Week 22 - Asuncion Paraguay - Mariano Roque Alonzo

Dear Family,

I HAVE A NEW COMPANION!! Her name is Hna. Tua´one (Too-ah-oh-neh) and she is awesome. She´s of Tongan/Samoan descent but she was born and raised in West Valley, Utah. 

I was so worried when we got The Call and I hear that I´d be getting a new companion. Hna. STagg was happy as a clam. Not that she doesn´t love me, but six months working in the same area is a long time. She got sent to Ypacarai (I still can´t pronounce that) and is in a trio with two latinas. She´s always wanted native companions and I hear Ypacarai is really nice and really pretty. It´s out by the big lake.

So yeah, I was nervous to meet Hna. Tua´one and have to learn to work with a different companion. But she is totally cool. She´s super sweet and just fun to be around. The apartment has so much more personality with her stuff in it (our dark study is now lit up with Christmas lights!) and she´s an amazing teacher. Everyone loves her already. She just knows how to talk with people. I feel like our lessons are more relaxed and yet so effective. We never stay too long at anyone´s house, but we seem to have more fun with people. Hna. T is a little unused to the stricter rules that were put into effect right before I came to the misison, but she´s determined to help me make some awesome memories during my time in Paraguay even if I don´t have as much freedom as she did when making her own.

I finally got Amanda´s announcement in the mail this week. We were at district meeting, and the Elders all gathered around when they saw the big, obviously-a-wedding-announcement envelope. They were all smitten. "That´s your SISTER?" "She has the most amazing eyes!" "Can I see it again?" "I don´t know if I should be looking at this right now..." Good thing you and Chase are already sealed, Panda Bear, or I think some of the Elders would track you down after the mission. :)

I knew better than to open my package in front of the Elders. McConkies, thank you SO much. I was totally in need of more pens, stickers, and notecards. And I loved sharing the snacks with my new companion, especially the Cadbury mini eggs. You know me so well. :)

Thank you Grandma Springer, Mom, Dad, Ashley, and McConkies for your letters this week. Today I worked on returning the favor. I ventured out to the only photo printing place I´ve heard of in our area. YOu may now look forward to 30 mission photos, to arrive sometime at the end of June. You´re welcome.

It´s been quite the adventure having to remember everyone´s names, how to get from place to place, and what we did in past lessons. I have yet to get majorly lost, and now I know my way REALLY well after lots of trial and error. I´m still learning how to keep good notes on lessons and such. Hna. Stagg would always write down everything. Too many times this week I´ve had to admit, "Um...I have no idea who that is." But we´ve done great, anyways. I still stress that someone´s gonna slip through the cracks of my memory, but I think I´m doing pretty well so far.

It´s been really awkward explaining to people that Hna. Stagg left. We tried to say goodbye to everyone on Tuesday, but there were some people who it just wasn´t possible to visit. I didn´t know how to tell people why they didn´t make the cut, especially in Spanish. I think some people are really hurt that she didn´t stop by. But it´s fun for me now to be the one who knows everyone. Before, I kind of let Hna. Stagg do all the talking, but now I´m a lot more involved as Hna. T is catching up. It´s weird, though, to be at the forefront. Not only do I talk a lot more, I´m also a lot more conspicuous on the streets now that I don´t have a tall, blonde companion to take some of the attention away. People are a lot quicker to assume that I don´t speak Spanish and Hna. T is my translator. They don´t believe that Hna. T is from the States, either. She speaks AMAZING Spanish. They always kind of laugh a little, like she´s joking, whenever she tells them she´s from Utah. Then they look between us like, "You can´t both be from the States. You look nothing alike." 

Anyways, the work is going well. We did great on our weekly goals despite the confusion of Changes, and we have an awesome new Ward Mission Leader who gives us hope for more progress. His name is Julio and he´s only 18 (all the really great, active people in the branch are jovenes). Tired of disorganized meetings, Hna. Stagg and I trained him well the first time we met him. Now, last night with Hna. T and me, he started the meeting with a song and prayer, then gave a spiritual thought and read out of Preach My Gospel. It was so cute. He was all nervous, hoping to be awesome at his calling. So far he´s doing an excellent job. He took notes as we went through the informe, suggested solutions to our problems, and gave me hope that he´ll follow through on all that he promised us. Tons of jovenes joined and stay active in the church because of him, and I know he´s going to do a lot more in his lifetime to change others with the Gospel.

Hna. Sanchez wasn´t able to go to church with us this Sunday. She had bronchitis, pobrecita. "We want to get her medicine," said her nephews after we rich, LDS, American Hermanas visited her on her sickbed, "but we don´t have the MONEY. Hospitals cost so much MONEY. If only we had the MONEY!" I think they were hinting at something... Well, we brought her something better. We took the Elders over on Saturday night. One of them was a three-day-old Greenie who I´m sure is writing to his family today all about the experience he had with us his first week. :) They gave Hna. Sanchez a sweet healing blessing. You could feel the power of the Priesthood in the dark, drafty room. It was so peaceful. Hna. Sanchez was too weak to move or speak much, but she was smiling the whole time and thanked them so fervently at the end. We prayed for her that night, that she´d be able to come to church. She was still sick in the morning, unfortunately, but when we visited her later that afternoon I was overjoyed to see her cleaned and dressed and sitting upright on her bed no problem. Saturday she had awful bronchitis, yesterday she was ready to make more torta de leche and prepare for her baptism next weekend. She has so much faith. I´m so blessed to know such an amazing sister.

There´s this cute little family we´re teaching. The parents are all, "somos catolicos," but their eight-year-old boy, Rodrigo, is golden. The first time we visited him we said that we can find answers to any question in the Book of Mormon. He asked us to mark a part for him that would tell him how to make his family happier. His mom told us that when she wants to watch telenovellas (soap operas), he asks her not to because there´s stuff in those shows that kids shouldn´t watch. He always volunteers to pray at the end of the lessons, and when it comes time for him to ask Heavenly Father for something, he always whispers what he wants so we can´t hear. You can tell that he´s asking for something really sincere, with so much faith. I know that he´s only eight and we should be working with his parents more, but he is so golden. I want to see him join the church so badly.

We found two families this week in interesting ways. First there´s the Flia. Ibarra. We´d passed by the house earlier and talked with the dad a little, but he said he didn´t want to talk with us without his wife and family there. So we left, not really planning on going back anytime soon, and passed by another house maybe a half our later. In the front yard was a handicapped boy whose wheelchair said, "A donation from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints." So of course we stopped to talk with the boy, his siblings, and their mom, who was just cleaning the house as her job. She said we could for sure visit her house, and when she told us where it was, we realized it was the house we´d already contacted. Glad to have the mom willing to have us teach the family, we went back a few nights later to find that they had a cousin over who just happened to be a very active member of the Church. It was just very obviously meant to be. Now the 13-year-old daughter, Griselda, is super excited to be baptized like her cousin, and the mom is always asking us about what she needs to do to baptize her family, and I´m super excited for all of them.

