Hola familia!
Thank you so much for the many e-mails and ranch pictures! Thank you for your support and encouragement Grandma Springer, Sarah, Dad, James, and Laurel. You guys are seriously the best, and I love hearing how you´re doing just as much as you say you love hearing about me. :) And Maddy, I got your graduation announcement! You are such a babe. Thanks for thinking to send one to me.
We´ve had a good week this week. Knowing that it may very well be out last week together (Changes AGAIN?? Sheesh!), Hna. Tua´one and I have been sure to take lots of pictures and do lots of bonding at the end of the day. Our district has been so cool this Change. I´m going to miss how it is right now. Today the Elders finally invited Hna. Tua´one and I to a P-Day activity. Apparently they play cards and/or ping-pong and/or go out to lunch together every week. So nice of them to invite us after I´ve been here FOUR MONTHS. We gave them a lot of grief about that, then fed them Hna. Tua´one´s Red Vines just to ensure that they invite us again next time. :) Today we played "Scum" in the chapel for a bit, then went to a nice restaurant "downtown." I had no idea there were restaurants like that in Mariano--with actual menus and decorations and waiters. It was nice. We had a really good time.
Griselda´s baptism went great. The youth in our ward ran the show, as they awesomely tend to do, and there were no set-backs at all. We´d had a scare earlier that day, though. While Hna. Tua´one helped Griselda wash some dishes, she had me go get her mom´s signature, because she needed her guardian´s permission to be baptized. After chit-chatting a bit, I asked, "So, Griselda has your permission to be baptized, right?" and my heart plummeted when her mom´s smile faded and her eyes darkened and she said, "Griselda´s already baptized in the Catholic church." After months of teaching, all I could stammer was, "She hasn´t talked with you about this at all??" She said, "Well, yeah, but I thought she was kidding!" I was so scared. SO scared. I thought after all of our hard work, after the jovenes had already planned everything for that night, her mom was gonna say no. Turns out, though, that her mom just didn´t understand baptism and wasn´t too keen on rewarding Griselda with anything because she was being disobedient earlier that week. But I explained to her that baptism is a covenant with God and a new beginning with Griselda, and her mom was really happy to hear about the rules about dating, alcohol, and respecting parents. We got her consent and it all went fine. More than fine. Griselda has a member cousin who was there, and who brought her to church the next day. I´m so grateful for that cousin. It´s so nice to not have a recent convert depending completely on us missionaries to stay active in the church or to walk with them to church every Sunday. I know Griselda´s in good hands, and I can rest easy.
This week we´ve been doing a lot of finding, now that our two golden investigators are baptized and confirmed and mostly in the hands of the ward. We´ve been working farther and farther away from our house, hoping to find people who have had contact with the missionaries before but not so much that they´ve hardened their hearts already. Earlier this week we found such an investigator. His name is Mario and he´s a great guy, but it´s very challenging to teach him because he can´t hear. Thankfully he can read or I don´t know what we´d do. We teach him by playing charades and writing and giving him scriptures and pamphlets to read. He´s already been taught by the missionaries a LONG time ago. His nephew was actually baptized. But he always felt like he can´t go to church because he can´t hear. We´re trying to teach him that the Spirit doesn´t teach us through our ears, but through our hearts. The poor guy´s got kind of a sad history, and I want him to feel the fellowship and love of the church so much. First when he was in the army (or something--it´s kind of hard to communicate the details between us) he underwent some kind of psychological torture that took his hearing away, then his sister dumped his nephew on him, and he raised him like his son, only to have the sister come take him away again, and now the church next-door is claiming his property as theirs and trying to evict him. It´s so sad.
Paraguay really is a sad place sometimes. I think about the curse on the Promised Land a lot--how when people set their riches down, they won´t find them again in the morning. EVERYONE gets robbed of their cell phones here. Nobody dares walk alone at night, and they all have huge walls around their yards topped with barbed wire, spikes, broken glass, and/or an electric fence. I´ve never felt threatened. Walking in pairs always helps, and our living place is really secure. Anyways, people just aren´t trusting here. There´s no such thing as service. Whenever we offer to help someone, they shriek, "NOOO!" because they think we´re either trying to butter them up to rob them or we expect to be paid later. We´ve also had a lot of menos activos asking us for money lately. So many here in Mariano were baptized thinking they would get a cash prize or something, and everyone tries to appeal to the blonde, rich American girl for money. Even the good members of the ward ask us for stuff, too proud to ask their neighbors or branch friends. We try to get them to help themselves, but it´s really hard when they live with such a messed up government. It certainly is a different world down here.
