all.

We had a really good week this week. First of all, our air conditioning is HEAVENLY. I´m actually using a blanket again! I can sleep so much more soundly and feel well-rested in the morning. It´s awesome. We had one glitch with the system, though, on Tuesday night. We´d just gone to sleep when all of a sudden a stream of water came pouring out of the air conditioning. We quickly shut it off and got all our stuff off of the floor, and wondered what had just happened. We tried to turn it on again later, only to have the same thing happen. Not knowing what to do, we just turned it off altogether. It was a VERY HOT night, as luck would have it. I was sweating so badly. I ended up angrily stalking out to the kitchen and grabbing my frozen water bottles to cool me off. I was so cranky. It didn´t help that we had to get up extra early the next morning to go to a zone conference. I was so tired and irritable at the meeting. But that same day the repairman fixed the problem and we´ve slept great ever since (the problem was that the system was a little tilted, so the water was overflowing in one corner instead of draining out the back like it´s supposed to).

The zone conference was all about goal-keeping--how we´ve been having a problem of getting all hyped up after training meetings and such only to go strong one week and then go back to old habits. To keep us going strong, our zone leaders came up with a plan to have us review our conference notes every week, make three individual goals and three companion goals, and then report our progress with them to our district leaders. It´s helped us a lot so far. It was a really inspired idea. We also got to have interviews with Pte. Madariaga, which is always a joy. I always wish we could stay in his office longer.

One of the goals that Hna. deVries and I put this week was to have a more positive attitude. That´s something I´ve had as a goal almost my whole mission. It´s kind of hard sometimes. We´ve been especially irritated with our branch lately, and we´ve been having a bad tendency of saying things like, "Oh that would NEVER happen in Utah!" But we realized that the grass is always greener on the other side, and that actually all wards have problems, and that we really need to learn patience. We´ve been working on only saying positive things. Sometimes that´s a REAL challenge. We decided you can say nice things sarcastically, but no real negative comments. If nothing else, it makes us laugh a lot as we try to figure out a nice way to comment on a bad situation. Laughter really is the best medicine. :)

The Lord is so perfectly wonderful. What better way to help me see the world in a better light than by sticking me in a situation where everything looks grey? It´s not hard at all to be positive if everything´s sunshine and daisies. A true test of character--a true training experience--is having to work on being happy when it´s very hard to do so. I really really hope that I come out of this with a perfectly cheerful attitude about everything, with no more frowns and no more criticisms and no more grudges. I don´t like it when other people are sour, so why should I be? It´s so much happier to be smiley and positive.

The reason we were so irritated with the branch this week had to do with Cleto´s baptism. But I won´t tell you why. Just know that we had a baptism and Cleto loved it and it all turned out to be really beautiful. At our district meeting on Tuesday, our district leader (aware that we were going to have a baptism) helped us to plan out how we could make it a really reverent experience. We put a great deal of effort into the plans. I wrote out a program, Hna. deVries provided music to play before and after the service, we had a Moment of Reverence while Cleto got changed (instead of singing hymns out of tune like we´ve done at every other baptism I´ve seen in Paraguay)... It made it all really lovely. It was a lot more reverent and spiritual with everything so well planned. I gave the first talk about baptism and introduced Cleto to those who were in attendance, since he´s very shy and doesn´t really have many friends in the ward. Cleto was smiling so big at the end of it. He said he felt at peace, and he was much more animated at church the next day. It made me happy.

Even happier, though, was when I saw my mission´s dream come true this week! In teaching Rubén this week, we discovered that he is actually "feasting upon the words of Christ!" He´s read to 1 Nephi 11 so far, and he re-reads every chapter so that he can understand it better, then asks us dozens of questions. He learned to use the scripture guide and the footnotes without any suggestion from us, and he actually applies what he reads to his own life! I´ve ALWAYS dreamed of having an investigator treasure the Book of Mormon, and he really does! We read the part where Nephi´s family rejoices over the brass plates and realizes that they´re of great worth to his posterity, and he held the Book of Mormon to his chest and said, "It´s just like with me. I´m finding joy in the scriptures and they´re going to help me and my children so much." He is so calidad. I don´t know what´s going to happen at Changes at the end of this month, but I wouldn´t be sad at all if I got to stay and see his baptism. He´s one of the greatest investigators I´ve ever known, and I know he could be a really great Priesthood holder and leader someday.