Then there´s a woman named Miriam who we´d randomly contacted weeks ago. She´d been really distracted and uninterested that first visit, but then earlier this week we saw her walking down the road carrying these huge heavy bags on her shoulders. We took the bags for her and helped her back to her house, asking after her and learning more about her as we went. She was very impressed with us, saying that most people usually just ignore her. As her job, she goes out into the forest every day and looks for all these fascinating South American herbs and roots and things for remedies and teas and such. She´s very poor, but super sweet and intelligent. She said she´d had a bad experience in the Church a long time ago, because she attended wearing pants and people pointed out that she needed to wear a skirt. She´d sworn that she would never go to the "Mormon church" again. But then we helped her out, and she was so touched that she completely forgot that she doesn´t like Mormons. :) We taught her yesterday as she cut and wrapped and prepared all her plants to sell (it´s really fascinating). She´s so cool, and she knows there´s Truth out there that she hasn´t found yet. She´s going to learn from us and gain a testimony and be baptized soon. I just know it. :)

I´m kind of skimming the Bible again now. Don´t judge me. :) I never realized how much repetition there is in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. It´s amazing how many times the commandments are repeated and expounded and emphasized, and yet i´ve met so many people here who profess to know the Bible and yet break the commandments without a problem. Anyways, I´m getting into Joshua now, and the stories are getting really fascinating again. I like being able to tell people that yes, I do indeed know about the Law of Moses and the Exodus and everything. They tend to think that we only read the Book of Mormon and know nothing about Christianity.

Well, time to go again. Pray for Mariela for me (Victoria´s mom). She told us on Tuesday when Hna. Stagg went to say goodbye that since she started listening to the missionaries she´s had more problems than ever, and yet she wants to get baptized more than anything. Unfortunately, after all the prodding he did to get us to teach his señora, Hno. Gomez is dragging his feet about marriage, preventing her from getting baptized. She´s considering leaving him because she can´t stand living in adultery anymore and wants the Spirit. Have I mentioned how much I love her? Anyways, I appreciate all of your prayers and your support. I hope you´re all having a great beginning of summer (I expect letters even if you´re on vacation). 

I LOVE YOU!!

---Hna. Springer

Week 21 - Asuncion Paraguay - Mariano Roque Alonzo

May 23, 2011


Dear Family,

Thank you so so much for all of your letters telling me all about Amanda´s wedding. It sounds like it was amazing, and I´m so happy that everything went perfect for my sister on the most important day of her life. Thank you Grandma Springer, Mom, Ashley, and Dad (and Teresa and Laurel, whose letters I haven´t read yet). Thanks for the pictures (who was the guy holding the light reflector disk? He did an amazing job!), and thank you Goompa for the letter and article you sent me in the mail. It was really, really inspiring and I think about it all the time as I go about my day as a missionary. P.S. Pouch mail is indeed faster, as that letter got to me in only two weeks. Laurel, I just heard that I got a package yesterday but I won´t get it to open it until tomorrow. I´m sure I´ll love whatever it is, though, so thanks a million! :) You all make me feel so special. I love you.

Hna. Stagg and I are so uptight today. We should be getting the call about Changes any minute now. Hna. Stagg is sure that she´s gonna leave--she wants to, anyways. She´s been in Mariano since November. She wants to get sent out into the campo. I´m pretty sure I´m gonna stay, but I´m nervous that now, after planning on staying all month, they´re gonna call me and send me away. Either way I should be getting a new companion soon, and I can only pray that she´ll be as awesome as Hna. Stagg and that I´ll love her just as much.

I love Mariano. I really do. I hope i don´t get sent away yet. We didn´t have any investigators in church yesterday, despite our best efforts, but for the first time since i´ve gotten here, the chapel was full. All of the menos activos who I´ve come to know and love were in attendance. Mariela was there and is like our best friend in Relief Society. A woman named Hna. Benitez hasn´t come to church in YEARS because she´s afraid of leaving the house (she has a personal shopper and everything) but yesterday she came! Also, her sister and little eight-year-old niece who´s been pushing them both to come because she wants to get baptized. I just felt so much love in the chapel yesterday. I was surrounded by friends and I´m going to be devastated to leave them. Even though we haven´t had many people join the church, I feel like we´ve made the Mariano branch a better branch. And now we have a new ward mission leader--an eighteen-year-old named Julio--who, like most of the youth in Mariano, is more than willing to listen to our advice and do all that he can to help us with the Work. With the members becoming more active and more involved, I´m sure that Mariano is going to see a lot more success in the future, whether I´m here or not.

Sadly, Verónica wasn´t baptized this weekend. She went home for Mother´s Day, and when she came back she told us she was never ever ever ever ever getting baptized. She says that she owes Maria her life because of some miracle in her childhood, and she can´t believe that the true church of God would add, "Thou shalt not drink coffee" to the 10 Commandments. I´m 100% positive that her family guilt-tripped her and fed her anti-Mormon propaganda. Before, she told us that her childhood miracle thing was no big deal for her and she didn´t believe in idol worship, and when we taught the Word of Wisdom she didn´t like being told not to drink coffee, but she was still willing to try it. Now... No, I have faith that she´ll make the right decision. She´s really, really smart, and she knows that we´re teaching the Truth. Hna. Stagg and I have both born our testimonies to her, and the Spirit was undeniable. 

Hna. Sanchez won´t be baptized until the middle of June because of health problems and missed church attendance due to a visit to her uncle in prison. She wants to get baptized, though, and I know she´ll follow through. We´re also teaching a woman named Clementina, a sister of a menos activo, who has a solid testimony of the Book of Mormon and is well on her way to baptism. So no, we didn´t have any baptisms this month, but we´ll have at least two next month, and numbers really don´t matter. When I look back on my mission, just the past few months even, the actual baptisms aren´t the highlights. They´re important and wonderful, but the lessons and the church attendance and the discussions about the gospel of Christ are what touch my heart and remind me that I´m doing a great work here in Paraguay. So yes, Sarah, I guess mission work is like "The Errand of Angels" sometimes, but I LOVE it. Every day my testimony gets stronger as people try to tell me I´m in the wrong and I remember all the good I´ve seen in my life through the gospel. That´s the key to happiness and success in all aspects of life, really--focusing on the goodness of God and moving forward with a perfect brightness of hope.

In other news, the world didn´t end on May 21st, though I did see two shooting stars that night. :) Where did that come from, anyways? I thought we were all agreed that the world is going to end in 2012? I was so confused when everyone here was going off about how some American pastor (many thought he was an LDS pastor) had interpreted Isaiah 13:6 to mean that May 21st, 2011 signals the beginning of the end of the world. Not that it changed anyone´s way of life around here, but we did get some pretty cool lessons with people who were worried about their salvation. 

I discovered this week, too, that even the lies spread across the internet about the Church have some purpose in the eternal scheme of things. On Saturday night, Hna. Stagg and I were frantically looking for two more new investigators to complete our daily goal. It was 8:30 and we were in the same area that we always contact at that time of night because it´s close to our house and everywhere else is risky after dark. I was positive that we weren´t going to find anyone, and I was really tired and just wanted to call it a night. But Hna. Stagg felt impressed to knock on one last door. A young couple came out to tell us that they already attend the Iglesia Universal. We could have just said, "Well, you´re invited to church..." but Hna. Stagg was determined to teach a lesson with them. So she started giving a summary of the gospel. Suddenly, the man said, "Oh! You´re from the Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Ultimos Dias? My friend was telling me about that church the other day, and I got really curious. I looked you up online and heard some weird stuff. Can you tell me about...?" And it just went amazingly from there. He invited us in and we taught him about the Restoration and cleared up his questions about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. He was so fascinated, and so smart about the fact that the internet is full of lies. He didn´t like promise to change his religion or be baptized or anything, but we showed him how to find the official church website and bore our testimonies about the greatness of the gospel, and it was just amazing. He´s the kind of person who has been looking for the truth in his life but just never knew where to find it. He´s very devoted to his church, but he also shows a lot more devotion to GOD than his pastor, which is a big deal for Paraguay. I´m so excited to begin teaching him more in-depth.