P.S. GBTV sounds awesome. "The Book of Mormon" musical? Not so much. Though, publicity is publicity, as I said about Sr. Torres a few weeks ago. And I´ve been reading in 1 Nephi a lot lately, loving Nephi´s vision about our latter-day history. I kind of stopped reading the Bible. It was really fun, but honestly, it left kind of an empty feeling. I need to find a balance between reading the Bible and studying the Book of Mormon, because if I´m not reading the Book of Mormon every day, I don´t have the same excitement to go out and teach. It truly is the best book in the world. Anyways, at first I was thinking I didn´t want to re-read all of Nephi´s stories because they´re what I´ve read the most in my attempts to read the Book of Mormon start to finish. :) But you can always find something new to learn from the scriptures. This time through, I loved reading how when Lehi told his sons about his vision, Laman and Lemuel just debated amongst themselves what Lehi was talking about. But Nephi turned to the Lord, pondering the things he´d heard and believing that the Lord could help him understand. Starting at 1 Ne. 15:8(?--I don´t have my scriptures on me) I really like Nephi´s response to his brothers about how we need to act. We can´t just have the scriptures in our hands, we need to study them. We can´t just believe that there is a God, we need to rely on His guidance in all things. And I love reading about Nephi´s vision of the history of the United States and the formation of the great and abominable church and how the Church of Jesus Christ is small but will flood the earth and eventually win. People can rail on us all they want, but we have the promise that our enemies will fall into the pits they dig for us. :)
Let´s see, what else... Hna. Tua´one and I check each other for lice a lot now. She still finds some in my hair now and again but it´s not too bad, and I use that tea tree oil stuff you gave me. Also, sorry, I don´t have pictures of the tarantula. I lent my camera to a couple in the branch who went to the temple to get sealed this week. And I never got a good look at it myself, but Hna. Tua´one tells me that yes, in fact, it WAS very fast and that it jumped (EEEWW!) and that it was so big she could see its eyes. That´s enough for me. Ew. I´m still kind of afraid of my closet. I throw open the doors half-expecting to see a spider in there again, and I´m sure to shake out all of my clothes really well before I put them on. :) There wasn´t anything in my laundry bag this time. When Martin delivered my bag I asked him if he´d double-checked, and he said, "No hay una araña. Una anaconda no más." Silly kid. :)
I got my wish. Last week I was complaining about the heat, and now it´s FREEZING. It feels like there should be snow, seriously. We bundle up really well every day, and at the end of the day we rush into our bedroom where there´s a heater and snuggle under our covers. Our room is really toasty (no Dad, I don´t need a sleeping bag. Even if I get Changed, every Hermana´s place has a heater, don´t worry), but the rest of the rooms are ice cold. We have to wear gloves when we study, and hot chocolate is our new best friend.
This week at district meeting we got the mail, and the office elders sent me back the big envelope of photos I sent you. Apparently there was a mix-up. NOW it´s on its way for sure. Sorry. I need to go develop a new batch soon, as none of those I sent are of this Change with Hna. Tua´one. Wow, June went by so fast. I can´t believe it´s gonna be July already. I hope you all have fun plans for the Fourth. We´re gonna try and have another district activity--preferably a barbecue. :)
Well, that´s all for today. Thank you so much again for your letters. I love you so much and I´ll be sure to send out more snail mail letters to show my appreciation. LOVE YOU!!
--Hna. Springer
Monday, June 27, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
Week 25 - Asuncion Paraguay - Mariano Roque Alonzo
Dear Family,
Hermana Tua´one is officially my hero. Despite being sick two days this week, she worked as hard as she could and we almost met our weekly goals even with the missed time. She´s so great with all the members and our investigators, and we´re seeing a lot of progress this Change.
Not only is she a great missionary, she´s an amazing friend. She had my back in major ways twice this week. First was when, after a few days of me being in denial, I told her that my scalp was itching really badly. For the next two hours she picked lice out of my hair, and that was the day she was sick! Yes, I got lice. After only three and a half months in Paraguay. It was really nasty, but now the itching is gone and my hair has been declared clean, and I´m told I´m less likely to get it again now. I´m not sure how much I believe that...
The second time she was my hero was just this morning. We´d just come back from grocery shopping. I opened my wardrobe to get my sweats to lounge around in, and there on the back panel of the wardrobe was a tarantula. This wasn´t the little baby, half-dead tarantula of that time with Hna. Stagg. No, this was like the father of all nastiness--as big as my palm and very much alive. I immediately shouted for my companion. She came running, and after giving her my flashlight and showing her where the monster had gone, I fled to the opposite end of the apartment. The next twenty minutes were very dramatic. Equipped with a plastic pitcher and a piece of cardboard, Hna. Tua´one struggled to evict the spider, first from amongst my clothes, and then out of the house. Sometimes it seemed like a fight to the death ("Ew! Ew! EEEWWW!"..."No, get off of that!"..."Oh gosh, it´s in your coat!!"..."AAARGH!!"), other times there was a tense silence as she carefully tried to trap the thing. I just watched from the kitchen, laughing and shuddering and stomach churning. Finally the eight-legged freak was caught in the pitcher. I followed Hna. Tua´one outside, armed with bug killer, ready to finish this battle with chemical warfare. But the kid of the people we live behind was out there, feeding his ducks, and when he heard we had a tarantula to kill he suggested we feed it to his ducks. That proved a much more satisfying end as the ducks eagerly chowed down with much excited quacking, leaving no body to dispose of. I was ready to invite the ducks to move into my wardrobe but sadly that´s against mission rules.