Well, I don´t have any more time. Sorry. I think this may be the shortest letter I´ve sent so far. It wasn´t a super eventful week, but it was really a good one. I´m happy. :)

Thank you all for everything, especially your letters. I look forward to them every week.

I LOVE YOU!!

---Hna. Springer

Hey, I´ve only got one picture for this week--us at Cleto´s baptism! Yay for baptisms!!

Week 54 - Asuncion Paraguay - Villa Hayes

Dearest Familia,

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!!

Week 53 - Asuncion Paraguay - Villa Hayes

Hola, Familia! ¿Mba´e la pórte? (That means, "What´s up?" in Guaraní).

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

Week 52 - Asuncion Paraguay - Villa Hayes

Dear Family,

Wow. 52 whole weeks already. Can you believe that?? I remember last Christmas so well--it´s hard to imagine that I've been in Paraguay for ten whole months and only have seven more to go. The time is going to fly by so fast. April Conference is going to be upon us in only three months, then Easter, then Mother´s Day (and another Skype chat! Yay!), then I´ll almost be home! It´s going to go by so fast. Seriously. Months seem like weeks to me now. I definitely need to strive to make the most of it.

This morning Hna. deVries and I were talking about that--about using our time wisely. We´d just read that talk in the Conference Liahona "A Time to Prepare," and I told her about how this year has probably been the most fulfilling, rewarding year of my entire life, yet last year I was a total bum and I have little to show for it. I could never just waste years to come because this year was so awesome. It doesn´t work like that--you´ve got to make the most of every day. God´s given us options of how to use our time. We´re going to be accountable to Him one day for what we chose to do with it.

Anyways, I´m glad to hear that you had an excellent Christmas. I haven´t gotten any of your packages or cards or anything yet, but I´m sure they´re on their way. :) Thank you so much for your letters and everything. Thank you Grandma, Mom, Dad, Goompa, Laurel, Ashley, and Amanda. And Hna. Messina, if you happen to be reading this, thank you for your letter, too! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas at home! 

My Christmas was a pretty typical holiday--a whole lot of hype leading to a relatively anticlimactic day. All week we´d been hearing, "Oh, la Navidad! I love the Navidad! We´re going to have such a blast! You´re going to get fed so much great food and see what Paraguay is all about!" I was really, really excited. But then when the actual holiday came, we saw nothing happen. Turns out they celebrate Christmas by having a big dinner starting at 9:00pm Christmas Eve and then shooting off fireworks at midnight and getting drunk and everything, only to sleep all day Christmas Day. So...we got no food (we had to go home before any food was ready to eat), hardly anyone wanted to talk with us because all their family was over or they were traveling, and we had a TINY amount of people come to church, even though it was only one hour this week to accomodate them. But honestly, I didn´t expect much else. :) I´m used to this by now.

I just felt bad for my poor companion, who´s fresh from the States (relatively) and was probably expecting something awesome to take her mind off of Christmas at home. I´m so unthoughtful. I didn´t do anything for her for Christmas. I was kind of trying not to think of Christmas at all so I wouldn´t get "trunky." She got to talk to her family on Christmas Eve, thankfully, but I could tell that on Christmas she was pretty bummed. So today, I made up for that. I called the Elders to come hang out with us today. We had a mini (late) Christmas feast at the chapel. We brought a cake, some deviled eggs, and sweet potatoes. The Elders brought drinks, and were supposed to bring some baked chickens. Turns out all the usually-reliable chicken stands were closed today, so we had hamburgers instead. :) It was pretty fun, though it was a lot more filling than I expected it to be. I think I´ve lost my ability to overeat. We had a lot of leftover food. We watched The Testaments, too, which made me cry, as usual. Hna. deVries had never seen it, if you can believe that! 

Oh, P.S. I´m still with Hna. deVries in Villa Hayes! I was SO SURE I was going to get Changed, but nope. This will be the longest I´ve ever been with one companion, and we´ll get to spend almost the whole summer in one of the hottest Hermanas areas. How lucky are we? :) God was really nice to us, though, and gave us a perfectly wonderful overcast, drizzly Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. It felt SOOO nice after all the hot, restless nights. Our air conditioning hasn´t been working very well. We bought some new fans and we sleep with our frozen water bottles. Then when the water bottles melt, we dump them all over ourselves in the middle of the night. You were right--it works! We´re going to be moving soon, though, turns out. Our landlady wants to switch us places. She lives in the house next-door on the second floor, and wants to move to our house because her husband recently had surgery on his knee and can´t climb the stairs very easily. She promised us a new air conditioner if we agreed to the new contract. DEAL!!