I´m reading the Bible during personal study. I´m not sure if I told you about that last week or not. Anyways, I am absolutely loving it. I´d tried to read the Bible before in my life, but I thought it was so boring. But that was before I realized that there are footnotes and the Joseph Smith Translation. How did I not see that before?? The Bible is so amazing to me now. With the Joseph Smith Translation, it all makes so much sense. The nature of God and the truths of the gospel are so clear, and I can see how much the Old Testament is still so important for us to learn from. I especially loved reading about Enoch, Abraham, and Joseph. It´s so sad how Enoch only has two lines about him in the King James Version of the Bible, and yet he was a great prophet who opened a new dispensation and prophesied of our day and helped a city become so righteous that they were translated! It´s so so sad that the rest of the world has no idea about that. I´m so grateful for the Pearl of Great Price, for Enoch´s story and for Abraham´s. Abraham was so much like Joseph Smith--recognizing the distortion of the truths and doing all he could to learn from God. And of course I love Joseph of Egypt´s prophecies and history. I´m getting into Exodus now, which is where in the past I stopped reading because I found it boring. But I also used to think that Second Nephi was boring, and I love that now, too. There are a lot, a LOT of laws and things to wade through, but all of them carry the same central message--put God first at all times and in all things and in all places, and love your neighbor as yourself.

I hope you all read Preach My Gospel as a family, at least occasionally. There are so many things about the gospel that I´d always been taught but never really understood until I started thinking like a missionary. And all members are so important in building the Kingdom of God. All callings are essential and come from the Lord. I can´t believe how much time I wasted and how many opportunities I passed up in the past. If you see a chance to help someone, whether with their temporal needs or with building their relationship with the Savior, seize the day! 

Again, no pictures, and I feel like this letter is a lot shorter than the others, but know that I love you and think about you all the time. I love Paraguay, and I try not to think about how fun it will be to be with you all again and share my experiences in person. If you have anything you´d like to hear about, please ask me. I love having a topic to write about. :) And don´t forget to write. I love hearing from you, even if you think you have nothing to say. Tell me about what you´re learning from the scriptures or what service you´ve done or how you´ve seen God´s hand in your lives lately. You´re not just my awesome family, you´re fellow Latter-Day Saints, and when I hear your stories it makes me all the more excited to give similar experiences and opportunities to the lovely Paraguayans. 

Take care everyone! I love you!!

--Hna. Springer

Week 20 - Asuncion Paraguay - Mariano Roque Alonzo

May 16, 2011


Dearest Familia,

I am SO excited to read your e-mails about Amanda´s wedding. I hope it all went perfect and that you all had a wonderful time. I am so happy for Amanda. I´m so grateful that she found her eternal companion and that they´re sealed in the temple. I´m so so glad. I´m not gonna lie, I was pretty darn depressed yesterday. All through Saturday I had no problems, but on Sunday I woke up and immediately thought solemnly, "My baby sister/bestest friend has a husband. I´m not there to see her with her husband. I´m going to miss the first year of their marriage." Hna. Stagg sensed my melancholy, I think, because she was sure to keep me talking all day. It helped. But by the end of the day, after pining and daydreaming and missing you all, I realized that there is absolutely no sense in wondering what life could have been like. Had anyone come up to me on Sunday and said, "Hey, here´s a pain-free, honorable way for you to leave your mission and go see your sister," I would have said, "No way! I´m staying!" I just remembered all of the amazing people that I¨ve met here--all the amazing people I´m GOING to meet here in Paraguay--and it´s true. I wouldn´t leave for anything. It´s gonna be weird still, but God has promised me that He has something better for me than the memories Im going to miss out on.

We´ve had some amazing experiences this week that reassured me that I´m where I´m supposed to be and that I´m exactly what God needs in Mariano Roque Alonso B right now. Just last night we contacted the house of a man named Miguel. As soon as I´d finished telling him who we were and that we wanted to share with him and his family, he said, "God doesn´t exist for me. I don´t believe you and I never will believe you. God has never been there for me and I´m never going to join your religion." I´m not gonna lie, I was pretty taken aback and I was all ready to just say, "You´re always invited to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Bye!" Thankfully, I have an awesomesauce companion who doesn´t get discouraged so easily. She stood her ground and asked more about him--what had happened to make him think God doesn´t exist, then about his family and his life. We talked for a while, mixing in teachings about the Plan of Salvation, and the more we talked the more he changed from a hostile street contact to a hurt and confused neighbor. In the end, HE asked US when we would come again. Hna. Stagg just handled it so well. She knew just what to say and how to teach as we talked. It was amazing. Now Miguel has a totally different idea of the missionaries, and we´ll see how much the Truth touches him.

The Barrio Palermo (in our new area) is FILLED with people who will let us talk with them. Because they´re right along the road, before our boundaries changed the Elders rarely visited out there. But now that it´s in the middle of our new area, we go there all the time, and people are more ready now to talk. Most of them are related to Hna. Sanchez, funnily enough. They´re all really poor and pretty superstitious. With Hna. Sanchez that´s no problem. Things have been going worse for her since we showed up to teach her, but she says confidently every time, "Satanás is trying to stop me from listening to you. He knows you can help me." It´s such a relief to teach someone with so much faith.

Their superstitious...ness... actually proved to be a help this week instead of a hinderance. We were teaching Hna. Sanchez´s great-neice or something like that, and Hna. Stagg dropped cane on her pretty hard because she´s fifteen and has a child and is doing exactly what her parents did instead of really giving her child a better life by searching for help from God. The girl, Mariela, said, "Well, I had a dream and Christ told me that all I had to do was drink water." At first I was like, "Um...okay...it was a dream. That makes no sense." But before I said that, I got to thinking, and I quickly turned to the Bible. We read the story of the Woman at the Well, and how Christ told her that she needs to drink living water to never thirst again. Mariela thought long and hard about that, and I think she´s really starting to see that Christ really does have answers for her.

Hna. Sanchez had a dream, too, that we used to comfort her. Her legs have been hurting her really badly lately. Yesterday when we were visiting her she said that she only slept for a tiny bit the night before, and that she had a dream where Christ was carrying the cross. "He said something to me," she said, "But I can´t remember what He said." Hna. Stagg answered exactly what I´d been thinking, "Christ has felt everything that you´re feeling and have felt and will feel. He knows your pain and He´s here to help you through it." That really touched her.

I´m finding a lot this week that there are always people right under our noses, and we can´t be too hasty to write them off. For example, Hna. Granados´ mom lives with their family, and she´s always just kind of been this Catholic background figure when we go over there. But this week we invited her to a ward Mother´s Day activity. She came, and when we visited the family again on Saturday and Sunday, she was SO NICE to us. She loves Hna. Stagg especially, and is just as great and loving as Hna. Granados. We love her, and she´s been there this whole time but we never really tried to teach her before. Now I have total confidence that she´s going to accept the Truth someday.