I couldn´t rest until I had sprayed bug killer all over the house, and I´m still not gonna feel secure using my wardrobe for a while. I carefully extracted an examined everything in there using a pair of coat hangers and sprayed it all with bug killer just for good measure. i just can´t get over the fact that it was in my clothes! The only way I can imagine that it got into my always-locked-tight closet is through my laundry. It must have hitched a ride from the plant-filled backyard of the woman who does my laundry, and it must have been chilling in my socks as I put them in my closet. That means that at some point, I was HOLDING IT!! Thankfully I was too lazy to put my clothes away nicely this morning, or finding that thing would have been a lot more traumatic. *SHUDDER*
So yeah, I love Hna. Tua´one. I´ve pretty much sworn to wait on her hand and foot for as long as she´s my companion. :)
Anyways...how are you all doing? Having a nice, tarantula-free week, i hope? It sounds like you´re all having a great time hanging out in Utah together. Dad and Mom, I totally think you should just move to Utah. That would be so sweet to just fly home to the Salt Lake airport and be greeted by the entire extended family. Not that I ever think about the day I fly home... :)
Oh, Happy Father´s Day by the way! Grandpa Springer, Goompa, Dad, Clayton, Todd, Neil, Jared, James, Jens, Taylor, and EVERYBODY, thank you for being so amazing. You are really all such an inspiration to me. I´m so glad to have you as father figures in my life. Paraguayan men celebrated Father´s Day by getting too drunk to walk. I was very very grateful for all of you that day, for being such awesome fathers, uncles, husbands, and grandfathers and making our family such a happy place to be. I hope I can marry somebody who will be as good a father as all of you are. Not that I ever think about being married... :)
Our investigators are all doing great. We´re teaching some really nice people. Not all of them are totally gung-ho about learning about the church, but the one who is makes it all worth it. Griselda is an absolute joy to teach. Every time we go to her house, she´s not only read the pamphlet or chapter we assigned her last time, but she´s taken detailed notes and enjoys teaching US the doctrines. She went to one of the Elders´ baptisms with us on Saturday, and she came to church with us yesterday in a pretty pink skirt borrowed from her cousin. Now we´re planning her baptism on the 25th, and we´re all super excited. She´s being such a great example for her siblings, and I think her mom really likes the gospel, too. I hope to see her whole family baptized someday.
Last Monday, right after I e-mailed you, we went to go visit Hna. Sanchez, and the change in her was amazing. I was there for her baptism and her confirmation, but it was like she transformed Sunday night. When we showed up at her house, she came to greet us, and it was like she was a completely new person. She walked tall, she was smiling, she seemed really put-together, and she just FELT like a member of the Church. I can´t really describe it. You could just feel the Spirit in her, and it made me so happy to see how much happier she is. Now we´re teaching her about the temple and getting her ready to make more and more covenants and receive more and more blessings for herself and her family.
I´ve beeing going through the scripture reference guide i made in the MTC and marking key scriptures in my Spanish set to use during lessons. In doing so, I found that 1 Corinthians is my new favorite book of scripture. There are so many jewels of knowledge in there that are so useful when teaching--references to the Kingdoms of Glory, baptisms for the dead... I especially enjoyed reading chapters 12 and 14. I wish I´d read 14 a long time ago, as it addresses speaking in tongues--something that people bring up a LOT here in Paraguay. What I love about that chapter is that Paul compares speaking in tongues with prophecy, and ultimately concludes that prophecy for the edification of the church is a thousand times more important than speaking in a language that nobody else can understand. That´s what God and the Gospel is all about--making things clearer so that all can be edified. I try to help people understand that, but some Paraguayans seem determined to remain confused and hoodwinked.
And I lied, I totally have been thinking about marriage and the day I come home lately. Not in a trunkie, "I want this to be over" way, but in a very constructive, motivating way. Amanda´s wedding certainly got marriage on my mind, and in reading the conference talks and remembering Father´s Day, I´m realizing just how important marriage is. Families are so key to happiness here in this life and in the eternities. I´m so so SO grateful to have an eternal family. I don´t even want to think about what kind of life I would have without that knowledge of eternal families.
As for thinking about the day I go home, in Preach My Gospel there´s an activity where it encourages us to do that and ask ourselves what kind of person we will have become after our mission and what kind of legacy we want to have left behind. After every lesson, at the end of every day, I love to think about all the people that the Lord has put in my path and all the inspiration that has come to my mind that day. I´m reminded constantly that there is a higher purpose to it all, and that this is my time to really make a difference in Paraguay.