I feel bad, though. Our house kind of has some problems. We have the one room still without a light bulb, our shower head still doesn´t work, and now we have a mouse problem. The stupid thing ate half my bag of popcorn kernals! We bought a trap the other day. The thing snaps so violently whenever I so much as nudge it, and yet for five nights in a row the mouse has escaped unscathed. Last night, the bait was half-eaten and everything! We´ve never actually seen the thing. Maybe it´s a rat so big that one time it got caught in a trap but was so big that it wasn´t killed, and now it knows better than to touch our enticing peanut-butter-and-popcorn-kernal bait. We´ll see. I want that thing to die, though. Before, I used to be all for humane traps. Now, after it´s smelled up our house and eaten my beans and popcorn, I want it OUT! :) 

But anyways, this was definitely a Christmas that I´m forever going to remember. It was definitely lacking on the whole charitable, Christian, peaceful feeling. Most of the people we shared with on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were listening to loud rap music and could have cared less about the birth of our Savior. But the messages that we shared sure touched MY heart. We used Luke 2 the most. I love the part where the angel comes to the shepherds. They´re afraid, but the angel tells them not to fear, because he brings good news that will be for all people--that the Savior has come! So many people here see God as something to be afraid of--someone who, if they don´t recite "Padre Nuestro" every night, will rob them of their basic necessities like health, work, and daily bread. But the coming of our Lord wasn´t something to be afraid of--it was something to give us hope and joy! The birth of Christ was the moment when God, out of infinite love for us, sent His Son to redeem us from our sins. With the members, we shared out of 1 Nephi 11 (I think...) where Nephi is learning the interpretation of Lehi´s dream. When he wants to know what the Tree of Life stands for, the angel shows him the birth of Christ. Nephi is so moved by the vision that he recognizes that the Tree of Life is the Love of God. Showing him Christ´s birth was the angel´s best way to show Nephi the love of God. We should all see it that way, too.

On Friday we had a little mission party at the Mission Office. We got an amazing lunch, of course, and then we watched those video clips that apparently they showed at the Christmas Devotional this year. They were really brilliantly well-done. Are they making a full-length New Testament movie from those or are they purely online clips? I just bought the interactive Doctrine and Covenants study guide DVDs from the office, and they´re so great. I love the videos on that, too. I´ve learned so much already. Anyways, after watching the videos, we went to the huge, scary public hospital to sing. I never wanted to set foot in there, but it was much better without the fear of actually being worked on by a Paraguayan doctor. It was nice and cool in there, too. The patients really loved our caroling. Several people were moved to tears. I love that our mission presidents had us go do service to celebrate Christmas instead of just partying at the office or something. It was really nice.

Well, I´ve got to go now. Merry Christmas again, and never forget to have Christ in your hearts all year round! I LOVE YOU!!

---Hna. Springer

Hey family! I know you just saw my beautiful face and all, but here are more pictures of me from this week. It was SOOOO good to talk with you this morning! I´m so happy. :) I LOVE YOU!!

1-The Elders with the stockings we gave them for Christmas (those are the fishing lines that I bought when I was with the latinas--we won't ever use them again probably.)

2-We had a mini-party last Tuesday where the Elders gave us whatever gifts they found on the way to the church. Ha ha!

3-One of the many adorable nativities in the neighborhood.

4-Caroling in the hospital on Friday.

5-Me trying to cool down before another loooooong hot night.

6-Our little Christmas feast

7-Another picture of our Christmas dinner

Week 51 - Asuncion Paraguay - Villa Hayes

Dear Family,

¡Feliz Navidad (almost)!