The Mother´s Day activity was really fun. (Mother´s Day is always the 15th of May here, by the way). There were only like five actual mothers there, but a lot of people from the ward showed up to put on a show for them. There was salsa dancing and singing and a tiny two-year-old recited a poem about her linda mamita (SO CUTE!). There was a girl there who´s only six but is a very talented, pretty famous ballet dancer here, and she gave me my first look at traditional Paraguayan dancing. It involves big, frilly skirts and balancing pots on their heads. :)

Paraguay really goes out to celebrate Mother´s Day. Everyone was partying yesterday. The moms seemed to be really enjoying theirselves with cakes and visits with their female relatives. It was really cute. The men, however, jumped at the chance to get drunk, and none of them had work today so they could get EXTRA drunk, and so we kind of steered clear of their groups yesterday. Hna. Sanchez´s nephew was making an idiot of himself while we were at their house, proposing to Hna. Stagg repeatedly and assuring her that he would chase off her boyfriend if he came after her. She told him she´d think about it. It was hilarious. Hna. Stagg and I always laugh at the fact that all we needed to do to feel pretty and get proposed to was come to Paraguay.

The weather´s been improving a lot lately. Today it´s sunny but both Hna. Stagg and I are wearing sweaters. Yesterday it almost felt like Christmas because it was cloudy and cold and felt like it was going to snow or something. And yet it also felt like the Fourth of July because everyone was hanging flags and decking out in red, white, and blue to be patriotic. We sang their national anthem in church yesterday. It was fun. 

Guess what we did for our P-Day today? Picked lice out of the hair of four little girls. How fun does that sound? Yesterday in church we noticed that our friends, the Chicos, had really bad lice, and so this morning Hna. Stagg and I went to the pharmacy to buy special shampoo and combs to get rid of it. The lady at the counter seemed quite concerned when we told her that the two of us needed FOUR of each. It was not a fun task. There´s something extremely satisfyin about taking something nasty and turning it clean and gorgeous again (hence my dog-washing job in the past), but it was back-breaking work. We had to rub lotion on their heads first and let it sit for an hour. They did not want to sit still, and then kept touching their hair, touching their clothes with their hair, touching each other´s hair with their hair...it was very stressful. Then we washed their hair really well with the lice shampoo, and one-by-one combed through their hair to get rid of all the parasites and their eggs. One girl has very short hair so she had no problem, and the girl with really long hair takes good care of it so while it took a long time, it wasn´t too hard. The youngest at four years old, was a trooper. She barely complained at all. But the ten-year-old was SO mad at us by the end. She had the worst of it, and her medium-length hair was really tangled so it was really painful and took forever. We did all we could to console her, but finally she just ran off and wouldn´t let us near her with the combs again. So we just left all the supplies for their abuela to take care of them later. I think we dealt with the worst of it, but I´m still worried that they have lice all over their beds and clothes, and the grandparents and brothers claimed they didn´t have lice so we didn´t treat them. I hope it doesn´t just keep getting worse and worse. But as for today, I feel good about helping them out during my free time, and now if my kids ever get lice, I know exactly what to do. :)

Well, that´s all for this week. I love you all so much. I´m glad you had a fun weekend and I hope you´re all happy and healthy. Take care! I LOVE YOU!!

---Hna. Springer

P.S. Computer´s being dumb again. No pictures. But you got the ones in the mail so that should keep you for a while. Send me pics of the wedding!!

Week 19 - Asuncion Paraguay - Mariano Roque Alonzo

Dear Family,

It was so great to talk with you yesterday. You all look amazing. Seriously. I have the most beautiful family in the world. I´m so grateful that I get to have you for all eternity.

Sorry if I wasn´t very interesting to talk to. I tried to think of some cool things to tell you but I just wanted to hear all about you. You need to write me more so I don´t wonder so much. :) Also, that six-page letter I told you about had answered a bunch of the questions you asked--like my favorite conference talk, etc, so you´ll just have to wait until that gets to you and fill in the holes, I guess. I totally forgot that I could have shown you how I can awesomely roll my R´s now and say "Can we pray?" in Guaraní. And I wasn´t kidding when i said I was really glad that you couldn´t see me very well on the webcam. I have these lovely zits--two on my chin and one under each eye. If I played "Connect the Dots" with them, they´d make a perfect little rectangle. Lovely. Apparently every sister missionary Hna. Stagg knows (herself included) who showed up to Paraguay with perfect skin ended up having bad zits. I´m sure the fried food and dirty air and sweat contribute. Oh well. It´s worth it. And I´ll be resurrected someday so no worries. :)

I´m keeping a list of fun Paraguayan facts to tell you about someday. It all seems so ordinary to me right now, but I know you´re dying to know more and I want you to know how awesome Paraguay is. I´ll try to mention more fun things in my letters. No pictures today, sorry. I just tried to upload them and it said that my battery is dead which makes no sense because I just charged it but whatever. Next week for sure. :/ I really don´t have many pictures to send you. The rule is we can´t carry our camera except to baptisms or if it´s our last day in an area. Speaking of which, I can´t believe another Change is almost over. As much as I feel sometimes like i¨m so bored of Mariano, I really don´t want to leave yet. There are too many people that I care about--too many people whose baptisms I wouldn´t get to go to if I left.

Our new area is turning out to not be as lame as we originally thought. Lots of people there had shared with the Elders before, but the Elders gave up on that area so long ago that now that they´ve given it to us, people are ready to listen again. We´ve had a lot of good lessons with a lot of good people. Just Saturday we came across this large extended family where some were Catholic and some were Evangelical. Once we learned that about them, we immediately dived into, "Have you ever wondered why there are so many religions in the world today?" Usually people are just like, "Meh. To each his own. All churches are good." But this family was like, "Yeah, actually, we have. We´ve been reading the Bible and we can´t decide which church is right." Well, we read the Bible with them some more, James 1:5, and told them about the Restoration. We gave them a Book of Mormon and marked chapters that answered their questions. It was a perfect lesson, and it made me grateful that the Elders gave us that part of their area.

The absolutely best thing that that area has brought us is a woman named Hermanía Sanchez. She´s part of another large extended family that lives in our new area. She´s in her late fifties and has never been married or had kids, but she LOVES her nieces and nephews like her own children. I imagine she´s always been an amazing lady, but for the past few years she´s had diabetes and now she can barely see. She has nerve problems in her legs, too, that causes her a lot of pain. She can´t easily go to church or work anymore, and so she´s felt abandoned by her friends and family. She has a new appreciation for the little things and is turning to God more. She was grateful for our visits right from the start, and yesterday after faithfully attending church with us and her niece, she shared with us that last week she´d been praying for someone to come help her follow God and brighten her days. Soon after, we showed up to give her a way to go to church again and come to her house to talk about spiritual things. She cried as she thanked us for answering her prayers, and while she can´t read on her own, she sleeps with her Book of Mormon over her heart and prays for guidance and faith as we teach her. Her baptism is set for the 28th. Thus, I REALLY don´t want to be transferred on the 23rd.

Veronica´s baptism is still set for the 21st, though. She´s coming to church regularly and is going to start going to institute after her exams. She really likes the church and us, and while she´s scared for the familial consequences, I know she´ll do the right thing and be baptized. Mariela is doing great, too. She misses us and stopped by our house this week to give us an awesome chocolate cake. She loves the new Elders, too, though. She comes to church more, now. Yesterday she came for all three hours. It may just be because she wants to be with us again, but her faith is really growing and thanks to the Elders´straightforward prodding, the marriage arrangements are quickly coming together. I hope she´ll be baptized at the end of this month, too.

We lost Teodocio, though. The Elders all lost their baptisms for this week, too, so our awesome triple baptism weekend turned out to be a disappointment. Teodocio really liked our visits and likes coming to church, but we realized this week that he has never once said anything that gives us reason to believe that he has faith in God. He´s also made it pretty clear that he has no faith in the church--he´d only be baptized if it meant financial benefits and more visits from us. We also think he´s been lying to us about keeping the law of chastity. It´s been a mess.