Well, that´s all for today. I hope you´re all enjoying the non-humidity. I really hope it rains here soon because this muggy, sweaty heat doesn´t make it really easy to get up and go. I thought it was supposed to be winter?
I love you all and hope you have an amazing week. Don´t forget to write before next Monday. Read the scriptures every day and try to find some new inspiration every time. Thank you for everything.
Love forever and ever,
---Hna. Springer
Hermana Tua´one is officially my hero. Despite being sick two days this week, she worked as hard as she could and we almost met our weekly goals even with the missed time. She´s so great with all the members and our investigators, and we´re seeing a lot of progress this Change.
Not only is she a great missionary, she´s an amazing friend. She had my back in major ways twice this week. First was when, after a few days of me being in denial, I told her that my scalp was itching really badly. For the next two hours she picked lice out of my hair, and that was the day she was sick! Yes, I got lice. After only three and a half months in Paraguay. It was really nasty, but now the itching is gone and my hair has been declared clean, and I´m told I´m less likely to get it again now. I´m not sure how much I believe that...
The second time she was my hero was just this morning. We´d just come back from grocery shopping. I opened my wardrobe to get my sweats to lounge around in, and there on the back panel of the wardrobe was a tarantula. This wasn´t the little baby, half-dead tarantula of that time with Hna. Stagg. No, this was like the father of all nastiness--as big as my palm and very much alive. I immediately shouted for my companion. She came running, and after giving her my flashlight and showing her where the monster had gone, I fled to the opposite end of the apartment. The next twenty minutes were very dramatic. Equipped with a plastic pitcher and a piece of cardboard, Hna. Tua´one struggled to evict the spider, first from amongst my clothes, and then out of the house. Sometimes it seemed like a fight to the death ("Ew! Ew! EEEWWW!"..."No, get off of that!"..."Oh gosh, it´s in your coat!!"..."AAARGH!!"), other times there was a tense silence as she carefully tried to trap the thing. I just watched from the kitchen, laughing and shuddering and stomach churning. Finally the eight-legged freak was caught in the pitcher. I followed Hna. Tua´one outside, armed with bug killer, ready to finish this battle with chemical warfare. But the kid of the people we live behind was out there, feeding his ducks, and when he heard we had a tarantula to kill he suggested we feed it to his ducks. That proved a much more satisfying end as the ducks eagerly chowed down with much excited quacking, leaving no body to dispose of. I was ready to invite the ducks to move into my wardrobe but sadly that´s against mission rules.
I couldn´t rest until I had sprayed bug killer all over the house, and I´m still not gonna feel secure using my wardrobe for a while. I carefully extracted an examined everything in there using a pair of coat hangers and sprayed it all with bug killer just for good measure. i just can´t get over the fact that it was in my clothes! The only way I can imagine that it got into my always-locked-tight closet is through my laundry. It must have hitched a ride from the plant-filled backyard of the woman who does my laundry, and it must have been chilling in my socks as I put them in my closet. That means that at some point, I was HOLDING IT!! Thankfully I was too lazy to put my clothes away nicely this morning, or finding that thing would have been a lot more traumatic. *SHUDDER*
So yeah, I love Hna. Tua´one. I´ve pretty much sworn to wait on her hand and foot for as long as she´s my companion. :)
Anyways...how are you all doing? Having a nice, tarantula-free week, i hope? It sounds like you´re all having a great time hanging out in Utah together. Dad and Mom, I totally think you should just move to Utah. That would be so sweet to just fly home to the Salt Lake airport and be greeted by the entire extended family. Not that I ever think about the day I fly home... :)
Oh, Happy Father´s Day by the way! Grandpa Springer, Goompa, Dad, Clayton, Todd, Neil, Jared, James, Jens, Taylor, and EVERYBODY, thank you for being so amazing. You are really all such an inspiration to me. I´m so glad to have you as father figures in my life. Paraguayan men celebrated Father´s Day by getting too drunk to walk. I was very very grateful for all of you that day, for being such awesome fathers, uncles, husbands, and grandfathers and making our family such a happy place to be. I hope I can marry somebody who will be as good a father as all of you are. Not that I ever think about being married... :)
Our investigators are all doing great. We´re teaching some really nice people. Not all of them are totally gung-ho about learning about the church, but the one who is makes it all worth it. Griselda is an absolute joy to teach. Every time we go to her house, she´s not only read the pamphlet or chapter we assigned her last time, but she´s taken detailed notes and enjoys teaching US the doctrines. She went to one of the Elders´ baptisms with us on Saturday, and she came to church with us yesterday in a pretty pink skirt borrowed from her cousin. Now we´re planning her baptism on the 25th, and we´re all super excited. She´s being such a great example for her siblings, and I think her mom really likes the gospel, too. I hope to see her whole family baptized someday.