I hope your Christmas weekend is full of family, friends, laughter, carols, fudge, and charity. Thank you all for your Christmas wishes and your prayers, and for helping me to remember that even though I´m thousands of miles away from any snow or sleigh bells, the spirit of Christmas is still here with me. I swear I can feel your love. That´s the only thing I could ever ask for this year. :)

Thank you Grandma, Laurel, Jared, Mom, Dad, Ashley, Pam, Clayton, Madison, Lexi, and Cami for your e-mails this week. You´re all so sweet. Clayton, I especially liked reading about your armadillo. Who knew all this time I just had to go to Texas to see exotic wildlife? I really enjoyed the picture. Thanks for sharing that with me. 

I´m still not entirely sure what´s going to happen this Christmas. I´ve heard rumors of a mission party on Thursday, but we have Changes on Wednesday, so I might get transferred to an area that has already done their Christmas party. That would be sad to miss it. I´m really scared for Changes. Part of me would LOVE to be with a stronger branch, and in a cooler environment, but there are so many people who could get baptized in January and I wouldn´t want to miss that. It would also be sad to spend the holidays with complete strangers instead of a branch that is at least loving if not active in the church. I´d also really miss Hna. deVries. We get along so well. The prospect of a new companion is always scary. We´ll hear tonight (hopefully--tomorrow morning at the latest) what Changes are going to take place in the zone. I can´t believe my time as a Trainer is already over. This was a fast three months. I can´t believe I only have seven left! I can count the number of Changes i have left on one hand! That´s psycho.

I´m not sure what to expect for Christmas no matter which area I´m in. All I´ve heard is that on the 24th they stay up until midnight, then set off fireworks and honk their horns and get drunk and stuff to celebrate the birth of Christ. Then on the 25th they sleep in (we´re only having one hour of church, from 10 to 11 so they can all sleep) and have a big dinner I´ve heard. They don´t exchange presents until January 6th, which is when they celebrate the Wise Men coming to give gifts to Christ. That´s where the 12 Days of Christmas comes from, after all. 

Everyone keeps asking us why we haven´t made a little nativity on our porch yet. I sent you a picture of all the stuff they sell on the highway for it. I think it´s a very cute idea, but we don´t have time to weave palm flower branches together, and buying the little ceramic figures is way too expensive. Our house is actually quite un-Christmas-y now that I think about it...Oh well. :) 

We are LOVING mango season. So far there aren´t too many, but some of the trees further into the forest are just dropping them like crazy. They´re really small and very stringy because they don´t bother to prune the trees, but they´re still pretty darn yummy. And we have a tree by our house (see attached photo) with some HUGE ones that are so much better. So far we´ve only found one on the ground before the cows got to the rest. Every day when we come home we check to see if any more fell for us. We made mango juice with one yesterday (just mango, milk, ice, and sugar) and it was so yummy. I´m definitely a fan of this authentic mango stuff.

The work is continuing to go well. STILL no baptisms, but I´m honestly not upset about that. Numbers really don´t mean anything--I´ve never been more convinced of that before in my life--but it would be nice to end my mission with more than just seven baptisms on my record. I´m sure my President understands that I´ve helped so many more people than that, but still. Something I´m really learning though is that success isn´t mine to control. I know I´ve already written about that before, but this last week our Zone Leader, Elder Argyle, shared a story with me that has pretty much changed my whole outlook on mission work.

The story goes something like this (sorry if you know the story already and I tell it completely wrong): A man one night is visited by the Savior, who tells him to go push against this huge rock in front of his house every day. The man obeys, of course, and day after day goes out and pushes against that rock. It doesn´t budge at all, but he keeps trying. Years go by, and still the rock is exactly where it was before. Satan sees that the man is starting to become disappointed in himself, and so he whispers to him, "It´s impossible. You can´t move that rock. You might as well not even try." The man becomes discouraged, and starts to just do the bare minimum every day--going out, pushing on the rock a bit, then going home. Finally, he decides to make it a matter of prayer. He asks God´s forgiveness for not being able to move that rock--for not being good enough. The Savior appears to the man again and says, "My son, I asked you to push against that rock every day. I never asked you to move it, I just asked you to obey. Now look--you are stronger than you have ever been before. You have grown so much. I only asked you to obey, and you have. Now I will move that rock."

That hit me so hard, and I´ve thought about that every day since then. It´s so true--the simple act of obedience has made me so much stronger physically and spiritually. God never asked me to get more than seven baptisms. He simply asked me to obey. Now look how much I´ve grown! I can only imagine how much more I will grow as I keep "pushing against the rock" every day for the next seven months (and beyond).