But yeah, this week has overall been pretty good. Hna. Stagg and I have really been doing well with completing our goals. We cumplired six days this week, when previously our record was 4 out of 7. We were one new investigator and one lesson with a menos activo short of cumpliring our weekly goals. We feel so guapa (that means "hard-working" here in Paraguay). We had a zone conference this week that really got us determined to succeed. It was a fun day. I met a lot of cool Elders and Hermanas. One Hermana has only been here for three weeks and she had dhengue for the first two. Pobrecita literally contracted the disease her FIRST DAY in Paraguay. She´s all good now, though. There´s also this native Elder I met from Guatemala--Elder Che Xol. Spanish is actually his second language. His native language is Mayan! How cool is that?

Anyways, at the zone conference, Pte. Madariaga showed us the talk by Elder Holland that he gave while i was in the MTC. It had really touched me back in January and it made me cry hearing it again from in the Field. I love Elder Holland´s talks. It made me so scared, though, because President had asked me to give a talk in Spanish at teh conference, and after Elder Holland moved us all to tears, I felt like I had nothing to say. But a native Elder had also been asked to speak in English and he went before me. He literally just read a scripture, said, "I know the church is true" and that was it. I felt a lot better about my three-minute talk after that. :) The scripture I spoke on was Mosiah 24:15--this Change´s theme. It´s about the Lord strengthening Alma and his people in their captivity and how they cheerfully submitted to the will of the Lord. It´s a great scripture for us Latter-Day Saints to learn from. I think I¨m gonna try and memorize it.

Oh, before I forget, thank you so much Nana for the letter and talk you sent me. I got it on Tuesday and I really, REALLY loved it. Thank you! It means a lot to me that you thought of me and took the time to send it.

And Grandma Springer, thank you for that big fluffy purple robe you gave me all those years ago. Last weekend it got SO COLD. We could see our breath and I wore gloves and a sweater and a scarf and coat. At night I slept with the robe for extra warmth. Our heater hasn´t been working super well so it saved me from a few nights of lost sleep. Thankfully at conference we received thick winter blankets (Hna. Stagg and I slept SO WELL and were so happy and rested after that first night with our new bedding), but I still sleep with the robe because it´s super comforting. Also, thank you Laurel for the long, striped socks. I love wearing them around the house and last week I only wore my tall rainboots, not because it was raining but just because I wanted to keep wearing warm, colorful striped socks outside the house. :) And thanks too for the summer shirts you sent me in the MTC. They´ve been awesome.

Hna. Stagg is doing well. WE have a lot of fun together. She´s getting a bit trunkie (meaning she talks about home). Today they called her to ask which airport she wants to fly home to. She wasn´t happy to realize how close her "death" is. She wants to get sent out to the chaco before she dies. She was "born" into this zone and has only been outside of it for two Changes. So she´d like to see someplace else. But at the same time, she´ll REALLY miss Mariano, and I´ll miss her when she goes. She amused me this week with a pilates class one morning, putting on a cheesy, high-pitched pilates instructor voice ("one more ladies! Good! Keep it up! Feel the burn!") and made me laugh so hard that I couldn´t do crunches. Today she spent quite a bit of her P-Day time playing "Called to Serve" on our cell phone and making it so that it will play that whenever someone calls us. Now she really wants the people who annoy us with their constant calls to call us. :) 

Have I ever told you what it´s like to ride a bus here? I know I´ve mentioned how crazy the roads are thanks to no traffic laws, but it´s even worse when you´re in a colectivo. There are no bus stops. When you want to get on you´ve got to be watchful and just stick your arm out when your bus comes speeding down the road. Then you have to hold onto something quick because the driver floors it as soon as you´re on the steps (they don´t even bother closing the doors). People pack into buses like sardines, and a lot of the time I feel like Ping the duck, terrified to be the last one on because if the bus is full it means that I have to stand on the bottom step the whole ride down the crazy road. Being further inside the bus isn´t much better, though. You´re crammed between people you don´t know, and because the bus brakes and accelerates so randomly, you have to be careful not to lose your balance and barrel into everyone else. It´s really crazy. I have pretty good balance now (I think I could make a good sailor in the future) but that first week, when we stepped off the bus after my first ride I just wanted to kiss the ground ("LAND!! SWEET LAND!") and never get on a bus again for as long as I lived.

Well, that´s it for this week. I hope you all had a fabulous mother´s day weekend. Thank you to Nana, Grandma Springer, Chelsy, Holly, Pam, Lucie, Teresa, Shelli, Laurel, and of course my own amazing Mom for being such wonderful mothers and great examples for me. I hope to someday be as incredible as you.

Take care, everybody. I love you so much.

---Hna. Springer

Week 18 - Asuncion Paraguay - Mariano Roque Alonzo

Hola Familia!

 

How is everyone doing? Happy month of May! I can´t believe it´s been two months already. In our last zone conference we put goals for baptisms, and I was thinking we were still putting goals for April! It´s so bizarre to think I have four months as a missionary.

Me and Hna Stagg with Easter Baskets from her family!

 

It´s getting so cold here, now! Ít´s so weird that you´re all starting summer and today I wore two sweaters, my coat, thermals under my skirt, long socks under rain boots, and gloves. It´s been so rainy lately, and when it´s not raining it´s misting, making everything just wet enough to be a lot colder than it should be at 65 degrees. But then the sun will randomly peek through the clouds and it get scorching hot again. It was confusing at first, but I´m quickly learning to just put on lots of layers and carry some around with me if I get too hot.

 

I haven´t read this week´s e-mails yet, but thank you everyone for last week´s. Grandma, Teresa, Laurel, Dad, Mom, Sarah, Ashley, and Amanda--you´re the best. Seriously, I love you so much and I´m so grateful to have you as my family. Ashley, sounds like you´re having a blast with Ringo. You make me laugh with your stories about what you and the dogs do together. Which stories of mine are you reading? I desperately hope you´re not reading anything that I wrote during high school. That would be embarrassing. :) Sarah, I hope things are going better for you in school. You´re a wonderful person and I know that you´ll do your very best. Don´t stress too badly, but be sure also to use your time wisely and remember the long-term goals. Mom, thank you for sending me those recipes and keeping me up-to-date on all the wedding stuff. It sounds stressful, but very fun at the same time. Send me lots of pictures and details. Holy crow, Ámanda´s getting married next week! WHAT?? I just barely bought your present today. I´m sending it to the home address along with some little things for Sarah and Ashley, so sorry, you probably won´t get it for a while. I´ve only sent one written letter so far, so don´t be expecting tons in the mail. I´m not sure about faxing, Dad. Sorry. I would love to spend all day writing you. I love hearing from you. You have no idea. I wish I could return the favor.

 

We get to talk over the phone on Mother´s Day!! I am SO EXCITED! I just forwarded the details. It will be a challenge to focus this week knowing that hearing your voices is only six days away!

 

So things are going well here in Mariano. It´s a lot harder to do contacts and find new investigators in the evenings now because people aren´t sitting outside to escape the heat anymore, and everyone´s terrified of mosquitos. But we´ve found some cool people. This week we rearranged our district´s areas, as I think I mentioned last week. Hna. Stagg and I got robbed of one of our best areas and got a little part of the Elder´s area in return with no member families and only one progressing investigator. We were so excited to go exploring in our new area on Thursday once we finalized the boundaries. In the end, though, we felt like the Madagascar Penguins--we went to all this trouble to get to this new, awesome area but once we got there...

