Hey everybody!Can you believe I´ve been gone for 15 weeks already? I certainly can´t. And I´ve now officially been in Paraguay for one whole change! Crazy! We got our changes this morning and turns out nothing´s changing at all for me. I´m staying with Hna. Stagg here in good old Mariano Roque Alonso B for at least six more weeks.
For a lot of reasons I´m both sad and happy about that. There are some days where I just want to go somewhere else. I feel like I´ve been rejected by every single person in our neighborhood and I´d like nothing else than to start over in an area where I don´t know what the people are like. But at the same time, we have so many great people who I would be devestated to leave. And I really do love being with Hna. Stagg. She can be pretty blunt sometimes, but she´s a great teacher and a wonderful companion. I feel like I grow to love her more and more every day.
Thank you everyone for your letters. I´m soryr I haven´t been very good at responding. I sent a snail mail letter last week. Let me know when it gets to you. I think from now on I´m just going to write my weekly e-mail, send some pictures, then print off your e-mails and snail mail my replies to them. Sorry, but I really REALLY want to reply to everything and that just doesn´t work without snail mail being involved. :) Also, I´m trying to find a thumb drive so I can send you all my pictures in the mail, along with a present for Amanda (it may or may not get to you before your wedding, Manfred).
This week was so much better than the last one, numbers- and quality-wise. First of all, we had a baptism! YAY!! After a lot of drama involving her Anglican grandma, nine-year-old Victoria Gomez was finally baptized on Friday. We´ve been visiting her almost every day for the past two weeks, teaching her all we know at the request of her dad. It´s been really fun. I love her family. Her dad is a member but he hasn´t been active for years. He isn´t married to Victoria´s mom because, wouldn´t you know it, he´s married to someone else. But he wanted to see his little girl living the gospel so badly that he´s now reactivated and after a 10-year struggle he should be getting a divorce this May. We really hope that after they´re married, Hna. Gomez will get baptized, too.
The actually baptism started off being a nightmare. Hna. Stagg and I got up really early and walked way out to the chapel to clean the font and all the rooms and get everything pretty. We wanted everything to be perfect, not only for Victoria but also for her non-member family members who were probably going to compare everything with the grand, ceremonial way of doing baptisms in other churches. As we were cleaning we discovered that all of the baptism clothes were missing. Not good. We made a lot of calls and our ward mission leader, Cesar, promised to take care of it for us. We went the rest of the day unworried. Then at 6:00 we went back to the chapel to make last-minute preparations before the 7:00 baptism. At 7:00 the Gomez family showed up. At 7:05 the branch president, who was going to do the baptism, called to say he couldn´t make it. We were obviously very upset, and I did all I could to keep the family happy as Hna. Stagg called every priesthood holder we know. Sadly, there are only about 20 worthy priesthood holders in the whole branch. Cesar showed up at 7:30 and said he could do the baptism, and we were relieved until we realized that we still needed two priesthood-holding witnesses. Also, he had only been able to find one jumpsuit for the baptism,. THANKFULLY Victoria happened to be wearing a white dress, so Cesar could use the jumpsuit and she could use her own dress for the baptism. More phone calls and a lot of prayers later, at 8:00 we were finally ready to do the baptism. We´d sung songs and eaten our refreshments already to keep everyone entertained. There still weren´t many people there, but Hna. Stagg and I were trying to be as tranquila and optimistic as possible.
Then we opened the divider to the font.
It was empty.
At 7:15, to entertain Victoria, Hna. Stagg had taken her to look at the font. Victoria is a bit afraid of water and so she wanted to see how much there was. Hna. Stagg saw that it was a little too full, so she started to drain it a bit. After this morning we knew that it drained very slowly, so she was planning on just turning it off right when the baptism started. But after all the drama with the clothing and the priesthood holder and the fact that very few people had turned up to support Victoria, by 8:00 when we were ready to go, the font had completely drained. Hna. Stagg felt SO BAD as you can imagine. We apologized to the family a thousand times over, and we finished the rest of our food and sang more songs to wait as the font refilled.