We finally got the November Liahona too, so those amazing Conference talks have helped me loads this week, too. I LOVE conference. That was a Christmas present enough, just getting that and being able to re-live those talks. I especially love reading those by the apostles, whose voices I know so well. As I read, I can still remember them saying it, and the Spirit comes so strongly. I loved finally getting to read the Priesthood session, Relief Society session, and a few other talks we missed when the power went out. So beautiful! I´ve already read the whole copy, but now I´m gonna go back through and take notes and stuff.

Our English class continues to go fairly well. We played Jeopardy this last time to review all the things that they´d learned. It was so much fun. We don´t usually have non-members show up, though. If we can´t get others to come, I think we may have to discontinue it. I´ll be sad if we do, but it´s been fun, and we´ve at least helped one person a lot. There´s this recent-convert kid in the branch named Sergio who is very shy and a little awkward socially. He lives with just his dad and his four-year-old brother, and we get the impression that his dad can be kind of mean to Sergio sometimes. When I first met him, he never smiled at all. He was the most serious kid I´d ever seen. Now, though, after the English class, he´s gained so much self-confidence. His dad praises him for his intelligence and Sergio´s made friends in the branch. He smiles so big when we show up at his house, and he loves greeting us in English. He´s also the Deacon´s quorom president (because he´s the ONLY deacon). Yesterday the district presidency came to the branch, and we did the sustainings of everybody, and when they proposed that we sustain Sergio as president of the Deacons, his face lit up so much. He felt so important. He has a place in the church. That´s what the work is all about. 

Well, time to go again. I´ll be talking to you (Mom, Dad, Sarah, and Ashley) on Skype hopefully on Saturday at 3:00. I´ll tell you on Friday if that changes. I´ll only have 40 minutes, so I´d like 10 minutes with each of you individually if that´s cool with you. I can´t wait to hear all about your pre-Christmas week! 

I love you all so much! Thank you again for everything, and MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

---Hna. Springer

Here are some more photos! Enjoy! I wish i had more. 

1-The mango tree by our house

2&3-Better pictures of the baby coati

4-Nativity stuff salesmen alongside the road

---Carly

Week 50 - Asuncion Paraguay - Villa Hayes

Dearest Familia and Friends,

Happy Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day and Feliz Dia de la Adoracion de la Virgen de Caacupe!! (The 7th and 8th respectively). We had quite the week. Our zone leaders challenged us to meet our daily goals every single day this week. They promised us that if we did it, we would have more baptisms and confirmations. So we worked as hard as we possibly could, and we did it! On Saturday, when we had six days of goals met and only faulted one more, we were so excited. But funnily enough, when we met our goals yesterday and successfully got 7/7, we weren't all that celebratory. We were just really, really tired. :) 

But we did have a good week. Three of our investigators either went to the chaco for Christmas break or are being hidden from us by their parents, but we have two investigators who are really doing well. One of them is the girlfriend of one of the members--Jasmin--and just the fact that she's dating a member kind of gives me hope that she'll go all the way and get baptized. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that--we don't want her commitment to the church to end with their relationship--but at the MTC we heard so many new missionaries tell their conversion stories, and so many of them involved member girlfriends/boyfriends! That's how Fabiola got baptized, and she's doing amazing. She still loves to learn so much, and she's super strong in the church. Hopefully Jasmin goes the same direction.

The other investigator is our dear Ruben. We visited him again earlier last week, after he failed to come to church. When we got to his house, he seemed okay, but as the lesson went on we realized that he wasn't himself. It was obvious that he was either currently on something or he had very recently been on something. We got through the lesson, but he just wasn't there. He was kind of snippy, and we left feeling really sad for him. Hna. deVries was devestated, thinking that he was a lost cause, but thankfully I've had experience with drug addicts in the past and I told her we just needed to forget that visit and remember how he'd been before when he wasn't under the influence. Honestly, I was just really hoping that I was right about him and that he sincerely did want to change. I was kind of in denial that we'd seen the other side of him. But then yesterday at church, after having not spoken a word to him after that last visit, he showed up out of the blue! He was his normal, humble, super polite self again, and it made us so happy. He was so sincerely apologetic and ashamed of how he'd been when we'd talked to him, and at church he was completely reverent and hungry to learn more about Christ. Then we went to find him at his house yesterday after church, only to find him helping fix a car along with two of our strongest families in the branch. They're totally friends already, and now my hope for him has doubled because the members live so close by and are so willing to be there for him. He gave the prayer after our little reunion there at the gutted car, and it was the sweetest, humblest prayer I've ever heard. He really is wonderful.

