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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
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