Week 14 - Asuncion Paraguay - Mariano Roque Alonzo

Dearest Family,

Thank you so much for your letters.

I really really really want to answer all your questions.

I feel like we do have the most success with the younger people for exactly that reason--they´re not trapped in sticky divorce situations and they´re trying to figure out their lives. The older people are SUPER nice here, but they think that everyone who´s Christian is going to make it to heaven so why worry. The mission president hasn´t really said much about who we´re supposed to focus on. I think the philosophy is just that everyone´s a child of God so focus on everyone. :) We do a lot of contacting but not really tracting. We just go from one appointment to another and talk to people in the streets as we go. Our members and investigators are so spaced out that we do a lot of street contacting.

It´s not actually impossible to get a divorce anymore. The government used to be ruled by teh Catholic church, and in Catholicism it is literally impossible to get a divorce. Now it´s just super super expensive. People are becoming more open-minded and the Church is doing a lot of petitioning to let people get their marriages and families figured out.

I did get to watch all of Conference, in English even! My Spanish is coming along pretty great. Only if someone talks really fast or in a weird accent can I not understand, usually. Replying is always more difficult, but está bien. I watched in English so that I could get the most out of the message, and so that I could hear the familiar voices of our beloved church leaders. It was weird not watching from home and having to run around and find people before, after, and between sessions. But I loved it, of course. I learned so much about what I need to improve in my life as a missionary and as a whole. I´m excited for the future. I really am.

What has surprised me the most about the people, their culture, the environment, the language, the work, etc? I was surprised to learn that the people don´t hate Americans. When I first showed up they kept telling me not to speak English or I´d get robbed, and not to do anything American-ish like refuse second helpings or I´d offend everybody. As a result, I barely spoke at all those first three days and I stuffed myself to where I physically couldn´t eat anymore. It was not very fun. Now I´m totally at ease, though, and really most people assume we´re Germans.

As for their culture, it´s just crazy how social they are, how much they love to talk, and yet how much they learn. It´s like they have two mouths and one ear instead of the opposite. People are just so ignorant sometimes, it drives me nuts. They love to watch TV, sit outside and gossip, talk on their cell phones, and claim that they love Maria, but none of them actually DOES anything. They work, then they come home and sit around and do nothing. It´s sad. It really is. I know the church can help them so much, but many of the people we talk to just want hand-outs. Stupid government.

The environment is HOT. Everyone was telling me it only got to 80 degrees but it felt like 100 degrees. Liars. It feels like 200. I have to carry an umbrella around for shade because sunblock does almost nothing and I sweat like a pig. The rain´s fun, though. Last week it was overcast almost the whole time with a brief downpour once a day. Loved it.

The language is easier to understand than I expected. Guaraní uses a lot of sounds that English uses but not Spanish, so people here actually speak really bad Spanish with accents closer to English than I expected. They´re fairly easy to understand. Except they use bad grammar that threw me off at first, like ¨Me voy a casa¨ When in reality there is no such verb as irse.

The work is difficult but I find something to be grateful about every day. I think I expected to feel the Spirit a lot more than I actually do. That´s bad, I know. It´s totally my fault. If I don´t have the Spirit, I can´t do anything, and I´m trying really really hard to let it guide me. This first month I´ve mostly just been trailing behind Hna. Stagg trying to learn everything. Whenever I speak, though, I rely on the Lord to tell me what to say. I´m learning to be more bold in speaking with people and meeting their eyes. I got in a bad habit of just letting Hna. Stagg dominate every conversation until people forgot I was there. I´m changing that, though, don´t worry. I know I´ve already grown so much and done a lot of good here. I´m gonna continue to be the best missionary I can be.

My favorite thing about Paraguay is the fruit. That´s a very temporal thing to love about a people and culture, but it´s true. The fruit is AMAZING. And the flowers. Everything just has so much color and life to it.

A typical work day...We get up at 630 am and do exercise for a half hour. I mostly do strength training and Hna. Stagg jogs in a tiny circle through our tiny apartment. At 700 we get ready for the day and I try to squeeze some journalling in. Then at 800 we do personal study. We´re starting to read Preach My Gospel cover-to-cover this month, 3 pages a day through June I think. You should do it too! Anyways, then at 900 we have companionship study where we do a practice and discuss what we learned during personal study, etc. At 1000 we plan our day and I study the language a bit. Then we usually have a lunch cita at 1200, so we try to throw in a lesson or two before that. But lunch is like dinner here. Everyone makes a big deal out of it. They come home from work, school lets out, and we almost never get anyone to let us in because they´re busy. So we usually really just work from 3:00 to 9:30. I think we have about 10 planned lessons a day, and when things fall through or we have extra time we go in search for new people to teach. Then it´s back home where we rendere our numbers, do some more journalling, and it´s straight to bed at 10:30.

Shoot, I just remembered I forgot to get some pictures started loading. Dang it! I´m so sorry. I try, I really do. Someday I´ll get a ton printed and send them in the mail. In the meantime, just use your imaginations, I guess... :/

This is ending up being my weekly letter because i´m running out of time. Sorry.

This week we had nobody show up to Conference. not a single investigator. I was extremely devestated, especially since all this week I talked to EVERYBODY about how the prophet of GOD was going to speak and how amazing it was going to be. We passed by for so many people, had so many people promise to come, were so certain that we´d have big numbers... nothing. And then as the prophet and apostles spoke, I heard something that every single one of our investigators could have really used in their lives. I was so sad. But we´ll get the Liahona in a month and I´m going to tell them all about how much they missed out.

This week also my digestive system finally started fighting back, after a month of strange food. It was horrible. I´d been secretly wishing for a break from everything, but when my insides started feeling like barbed wire, it was right before our trip to the temple and General Conference! I wasn´t going to miss out on that! So I let my mama give me some of her remedies and I was fine through all the important things. Afterwards, though. Blech. I hardly had to buy any food today for this week. I had no appetite at all and now I have a lot of food left over.

The temple was amazing. I listened to the sessions in Spanish and all the workers were from Mesa, Arizona! It was funny, I actually had a harder time understanding their Spanish than Paraguayan Spanish because theirs was so atrocious. Sorry, but it was. They were so sweet, though, and you could just see how much they love their job.

I´ll send pictures next week and write more about Conference when I have time. I´m actually thinking I¨m gonna try and send a letter home this week. You might get it in a month. :)

In other news, I finally had my first experience with ginormous bugs in the apartment. First was a humongous spider that looked very much like a baby tarantula. Thankfully it was half-dead already so I didn´t freak out too badly. Then last night I heard this creepy scuttling sound as I was studying before bed and turned to see a cockroach the size of a small sparrow skittering across our floor. It was heading to my bed so I soccer-kicked it into the bathroom, then flipped it over onto its back so it couldn´t run away as I searched for something to trap it in. I used a cereal box to evict it, but when I told Hna. Stagg about it this morning I realized how stupid that was. Now it´s probably going to come back. But I didn´t want to squish cockroach guts all over our floor. It was so huge.

Okay, I´m out of time. I love you all and I´m sorry I have so little time to write everything and send pictures and adequately express my love and appreciation for you and the Gospel. Know that I´m having a great time and I know that I´m doing a marvellous work here in Paraguay. Thank you for your prayers!!

--Hna. Springer