It continues to be freakish hot here. I'm constantly wet with a sheen of sweat, and even with my umbrella I feel like I'm getting dried up like a raisin. Several of you have suggested that we soak our sheets or clothes or both in water before going to bed. Not a bad idea. We may just try that. I just hope it would help. It's so humid, I'm honestly not sure that it WOULD dry. Oh man, yesterday we totally jinxed ourselves by saying, "Man, we are so grateful that we at least have air conditioning!" In the middle of the night last night, our power went out and we lost our air conditioning and our ceiling fan. Our room grew steadily hotter, and we both just laid there, wide awake, staring desperately at the ceiling fan and waiting for it to move again. It was boiling. When the power did finally come back on, I said a prayer of thanks and fell promptly back asleep. Circulating air has never felt so good. Sadly, the power went out again at like 5:00AM and this time stayed off until 9:00, along with our water. Joy. Now all's well, though. I just pray that doesn't happen often or we're gonna have lots of restless nights. 

Good news! Mango season is coming on! We still haven't actually eaten any, but we've seen others feasting on them. It's so funny--they just wait for them to fall off the tree when they're ripe instead of actually harvesting them. We'll be in the middle of a lesson and all of a sudden hear a thump behind us, and the little kids go running off squealing excitedly to collect the fruit. They never share. :( But they assure us that soon so many people will have so many mangos that they'll just leave baskets of them in their front yards for anyone to take. We're excited. :)

So today for P-Day we went out to Benjamin Aceval (where our district Elders work) to say goodbye to Lilian--that RM girl who helps us do visits (both here and back when I was in Mariano). She's flying out to Utah today to go to BYU this winter! I am so excited for her. She's such a charitable, honest, hard-working girl, and she deserves every moment of happiness that she experiences in Provo. She served her mission in Salt Lake City, so she has tons of connections and is already United States-savvy, but she was so nervous today. Her poor mom was just silently crying. Lilian may honestly never live in Paraguay again, and she just got back from her mission nine months ago. But she had a great last few hours with her family, and was nice enough to invite us. We ate rice and beef and hot dogs, and she showed us all her pets (a dog, three cats, and two rabbits). Her aunt (Cesar's mom) was there briefly, along with her new baby coati. I immediately begged her to let me hold it and take a picture. I've always loved coatis (from what I've seen of them on Animal Planet) and was thrilled to get to see one in real life. 

People here have some weird pets. Pretty much any baby animal they find in the chaco, they take back to some pet store in the city to sell--monkeys, parrots, coatis, toucans, owls, you name it! I want to see some in the wild sometime. We may have to explore the forest again. I hear there are armadillos around here, too. Last night, Ruben was talking about how some people eat them, but he didn't know the word for armadillo in Spanish. He started describing it--"It's big, and it's like a turtle..." "Okay," I thought, "It's some kind of fish. Whatever." "Except," he said, "It can go like this," and he motioned it curling up. My jaw dropped when I realized what he was talking about. "You EAT armadillo?! You barbarians!" I was just teasing, of course. :) But really, I like armadillos. 

Anyways, I've now finished reading the Liahona for April conference, and I CANNOT WAIT to get the Liahona for November tomorrow. I love reading the words of the modern-day prophetes. Something that I've heard repeatedly recently is that when we listen to the prophet today, we literally come to know God better. The prophet is God's spokesman, and if we are familiar with their words and their ways, we're familiar with God. Also, there was a verse in the scriptures the other day about how when there's a prophet on the earth, we can rejoice as if Christ was already here with us, because we'll already be preparing to see Him. I have a testimony of that. The prophets are men of God and I just love reading their words.

Well, I gotta go. I love you all so much! Thank you for your letters, and enjoy the Christmas season while it lasts! Take care!

---Hna. Springer

Here are some pictures from my week. Well, actually, just from today. :)

1-Me and a baby coati! 

2-Hna. deVries at Lilian's house about to chow down on hot dogs.