It turned out to be really great, though. Victoria didn´t want a lot of water anyways, so we didn´t have to wait too long to get started. And by the time we did start, the youth (who are AMAZING here) had showed up for an activity and they put it off so they could attend, filling the previously-empty room. Victoria was beaming. She was never once upset about anything, and everyone in the branch who gave talks for her made her feel really special. It was really beautiful. Her dad cried, and her mom told us that she´d been very touched and almost cried, too.
Hna. Gomez came to church yesterday to see Victoria confirmed. We were so happy to see her come. She´s always not liked the church before, but she´s so pretty and kind and just amazing that we´ve always wanted to see her there. We did all we could to make her feel welcome and happy. Her two-year-old daughter Sophie behaved herself perfectly the whole time, and when she was asked to give the prayer after Gospel Principles, Hna. Gomez gave a beautiful prayer thanking God for the Priesthood. It was lovely.
Turns out, though, that someone in the ward talked to her while our backs were turned and told her that she couldn´t go to the regular class with her husband but had to go with us to the "special class" with us missionaries and our investigators. Then she was told rather bluntly that she couldn´t take the sacrament because she was living in sin. Now she doesn´t like the church again. Great. Thankfully she still loves Hna. Stagg and I, for which I´m very glad, but at the same time I need to do a lot of repenting for all the times i´ve been angry with the branch members.
Aside from the Gomez family, we have two other really great investigators right now who we love to teach because we can really see the gospel changing their lives and the lives of their families. One of them is Elber, who is still just GOLD! I absolutely love teaching him. He´s so fun to talk to and he believes what we tell him so readily. The other night, after he told us how he´d read the intro to the Book of Mormon and believed Joseph Smith´s testimony (yay!) we mentioned how we need to not drink. He was like, "Cool. I´ve always hated drinking anyways." Then we said he couldn´t smoke. "Oh no!" he said. We´d already seen him smoking, but we were so happy with how he reacted. The way he said it wasn´t the usual, "That´s it, I don´t believe you anymore. Get out." It was more like, "Oh no! That´s gonna be so hard to quit. I´ll have to get started on that." He is so awesome!
Unfortunately, though, he mentioned how before his marriage the priest had told him he had to confess (he was complaining about the hypocrisy of the Catholic church at the time), and we now suspect he was married in the Catholic church. Which means he literally can´t get a divorce. GRRRR!! I´m not giving up, though. If nothing else we´re going to make sure that he gains a solid testimony and does all he can given the circumstances to live the gospel.
The other investigator we have is named Veronica. She´s the cousin of an inactive family we´ve been trying to reactivate lately. We´ve never talked to her alone before, but yesterday we had the opportunity. She´s only 17 and when we asked what she wanted most in life, she said, "I want a job so I can help other people. And I want to be with my family forever." Yeah. She´s gold, too. We had the most beautiful lesson with her on a beautiful Sunday morning, just talking in her front yard about how through the gospel she CAN have her family forever. She was so moved, and she sincerely expressed her desires to learn more. I can´t wait to get started teaching her.
We have a lot of big plans for the ward here. We need to reactivate so many families. There are at least 2,000 members in all of Mariano, but we only have about 100 come to church regularly. The branch president is getting us all excited to reactivate everyone so that we can have THREE branches here instead of just one. That way we can have more chapels and it will be easier for people to come. Funny how that works.
One last story before I have to go. Yesterday morning Hna. Stagg woke up with a gasp. It was the usual 6:30, except that we´d forgotten about Daylight Savings. We had no idea if it was 5:30 and we had another hour to sleep, or if it was 7:30 and we were going to be late for church. I was hoping it was 5:30 but since in the states it´s summer I figured we´d spring forward too and it was 7:30. We didn´t want to call anyone in case it was 5:30 and they would hate us, but we had to know. So Hna. Stagg called one of the Chicos, Flopi. She´s 11. This was their conversation.
"...hola?" "Hola Flopi!" "...Hermana? What happened?" "Nothing, nothing! We just have a question. What time is it?" "...no sé, Hermana." "Could you go check, please?" "...*yawn* Sí.....It´s 5:00, Hermana." "Thanks, Flopi! Go back to sleep!" "Uh huh..."
It was so funny. :)
Well, time´s up again. I hope you´re all doing well and that you enjoy the pictures! I love you all! Never forget that no matter what your circumstances or your sorrows, the solution is always to do what God says, and then everything will turn out perfect. Take care!
---Hermana Springer
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