 

It´s just really sparse out there, and the people aren´t very nice. We found a couple good, promising people, but the rest are pretty deep-rooted in their Catholic ways. One woman, when we brought out the Book of Mormon and started explaining it, just opened her Bible and started reading out of it, completely ignoring us like a child plugging his ears and going, "La la la, I can´t hear you!" It was kind of sad. We haven´t had the fondest of experiences out there, yet. It doesn´t help that all three times we´ve gone, it´s started pouring rain. Two of the three times we were pretty much unprepared and it was very, very miserable. I told Hna. Stagg that I think I´ve found the solution if Paraguay ever gets hit with a drought--she and I just have to go to our new area and it will start pouring.

 

There is one great family out there, though, that we´re going to start working with a lot. The kids are members, thanks to being fellowshipped into the awesome youth group, but the parents aren´t so certain. They need to get married (no previous marriages, though, so yay!) and the father needs to stop drinking and smoking, but they love what the church has done for their kids, and I´m pretty sure that they´re going to get baptized soon.

 

Teodocio´s going to be baptized next week, too. We´re pretty excited about that. He´s very good about coming to church and he´ll be really glad to be an official part of it. We think all three companionships are going to have a baptism this weekend so that should be a fun day.

 

Veronica is doing pretty well. She´s really stressed about her exams coming up because she feels like her teacher doesn´t explain anything. She´d love BYU. She said that over the weekend with her family, her parents were VERY adament about her not reading the Book of Mormon. They actually locked it up and hid the key from her to prevent her from reading it. But, maybe out of spite but hopefully out of her awesome desires to learn more, she says she just kept stealing the key back and retrieving her Book of Mormon whenever she got the chance. She´s so great. She has some wonderful questions about the gospel, like "If there are three separate people in the Godhead, why does Christ say that He is God?" We sometimes have a hard time answering her satisfactorily, but she´s very understanding and very smart. She´s attending Institute with the other jovenes. AND, she still really wants to get baptized on May 21st! We´re so excited for her.

 

This week, to show the Elders their new area, we went around with Elders Carter and Tucker all day Thursday. It was really, really refreshing. First of all, Hna. Stagg and I didn´t get whistled at all day thanks to having two very tall men as escorts. :) And the Elders are seriously so hard-working. They´re great missionaries. They´re very different from us Hermanas, and in a lot of ways, they´re better than us. We took them around to meet all the menos activos in the area, and with each family they got them to promise them that they´d come to church on Sunday. And a few of them actually did! They´re just very direct and sincere and they know why they´re here. After they´d gone around and met everyone, we took them into our area to help us secure baptismal dates with a few of OUR investigators. They were glad to do it, and they did it well. ´We have them to thank for Teodocio´s date, and there´s another man named Nasario that accepted a date, too, after talking with them.

 

When they´re not teaching, though, the Elders are a lot more laid-back than we are. They love to tell us all about the other missionaries in the zone and they act very Paraguayan when they get around fruit trees. At one point, we were heading to an appointment and Elder Carter stopped talking mid-sentence to go check out a tree heavy with grapefruits. Elder Tucker eagerly followed, and to Hna. Stagg´s and my horror they just started picking grapefruits off of a tree in some stranger´s yard! Then Elder Tucker started peeling his and asked Elder Carter, "Did you bring the knife?" Hna. Stagg was like, "What do you have a knife for??" "To eat grapefruits!" they said, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Hna. Stagg and I didn´t even know it was socially acceptable to just start picking other peoples´ fruit and throw the rinds around on the street like they did. But that´s what all Paraguayans do so it shouldn´t surprise us.

 

Sorry, I don´t have any funny stories to tell you about today. :) This week really wasn´t all that interesting. 

 

We´ve been trying new tactics to get the members to help us out with the mission work more than they have been. We´ve learned that it´s a THOUSAND times better to have an investigator have friends in the church before we even start teaching them. But the members always just tell us that they can´t think of anyone to fellowship, and we felt like we´d long since milked them dry. But as a zone we´ve been talking a lot about teaching members like investigators--helping them refresh their testimonies and their desires to do what is right. So Hna. Stagg and I tried it the other day, and it totally works! We taught an amazing lesson to the Granados family the other day about prayer, and at the end Hna. Stagg asked, "And who do you know who doesn´t know that they can receive answers to their prayers?" Right off the bat, each member of the family listed names! It was incredible! We´re definitely going to keep teaching that way, as we should have been doing a long time ago.

 

Oh, I just remembered a funny story. The first time we were caught out in the rain unprepared, we were wandering around the streets wondering what to do because we couldn´t go home early but we had two hours left to our day and NOBODY was going to receive us. So we wondered who we could possibly visit in such a situation, and we immediately thought, "The Familia Granados!" We clapped their door in the pouring rain, soaked to the bone, our feet caked in mud. They immediately let us in, of course. Hna. Granados had us wash off our feet and clean our socks in her shower and fed us popcorn and let us wait out the storm a bit. Then she told us, "When we heard someone clapping out in the rain, we thought ´Who´s crazy enough to be out in this weather, clapping at our door?´ Then we remembered: las Hermanas misioneras."

 

In Predicad Mi Evangelio we´re reading the chapter about the Book of Mormon and how it is essential to understanding the Gospel of Jesus Christ and making covenants with the Lord that are necessary for salvation. It´s really helping me keep my testimony strong, and reading in Predicad every day puts tools in my belt that the Lord can call on me to use later. I really love my personal study time and companionship study, now. I hope you all try and read the scriptures every day, both alone and as a family. It´s really the best thing that we can do to be servants of the Lord, because if we read the Book of Mormon and Predicad, we´ll understand the Gospel. And as we understand the Gospel, we´ll have a sincere desire to live it, and as we live it our lives are going to get better and better.

 

Out of time again. Sad day. I´m writing you more hand-written letters today though that I´ll send in the package, and I´ll get to talk to you more on Sunday! I love you all so much and though I think about you and miss you every day, I know that this, missionary work, is the best thing in the world. I hope you´re all working on being missionaries in your own little areas of life, and that you never forget who you are or that God has great things in store for you.

 

Until next week! I LOVE YOU!!

 

---Hna. Springer

 

P.S. The pictures are of a map of Mariano, with our old area boundaries outlined in yellow. Our house is the little house-shaped thing drawn right under "La Concordia." That should help you find our area on Google Earth. The other pic is of me and Hna. Stagg with the Easter baskets her family sent us. We were so happy to get them on Tuesday.

Week 17 - Asuncion Paraguay - Mariano Roque Alonzo

Me, Hna. Stagg, and the two other sisters who were in our zone before the change: Hna. Messina(left) and Hna. Jara (right)

Hey Family!!