3-Lilian on her way to SLC.

Love you all! Have a great week!

--Carly

Week 49 - Asuncion Paraguay - Villa Hayes

Mis Queridos Amistades,

Thank you Mom, Dad, Ashley, Grandma Springer, Sarah, and Amanda (twice this week!) for writing to me this week. Happy birthday to both of my Grandpas!! (I´m pretty sure...if not, sorry. I have a horrible memory) I love you all so much and I´m trying not to miss you too badly as I start playing my Christmas playlists on my iPod. 

Honestly, though, it doesn´t feel like December at all. Thankfully this weekend has been a lot cooler, but last week was SO HOT. We drank our 20-liter jug of water in under four days, just guzzling it like camels. It got so hot that even our air conditioning couldn´t penetrate the heat at night, and we would soak our sheets with sweat. That was a very tiring week with so much lost sleep, tossing and turning. I almost considered just sleeping on the tile floor (those sheets felt so thick and hot), and at one point I just got up and guzzled some tap water (after our 20 liters of mineral water ran out) out of desperation. I haven´t gotten sick yet, so yay, but I probably shouldn´t make that a habit. :) The heat just built up and built up and built up...and then on Friday we were teaching in this house and a freak wind storm came out of nowhere, rattling the house´s thin walls so hard I thought they were going to collapse. It only lasted like twenty minutes, but dust was everywhere afterwards, and now the weather is totally cooler and overcast. No rain, though. I don´t think rain would help the problem much--just put more humidity into the air. Ew.

We had some really great teaching experiences this week, I´m happy to say. We went to go teach Cleto (that guy who´s president of some international Guaraní-speakers association), and I don´t know what kind of shindig he´s running at his house, but his yard was filled with indigenous people. When we went in asking for Cleto, they all wanted us to shake their hands, and then Cleto had us share for all of them. There were seriously like twenty people, some out in the yard with us, others listening with rapt attention from inside the house. I´m not sure how many of them understood Spanish, but I was reminded of those meetings for the early Latter-Day Saints--just a big group squished into a little house listening to the prophet. We´re not prophets (not even close), but it still felt cool to bear our testimonies about Christ. I totally forgot to practice my Guaraní on them! I was so mad at myself afterwards--I´ve been practicing my testimony in Guaraní for weeks!--but who knows? Maybe the gift of tongues was in affect back there. :)

I´ve been studying Guaraní with a lot more diligence lately. I read a talk from April conference about how we should receive chastisement as a great learning opportunity, and how we should be constantly self-correcting (but not hard on ourselves, necessarily). As a result, I´ve decided to re-read my whole Spanish book just to re-learn the rules and perfect anything i haven´t perfected yet. I´m also trying to ask members about Guaraní a lot more. Hna. deVries is really getting into it, too, and it´s becoming lots of fun.

Meanwhile, we´re still teaching English. This week our class was really cute. We tried to teach them English sounds, but they didn´t have the patience for that, so we taught them how to ask for things instead. We want to teach them really useful phrases. Last week we taught them to approach and introduce themselves to a native English speaker, and this week we taught them to ask, "May I have a cookie, please?" "Thank you." By the end of the class, we were able to go sit off to the side with a plate of cookies, and they came up one by one and did a whole dailogue with us. It went like this:

"Hello."

"Hello."

"How are you?"

"I´m fine, thank you. How are you?"

"I´m fine, thank you. My name is ____. What is your name?"

"My name is Hna. Springer/deVries."

"Nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you, too."

"May I have a cookie, please?"

"Yes you may."

"Thank you."

"You´re welcome."

"Goodbye."

"Goodbye."

Now they´re totally prepared to ask strangers for cookies! :) 