Last Monday, right after I e-mailed you, we went to go visit Hna. Sanchez, and the change in her was amazing. I was there for her baptism and her confirmation, but it was like she transformed Sunday night. When we showed up at her house, she came to greet us, and it was like she was a completely new person. She walked tall, she was smiling, she seemed really put-together, and she just FELT like a member of the Church. I can´t really describe it. You could just feel the Spirit in her, and it made me so happy to see how much happier she is. Now we´re teaching her about the temple and getting her ready to make more and more covenants and receive more and more blessings for herself and her family.
I´ve beeing going through the scripture reference guide i made in the MTC and marking key scriptures in my Spanish set to use during lessons. In doing so, I found that 1 Corinthians is my new favorite book of scripture. There are so many jewels of knowledge in there that are so useful when teaching--references to the Kingdoms of Glory, baptisms for the dead... I especially enjoyed reading chapters 12 and 14. I wish I´d read 14 a long time ago, as it addresses speaking in tongues--something that people bring up a LOT here in Paraguay. What I love about that chapter is that Paul compares speaking in tongues with prophecy, and ultimately concludes that prophecy for the edification of the church is a thousand times more important than speaking in a language that nobody else can understand. That´s what God and the Gospel is all about--making things clearer so that all can be edified. I try to help people understand that, but some Paraguayans seem determined to remain confused and hoodwinked.
And I lied, I totally have been thinking about marriage and the day I come home lately. Not in a trunkie, "I want this to be over" way, but in a very constructive, motivating way. Amanda´s wedding certainly got marriage on my mind, and in reading the conference talks and remembering Father´s Day, I´m realizing just how important marriage is. Families are so key to happiness here in this life and in the eternities. I´m so so SO grateful to have an eternal family. I don´t even want to think about what kind of life I would have without that knowledge of eternal families.
As for thinking about the day I go home, in Preach My Gospel there´s an activity where it encourages us to do that and ask ourselves what kind of person we will have become after our mission and what kind of legacy we want to have left behind. After every lesson, at the end of every day, I love to think about all the people that the Lord has put in my path and all the inspiration that has come to my mind that day. I´m reminded constantly that there is a higher purpose to it all, and that this is my time to really make a difference in Paraguay.
Well, that´s all for today. I hope you´re all enjoying the non-humidity. I really hope it rains here soon because this muggy, sweaty heat doesn´t make it really easy to get up and go. I thought it was supposed to be winter?
I love you all and hope you have an amazing week. Don´t forget to write before next Monday. Read the scriptures every day and try to find some new inspiration every time. Thank you for everything.
Love forever and ever,
---Hna. Springer
Week 24 - Asuncion Paraguay - Mariano Roque Alonzo
Hey family!!
I hope you´re all having a blast at the ranch, the cabin, southern Utah, California, and all those other awesome places. Thank you Grandma and Grandpa Springer, Chelsy and the Hunts, the Anderson family, Cami, Sarah, Dad, and Mom for your letters this week. It means a lot to me that you took the time out of your vacations to shoot me a letter. Cami, I had no idea you´re planning on serving a mission. That´s so great! I just sent you and your family a letter in the mail so look forward to that soon. :) Grandma, that´s so sad that the cabin roof is caving in and that you had to cut down the tire swing tree. things can´t last forever, but it´d be cool if they could. :(
We finally had a baptism!! I was so worried that something would be wrong with Hna. Sanchez´s health and we would have to put off her baptism again, but nope! Since the Elders gave her a blessing she hasn´t had a problem. We had to go to Asuncion for an interview with President Madariaga and she came no problem. She was healthy the day of her baptism, and she came to church the next morning. I love the Priesthood. :)
The baptism was really nice. The Elders had one, too, so Hna. T and I didn´t have to get up super early to clean the font or anything. It was all planned for us, we just had to make sure Hna. Sanchez was ready. She definitely was. I was so glad that we got to take her to meet President beforehand. After her interview with him, I was 100% positive that she was truly ready to make this important covenant in her life. And President has an amazing spirit of love and peace about him that I´m glad she got to feel. She´s my first real convert, and I was so unbelievably happy to see her enter the waters of baptism and lead her to the front of the chapel to recieve the gift of the Holy Ghost. She´d been worried that the water would be cold (and I´d heard stories of people backing out of baptism just because of cold water) but while the little girls who were baptized squealed at how cold it was, Herminia said all she felt was happiness. :) She´s so awesome.