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend! I´m not gonna lie, I was feeling pretty homesick, especially yesterday as I thought about all of you hunting for Easter eggs and all that fun stuff. It just wasn´t the same here in Paraguay. The Semana Santa continued with Last Supper Thursday, which is like the Paraguayan equivalent of Thanksgiving. During our morning studying, Hna. Stagg and I got to hear all the pigs being slaughtered. All day we could smell them roasting, and we got almost no lessons in that day because everyone was too busy eating pork with their extended families. No idea why they eat pork. I´m pretty sure Christ didn´t eat pork during the Last Supper, but I could be wrong. :) 

Then Friday was Good Friday, of course. It was really strange. The custom is to not go to work, to eat no red meat (or no meat at all, or nothing, depending on which Catholic you talk to) and to be as quiet as possible. There´s no such notion as noise pollution here, so usually Hna. Stagg and I have to try to ignore all the American rap music blaring in the streets as we go teaching. On Friday, though, it was amazingly tranquil. Everyone was holed up in their houses watching movies about the Crucifixion--uplifting flicks such as Passion of the Christ (judging by what the kids were telling us about that movie later, I´m SO glad I´ve never seen it). We hardly got any lessons in that day, either. Many people we contacted were all appalled that we were working that day, and that we weren´t fasting. Our explanations about how we worship a living Christ and fast once a month and keep the Sabbath day holy every week didn´t change their minds about us being heathens. 

And then yesterday, nobody did anything at all. It was just a normal Sunday with everyone out playing sports, blaring their American rap music... We didn´t even sing Easter hymns or talk about the Resurrection at all in Church! It was very weird. Kind of sad, really. But that´s just how it is here. (Eat some Cadburry eggs for me!)

So, crazy question: Amanda, what´s your new address going to be? I can´t believe you´re going to have your own home address. So bizarre! Also, Mom, could you please e-mail me the recipes for peach cobbler and lemon bars? I feel like the only thing we ever bake around here is brownies, and while Paraguayans love them a lot, I´d like to blow them away with some real cooking. :)

Things are going really well here in Mariano Roque Alonso B. The mission work has been so much more enjoyable lately. Every morning when I wake up I think, "Wow. I´m waking up AGAIN??" The days are flying by. I still have tendencies every now and then to think, "Do we HAVE to go to work?" but once we get out of the house, I´m just so happy to be doing the Lord´s work. It´s so fun to meet new people, visit friends, and teach people how they can be happier and overcome all their trials because they´re children of God. Hna. Stagg and I have been getting along a lot better lately, too. We never actually fought or anything, but she always had her way of doing things and I felt like I couldn´t contribute anything, and then I felt like she was mad at me for not helping at all. Now, though, we´ve been practicing teaching together--she´ll teach a concept, I´ll testify and teach another concept, she´ll testify and teach another concept, etc. Our lessons have been a lot better and it´s all just been a lot more enjoyable. We chat a lot more and I feel like we´re actually friends, not just companions. The language is also a lot better, now, too. I can understand everything almost perfectly. Speaking is still a challenge, but usually because I overthink what I need to say. Hna. Stagg always tells me to just look people in the eyes as I talk and the words will come. It´s true. The less I think about myself, the more I think about what people need to hear, the easier the language is.

It rained again a lot on Saturday. It kind of caught us unawares. I´d left the house thinking, "Yay, it´s finally cold enough to wear a sweater!" but by the end I was really wishing I´d worn more. My shoes and sweater were soaked, and with the wind it was really quite cold. But we were far away from our house and there was work to do, so we just dealt with it. It was really fun to trek through the streets of San Luis, which are really rough and formed pretty little waterfalls for us to enjoy as we tried not to lose our shoes to the mud or get tangled in the long grass. "Sheesh," I said at one point, "It feel like we´re trekking through some jungle swamp somewh--oh wait, that´s exactly what we´re doing." 

The dhengue (sp?) situation isn´t improving much. In literally every house we´ve been to, someone either has a relative who has had dhengue, or they´ve had dhengue themselves. Everyone´s outside with their machetes trying to get rid of the tall scrub brush that harbors the mosquitos. We´ve been told that over 90 percent of mosquitos are now carriers. We´re subsequently using tons of repellant. The natives don´t use repellant much, though. They´re just very sensetive to mosquitos landing on them, and it´s like whack-a-mole every time we´re teaching a lesson outside. I´ve come to be pretty good at detecting them, too. But that may just be because they´re the size of hummingbirds here. 

Veronica got to go home for Easter weekend. She was very happy to have her family let her come home, and we were, too, except it means that we have to push her baptism back a week and we haven´t gotten to teach her since last Sunday. Aside from her and Mariela we really don´t have many progressing investigators. It has a lot to do with the fact that this was a big traveling week so all of our golden investigators were off with relatives the whole time. Elber is enjoying reading the Book of Mormon. We´re excited to find his brother-in-law someday. We still haven´t done so, and Elber tells us he´s on page 200 and loving every word. He and Elber are so cool about defending us "Mormons" to their friends. Elber always tells us about how his friends say we don´t believe in Christ or something, and he´ll pull out the Book of Mormon and be like, "Look. Right here. Another Testament of Jesus Christ." Edguardo´s been off with his relatives a lot since the baby was born. Mariela is doing great, except we just received sad news yesterday. The ward wants to change our mission areas so that we have a more even number of priesthood-holding men in each section. It´s a great idea. We´ll get lots of new streets to explore. But the part that the Elders are taking from our area includes the street of the Fma. Gomez. We. Are. Sad. The line goes right down their street. We keep joking that we should just have them cross the street and visit their member neighbor so we can still hang out with them sometimes, but it probably won´t happen. I´m not sure if that would be breaking mission rules or what.

Something that really made my day this week, though, was when we went out to find Romina. She hasn´t been doing a super good job of coming to church because the Gonzalez family hasn´t been coming to church lately, and if they don´t go, she won´t. Her mom isn´t being supportive, and she tries to keep Romina from talking to us as much as possible. But on her street there´s this unowned lot with abandoned cars in it, and Romina, her member sister Jessica, and their ten or so girl friends are always playing there. They´re all under ten years old and very, very adorable. This week to get a with-member lesson, we briefly sang and said a prayer with them in the car lot. They loved it. Afterwards, we happened to pass by there again and we found that Jessica was teaching them all to sing "Soy Un Hijo de Dios." It was so precious.

Something we´ve been taught lately as a mission is that the members´ involvement is very, very important. Before, the missionaries were driving all the work themselves, and they had about 100 baptisms a month. Now we´re trying to do the work with the members helping us, aiming for 200 baptisms a month. But the end goal is to have it all work how it should, with the members driving the work--fellowshipping their friends, inviting them over to FHE, and asking us to come teach the doctrine. If that were to happen, we could (and should) have 400 baptisms a month. I think it was David O McKay (or Spencer W. Kimball? I can´t remember) who said that every member of the Church should do all they can to convert at least one person EVERY YEAR. I certainly want to do that even outside of the mission, and I hope you all do, too. Talk to your friends about the Gospel. Have FHE with your neighbors. Do your visiting and home teaching. Give references to the missionaries. Volunteer to go teaching with the missionaries. Feed the missionaries. Do something whenever you possibly can to build the Lord´s Kingdom, and I cna guarantee you everything will be so much better.

Well, I´m out of time again. This computer is stupid and won´t upload my pictures within the hour that I have. GRRRRR!! 

I love you all so so so so much!!

---Hna. Springer

Week 16 - Asuncion Paraguay - Mariano Roque Alonzo

April 18, 2011

Hey everybody!

 

How´s it going in the US of A? With Easter coming up I think about you all a LOT, and about all the awesome family traditions we have. Did you get the letter I sent by snail mail yet? And Dad, I guess I could just take a picture of my written letters and e-mail it to you... Sadly it takes forever to upload pictures and wouldn´t you know it, I forgot to bring my camera today so I´m sorry you´re all starving for pictures. Someday I´ll send you so many that you´ll miss the days when you just got little tastes of my life.