We had some really great experiences teaching people this week. I´m sad that I´ll only be able to tell about a few of them in the time that I have to e-mail today. First of all, when we were visiting a long-time investigator, she told us that her neighbor´s been asking her to have us go visit him. We excitedly went to meet him after teaching her, and met a man named Benjamin. He seemed like a really nice guy, and we immediately invoked the Spirit by singing a hymn and saying a prayer, and listening to him tell us about his hospitalized brother. We testified of Christ´s power to heal us, and he thoughtfully said, "Oh...so you believe in Christ?" "Yes..." we said, and we told him about how He is the head of the church and we do all that we can to follow Him. He sat there for a while, then went into this shpeal about how Jehovah´s Witnesses don´t believe in Jesus Christ. He´d said at the beginning that he sometimes read the Bible, but then he started quoting verses and flipping to verses all about Christ. As he went on, we realized that he was actually a pastor for a church in the neighborhood, and that he´d been prepared to Bible bash with us, thinking that we were Jehovah´s Witnesses. We got out of there gracefully, but he had seriously been prepared to try and convert us to his church. We probably won´t go back there very often, if at all, but I´m just SO GLAD that we talked about Christ and rejoiced in Christ and proved ourselves to be Christians right at the beginning. Now, whatever he may think of us, at least he can´t say that we´re not Christian. We were really happy with ourselves after that experience.

One of the inactive members in the branch had a really tragic week. (McConkies, you may not want to read this next part out loud to the kids). Just hours after we´d left her house on Tuesday night, one of her sons came home very drunk, got into an argument with her other son who´s a drug addict, and brutally stabbed him to death. You can only imagine how devestated she was--one son dead, the other a murderer, and not even the assurance that her son is now resting in the paradise of God. We visited her several times over the next few days, but she was never in a state to talk. We mostly just sang and prayed. Saturday, though, we went there, and she asked us why death is necessary and how we can know that there really is life after death. I was so happy for my knowledge of the gospel in that moment. We used the scriptures to explain the Plan of Salvation. She asked, "How do you know that that´s really true?" I testified that I know, because a prophet told us so. I believe in the prophets, and therefore I have the assurance that there is life after death. And I´m very, very grateful for that.

We successfully earned the trust of our Ward Mission Leader, Osmar, this week. Before, he would often give us references, but he never would really strive to help us out or find time to talk with us. We´ve been trying to get his little girl baptized for ages. The other night, we went over there to visit her yet again, and Osmar basically said, "Look, this is YOUR responsibility. She doesn´t understand baptism, and that´s YOUR job--to make her understand so that she´ll want to get baptized." I kind of bristled at that, but instead of getting angry, we taught probably my best lesson on baptism we´ve ever given. We explained how baptism is a cleansing--it´s like washing yourself free of mudstains before entering a clean, white house. We explained how it´s like entering into a race to win a prize--you can´t win a prize if you´re just watching on the bleachers--you need to enter and run and THEN you´ll earn the prize. After that, Fiorella was easily able to explain back to us why baptism was important. The Spirit was strong, she accepted a fecha, and Osmar now loves us.

I know he does, because on Friday he called us in the middle of lunch to ask us to go meet his friend, Ruben. We dropped everything and went, of course. Ruben is 28 and he´s met with the missionaries a ton before in the past, but he´s had problems with basically every addiction in the book and admitted to destroying a copy of the Book of Mormon one time. Our lesson with him was AMAZING. We taught about the Gospel of Christ and brought the Spirit, and Ruben showed to us that he really is so humbled by his past mistakes and so ready to change everything around. He bore his testimony of the Savior and practically begged us to baptize him and expressed sincere wishes to be free from guilt. We used the scriptures so much and reassured him so much, and in the end he solemnly reached into his pockets and pulled out his packs of cigarettes. I just silently reached out my hand, and he silently handed them over (I promptly destroyed them as soon as we got back home to finish lunch). I know he´ll probably have lots of issues before he´ll get baptized, and who knows if I´ll even be here for that, but I will never forget that lesson. In the end, he said, "This has been the best day of my life. I never want to lose the Spirit that I feel now." We gave him a new Book of Mormon and invited him to read it whenever he has free time, so that the Spirit will be with him all the time. I´m really grateful that Osmar introduced us to him, and now Osmar is doubly impressed with us. I feel like a real missionary with a real ward mission leader now.

Well, time to go. I hope you´re all having a wonderful week getting Christmas decorations up and putting presents together. I discovered this week that instead of putting up a Christmas tree, most Paraguayans make hand-made little "stables" out of reeds and such and put little ceramic nativity pieces inside. Some people have huge collections of them. I´ll try to get a picture to send you. They´re really cute, and look much more authentic than the plastic pine trees we´ve seen every now and again.

I LOVE YOU ALL!! Thank you for everything! I hope to hear from you again soon!

---Hna. Springer