Griselda came to the baptism, and to church with us yesterday. She´s completely set to be baptized on the 25th. Our zone goal for this month is fourteen baptisms, and at this rate I think we´re gonna definitely meet it. That should make up for our atrocious numbers last month. :)
Our study plan for reading Predicad Mi Evangelio this week has been perfectly lining up with our situation. On the day we were stressing about getting everything ready for the baptism, the reading included, "How to Conduct a Baptism." When we were disappointed by an apostate member´s lack of testimony, the reading included, "Menos Activos." The day of Hna. Sanchez´s baptism, we read about new converts staying active in the church, helping us set our sights past this first step in her life as a member.
Oh, and we FINALLY got the LIahonas for May and June. Isn´t the cover for the Conference issue gorgeous? I spent that whole night after we received them just reading through both magazines. It was so great to finally be able to relive the conference talks and remember how I felt back in April. I can´t wait to use some of those quotes in lessons with our investigators. Dad, I remember thinking how weird it was that you would re-listen to conference talks throughout the year, but now I completely understand. I wish I´d had the foresight to put some of them on my iPod.
This weekend the Mariano district had a big priesthood meeting to ordain worthy men to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood. Filimón was one of those who received it, and seriously, visiting him and seeing his pure testimony makes all the disappointments worth it. I´m so grateful to know him. Every time we saw him this week before the meeting, he was poring over his gospel principles manuals and things, reading as much as he could about the Priesthood. He expressed nervousness, wanting to be 100% worthy to receive the power of God on earth. We´ve talked to so many men here in Paraguay who only care about money and alcohol, and/or tell us that we´re crazy and are missing out on the "good things" in life. But Filimón is an amazing example for all men everywhere. His greatest concern is his family and his personal worthiness. I´m happy for the missionaries who found and converted him. :) Anyways, we had an amazing lesson with him on Friday when he was worrying about receiving the priesthood the next day. I had just been reading Moses 1 that morning, and so I decided to read with him the part where Satan comes and tries to tempt Moses. I love how in that story we learn that Satan (and the wicked in the world) try to tell us that we are only "sons of man," but, like Moses, we can confidently say that we are children of God, in the similitude of the Only Begotten, and that we have all power over the Adversary. When we turn to God and remember who we are, we have every capability to be 100% worthy of the power of God. And because Filimón seemed to be worrying that he´d have to prove himself somehow, I told him what they´d told us every day at the MTC--"The Lord doesn´t call the qualified; He qualifies the called." I love how in anything other than the gospel, we have to prove ourselves and do all we can to get ahead of others. But with God, all men can be joint-heirs of the blessings He promises. All we have to do is be like Christ, and then the blessings freely flow.
I also have a new-found appreciation for the hymns after this week. We Hermanas always try to sing a hymn before teaching a lesson. Usually we just kind of flip to a random page because we´re both indecisive about hymns, but early this week we came across a catholic lady who seemed determined to hate us but I guess the Spirit moved her to compassion and she let us in. As she was bringing chairs, Hna. T said to me, "Okay, choose the best hymn we can sing--one that will bring the Spirit. One that says "This is who we are and what we stand for." We chose, "I Know that My Redeemer Lives," and by the end of the song, the woman´s suspiciously narrowed eyes had softened and we had a great discussion, not about differences in religion, but about our Savior Jesus Christ. We had several similar experiences this week, where we did our best to sing the most powerful hymns we could so that even if people didn´t initially agree with us, they would be left without a doubt that we love our Savior and that we have the spirit of the Lord with us. I definitely have a testimony of the power of music.
Oh, by the way. Dad, your weather forecast for Paraguay last week proved very useful. we never hear the forecasts here. Wanna send them to us every week? It would sure be nice to know whether or not to bundle up or carry an umbrella and such.
Thanks to the cold, it hasn´t really sunk in that you´re doing all that fun summer stuff without me. I predict it will be the same with Christmas--when I´m sweating like a pig and dying from heatstroke, I won´t be remembering that I´m missing the holidays. But seriously, don´t hold back when you write me about what you´re doing. Tell me EVERYTHING, especially about the ranch. I expect a ranch report to rival the wedding report.