 

Amanda, your wedding sounds like it´s going to be amazing. Don´t worry, I´m really not mad at you. I´m so so happy that you´ve found your eternal companion already and that you´re making the incredibly important choice to be sealed together in the temple. I´m writing you a long letter with all my thoughts. No idea when you´ll get it. Nor your present. If I get around to buying it. :) P.S. That picture you e-mailed me of you and Chase was like a gazillion megabytes so it was kind of hard to see it all at once. But your eyes look incredible!! P.P.S. BROOKE QUINN is getting married?? Details!!

 

So here in Paraguay (and possibly in all of South America, I´m not sure) they celebrate the whole week before Easter, the "Semana Santa." Yesterday was Palm Sunday, and literally everyone out on the streets was carrying a woven palm branch as they headed to church for the first time since Christmas. Hna. Stagg and I felt like we stood out even more than usual as we went around empty-handed. We had to explain to a lot of investigators that we only celebrate Easter Sunday, because they kind of think we just don´t celebrate the end of Christ´s mortal life at all. Anyways, I´m not sure what else they do the rest of the week. Good Friday...something Saturday, and then Easter Sunday... No sé. All I know is they´re going to eat a lot of chipa and sopa paraguaya this week. I like both so that´s cool, but I´m sad that we´re not really doing much else this week to celebrate. I kind of miss all that Easter bunny stuff, you know?

 

But Hna. Stagg is reading Jesus the Christ this week to think about the Savior more in-depth, and I asked her what we should be thinking about on this Monday of the Semana Santa. She reminded me that it was on Monday that Christ cursed the barren fig tree, and I was thinking about that during personal study this morning. How often are we like the fig tree--putting out lots of pretty leaves but not producing any real fruit at all? It´s amazing to think of how easy that is to do--just doing good things isn´t enough. That´s just leaves. You have to serve with love for it to make any difference and produce fruit for yourself and for those you serve. Just a thought.

 

We got another incredible rain storm this week. It´s been blazing hot the rest of the time. It was Friday morning, which is when we have daily planning, so it had come and gone before we needed to leave the shelter of our house, anyways. You seriously wouldn´t believe how much water comes down. Arizona has monsoons, and I thought I´d seen a lot of water before, but here it just POUNDS for hours and hours. We were dealing with the after-effects all through Sunday, as at around 9:00 Friday morning the wind started blowing in our direction and pushed water underneath our doors. There was nothing we could do except get everything off the floor. It smelled like frogs. I understand now why nobody in Paraguay has carpet. Nothing was ruined and it made it a lot easier to mop this morning, but it was still a pain to slosh through water all weekend. We trust that God will understand and forgive us for not doing kneeling prayers those two days before our floor dried out.

 

Sarah asked me last week what the food is like here. I´ve raved about the fruit enough, but really that´s pretty much the extent of what´s really great here. They have great chipa and the chicken is good, too, but just a tip: never EVER buy beef in Paraguay. Beef here is not that nice t-bone steak stuff. They use whatever part of the cow that has meat on it. It´s tough and fatty and really, really gross. Last week Hna. Stagg and I had to buy chicken to cook with a member in the branch, and I got a good look at the butcher shop for the first time. It was a sight I wish I could remove from my memory. They eat cow stomach here. And cow feet. And liver. And tongue. And pretty much anything that doesn´t resemble meat. Their noodles, too, aren´t like we´re used to, and I´m not very fond. Sadly, the most common meal we´re fed is noodles topped with beef. That´s why I stick with fruit as often as possible. :) But as I mentioned before, Hna. Stagg and I cooked for a member in the branch this week. We made chicken tacos, which she and her family thought were hilariously strange. I chowed down. It was so nice to eat something familiar for the first time in over a month. :)

 

Everything´s all cleared up with Mariela (Victoria´s Mom). We´d thought at first that she was harboring some resentment, but we got a chance on Tuesday to talk with her alone and she is still amazing. She doesn´t hate the church or anything, and she thanked us so sincerely for all that we´ve done to help her family. She keeps telling us how special we are to her, and she´s really come to be one of our best friends in the branch. Sadly, she said she doesn´t want to go to Relief Society or Sunday School until she´s married. She knows the church is true and she really likes us, but she feels uncomfortable in the more intimate classes where everyone knows that she´s new and unmarried. She´s still coming to Sacrament Meeting, though, for which I´m grateful. We´ll get her to come back to the other classes soon, I´m sure.

 

So guess what? For the first time since I arrived in Paraguay, Hna. Stagg and I passed by to take an investigator to Church yesterday, and THEY ACTUALLY CAME WITH US! I was like, "Whoa. Wait, what? You´re really coming? People really DO come??" I was so excited. Especially because it was Veronica who came! She is so amazing. After our awesome in-depth talk with her on Sunday when we first started teaching her and she accepted a fecha, we´ve gone back and visited her almost every day this week. Each time, she´s followed through with her reading commitments and understood everything and reaffirmed that she wants to get baptized. She loved church, and was so talkative during the class for investigators. She knew the answers to every question and she didn´t feel out of place at all! I´m so excited for her to get baptized. She´s seriously so great.

 

The sad thing is, though, that her family isn´t supporting her. She lives with her cousins, inactive members (I think I mentioned them last week?), and hasn´t seen her parents or siblings since Christmas. She was so excited to go see them this week during the Easter break, and was crushed when they said maybe it wasn´t a good idea for her to come back. She was really worried that maybe something is going on with them that they´re not telling her, and she´s been calling them all week trying to figure out how to visit them. Then on Sunday they called her during church. When she called back and told them where she was and that she wants to get baptized, her mom told her that now she´s not allowed to come home for Easter as punishment for changing her religion.

 

I feel so bad for her. She was crying as she told us. It would devastate her if her family really disowned her like that. I´m not sure how serious they are, but it sounds to me like they have unresolved problems besides difference in religion anyways. And I trust that Veronica will make the right choice. We talked with her for a long time about it, and whenever she mentioned her convesation with her family, she kept saying, "They were angry that I WANT to get baptized", not, "...that I WANTED to get baptized." That´s a start. I just can´t wait for her to read the Book of Mormon. We weren´t able to give her a copy until yesterday because we´d run out, and when we finally handed her her first copy, it was such a reverent moment. Normally we just dish them out like candy, but with her we´d been telling her about it all week, promising her further insight and assurance, and when she took it in her hands for the first time you could just feel how moved she was to be gifted with her very own copy to study. And she will study it. I have no doubt about that. She´s already read all the pamphlets we gave her, and she loves to learn.

 

We´ve been spending a lot of time with the Familia Granados this week because their daughter Jessica comes with us to visit Veronica sometimes, Hna. Granados feeds us lunch on Saturdays, and Hno. Granados is in the district presidency. They´re like our foster family here in Paraguay. We love them so much. Hna. Granados is so motherly. When she says, "Sit down, Hermana," or "Have second helpings, Hermana," I just say "Yes, ma´am." The way she looks at you when she tells you to do something, you know she doesn´t take no for an answer, no matter how in a hurry youare or how full your stomachs are. Anyways, we had Noche de Hogar with them on Thursday night, and while two of the other people we´d invited didn´t show up (we´re trying to invite lots of people to lots of activities to strengthen the ward), an inactive older man named Filimon came. He´d never come to a Noche de Hogar before and he loved it so much. He´s so sweet and wants to do all he can to share the gospel. We´re trying to get him to the temple to be sealed with his family.

 

Out of time. Sorry. I love you all!!!

 

---Hna. Springer