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.
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| 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.
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