Well, I´ve gotta go. Those pictures I mailed should reach you in two weeks or so. In the meantime, my camera still isn´t uploading anything on these computers. I can´t decide if it´s the camera´s fault, or the computer´s. Sorry. And sorry this letter is kind of uneventful. That´s how this week has been. :)
I LOVE YOU ALL!! Thank you for your thoughts and prayers and letters and everything. I´m the happiest missionary in the world. :)
Love always,
Hna. Springer
I hope you´re all having a blast at the ranch, the cabin, southern Utah, California, and all those other awesome places. Thank you Grandma and Grandpa Springer, Chelsy and the Hunts, the Anderson family, Cami, Sarah, Dad, and Mom for your letters this week. It means a lot to me that you took the time out of your vacations to shoot me a letter. Cami, I had no idea you´re planning on serving a mission. That´s so great! I just sent you and your family a letter in the mail so look forward to that soon. :) Grandma, that´s so sad that the cabin roof is caving in and that you had to cut down the tire swing tree. things can´t last forever, but it´d be cool if they could. :(
We finally had a baptism!! I was so worried that something would be wrong with Hna. Sanchez´s health and we would have to put off her baptism again, but nope! Since the Elders gave her a blessing she hasn´t had a problem. We had to go to Asuncion for an interview with President Madariaga and she came no problem. She was healthy the day of her baptism, and she came to church the next morning. I love the Priesthood. :)
The baptism was really nice. The Elders had one, too, so Hna. T and I didn´t have to get up super early to clean the font or anything. It was all planned for us, we just had to make sure Hna. Sanchez was ready. She definitely was. I was so glad that we got to take her to meet President beforehand. After her interview with him, I was 100% positive that she was truly ready to make this important covenant in her life. And President has an amazing spirit of love and peace about him that I´m glad she got to feel. She´s my first real convert, and I was so unbelievably happy to see her enter the waters of baptism and lead her to the front of the chapel to recieve the gift of the Holy Ghost. She´d been worried that the water would be cold (and I´d heard stories of people backing out of baptism just because of cold water) but while the little girls who were baptized squealed at how cold it was, Herminia said all she felt was happiness. :) She´s so awesome.
Griselda came to the baptism, and to church with us yesterday. She´s completely set to be baptized on the 25th. Our zone goal for this month is fourteen baptisms, and at this rate I think we´re gonna definitely meet it. That should make up for our atrocious numbers last month. :)
Our study plan for reading Predicad Mi Evangelio this week has been perfectly lining up with our situation. On the day we were stressing about getting everything ready for the baptism, the reading included, "How to Conduct a Baptism." When we were disappointed by an apostate member´s lack of testimony, the reading included, "Menos Activos." The day of Hna. Sanchez´s baptism, we read about new converts staying active in the church, helping us set our sights past this first step in her life as a member.
Oh, and we FINALLY got the LIahonas for May and June. Isn´t the cover for the Conference issue gorgeous? I spent that whole night after we received them just reading through both magazines. It was so great to finally be able to relive the conference talks and remember how I felt back in April. I can´t wait to use some of those quotes in lessons with our investigators. Dad, I remember thinking how weird it was that you would re-listen to conference talks throughout the year, but now I completely understand. I wish I´d had the foresight to put some of them on my iPod.
This weekend the Mariano district had a big priesthood meeting to ordain worthy men to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood. Filimón was one of those who received it, and seriously, visiting him and seeing his pure testimony makes all the disappointments worth it. I´m so grateful to know him. Every time we saw him this week before the meeting, he was poring over his gospel principles manuals and things, reading as much as he could about the Priesthood. He expressed nervousness, wanting to be 100% worthy to receive the power of God on earth. We´ve talked to so many men here in Paraguay who only care about money and alcohol, and/or tell us that we´re crazy and are missing out on the "good things" in life. But Filimón is an amazing example for all men everywhere. His greatest concern is his family and his personal worthiness. I´m happy for the missionaries who found and converted him. :) Anyways, we had an amazing lesson with him on Friday when he was worrying about receiving the priesthood the next day. I had just been reading Moses 1 that morning, and so I decided to read with him the part where Satan comes and tries to tempt Moses. I love how in that story we learn that Satan (and the wicked in the world) try to tell us that we are only "sons of man," but, like Moses, we can confidently say that we are children of God, in the similitude of the Only Begotten, and that we have all power over the Adversary. When we turn to God and remember who we are, we have every capability to be 100% worthy of the power of God. And because Filimón seemed to be worrying that he´d have to prove himself somehow, I told him what they´d told us every day at the MTC--"The Lord doesn´t call the qualified; He qualifies the called." I love how in anything other than the gospel, we have to prove ourselves and do all we can to get ahead of others. But with God, all men can be joint-heirs of the blessings He promises. All we have to do is be like Christ, and then the blessings freely flow.
I also have a new-found appreciation for the hymns after this week. We Hermanas always try to sing a hymn before teaching a lesson. Usually we just kind of flip to a random page because we´re both indecisive about hymns, but early this week we came across a catholic lady who seemed determined to hate us but I guess the Spirit moved her to compassion and she let us in. As she was bringing chairs, Hna. T said to me, "Okay, choose the best hymn we can sing--one that will bring the Spirit. One that says "This is who we are and what we stand for." We chose, "I Know that My Redeemer Lives," and by the end of the song, the woman´s suspiciously narrowed eyes had softened and we had a great discussion, not about differences in religion, but about our Savior Jesus Christ. We had several similar experiences this week, where we did our best to sing the most powerful hymns we could so that even if people didn´t initially agree with us, they would be left without a doubt that we love our Savior and that we have the spirit of the Lord with us. I definitely have a testimony of the power of music.
Oh, by the way. Dad, your weather forecast for Paraguay last week proved very useful. we never hear the forecasts here. Wanna send them to us every week? It would sure be nice to know whether or not to bundle up or carry an umbrella and such.
Thanks to the cold, it hasn´t really sunk in that you´re doing all that fun summer stuff without me. I predict it will be the same with Christmas--when I´m sweating like a pig and dying from heatstroke, I won´t be remembering that I´m missing the holidays. But seriously, don´t hold back when you write me about what you´re doing. Tell me EVERYTHING, especially about the ranch. I expect a ranch report to rival the wedding report.
Well, I´ve gotta go. Those pictures I mailed should reach you in two weeks or so. In the meantime, my camera still isn´t uploading anything on these computers. I can´t decide if it´s the camera´s fault, or the computer´s. Sorry. And sorry this letter is kind of uneventful. That´s how this week has been. :)
I LOVE YOU ALL!! Thank you for your thoughts and prayers and letters and everything. I´m the happiest missionary in the world. :)
Love always,
Hna. Springer
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Week 23 - Asuncion Paraguay - Mariano Roque Alonzo
May 6, 2011
Dear Family,
Wow this week went by so fast. I feel like I just barely wrote you, but I´m so happy for every opportunity I have to do it again. I love Mondays. :)
We´re going to see a baptism this week! Finally. We haven´t seen a baptism since the beginning of April if you can believe that. Despite a headache, Hna. Sanchez made it to church with us yesterday, and we got special permission to baptize her with only two asistencias. She´s so ready. She loved testimony meeting yesterday, and told us afterwards that she´d wanted to bear her testimony too but decided not to. Then she recited it for us right there in her house, complete with, "Good morning, Brothers and Sisters..." So cute.
We´re also seeing a lot of progress with Griselda Ibarra (I´m pretty sure I´ve mentioned her before). We thought for sure she wouldn´t be coming with us because on Saturday we went to her house to find her sprawled out on her bed with bad scrapes on her hip and ribs. But she´s such a trooper. She was all ready to go when we passed by for her yesterday morning, and she made fast friends with the young women in the ward. She also brought her six-year-old brother. It´s never too early to get them ready for baptism. :)
Griselda´s family is way supportive of us and the church. Not only do they have an active member cousin (who´s moving into our branch soon--yay!), but they´ve just grown to like us a lot. Griselda got those scrapes because she was with a friend who got drunk on wine and nearly got them killed out on the busy road. The friend made Griselda buy the wine because she looks like she´s 18 despite being only 13 years old, and Griselda feels like her fall is God´s chastisement. She didn´t drink any wine herself, because she remembered her cousin teaching her the Word of Wisdom, and her mom was really proud of her and grateful for the Church for teaching her daughter such standards while the 15-year-old friend is running around the freeway drunk.
We finally found and talked with Veronica again this week. She likes Hna. Tua´one a lot and basically admitted that she knows the church is true but is afraid to join right now. Her dad is coming to stay with them for a while and he really doesn´t like us, so she apologetically told us not to come around until he leaves. Sad day. But I still have hope for her. Talking with her this week was like chatting with an old childhood friend. I still love her a lot, and I know she loves us, too, deep down.
Mariela is doing loads better. Thank you all for your prayers. Apparently she had a long talk with Hno. Gomez and he immediately paid the judge to finalize the divorce. He apologized for taking so long, and now they´re scheduled to be married at the end of this month. Her baptism should quickly follow. I´m so happy for her. I hope I´m still in town to see that.
We had a hard week working with members. None of our part-member families were to be found, and none of the youth could go around with us. We had super low numbers. Saturday was the worst. We spent the whole morning just wandering around this one neighborhood. Everyone was home, but it was around lunch time so all the women were busy making the meal and all the men were busy watching TV in preparation for the meal. House after house after house we were turned away. Nobody was ever mean to us, thankfully, but we still just wanted to teach already. Finally we reached the far corner of our area, and Hna. T saw this little old woman a couple houses down. "Let´s go talk to her," she said. "I have a feeling we should go talk with her." So we did. It took us a while to find a way to her house because there were a bunch of yards and barbed wire in-between (it´s a less developed neighborhood), but finally we made it. The woman let us in (hallelujah!) and said, "I just talked with you missionaries the other day." We´d been hearing that a lot because the Jehovah´s Witnesses have been tracting around there recently, so we were like, "Nah, it wasn´t us." "No really," she said, "The day before yesterday, your hermanos were here." We were like, "Okay, sure..." Then she went into her house and came back with a pamphlet about the Restoration. Hna. T and I suddenly believed that sure enough, we missionaries had been there, but surely she was mistaken about WHEN we were there, because I couldn´t remember ever having been there before. So we turned the pamphlet over and saw--to our chagrin--the ELDERS names on the back. Those poachers! We didn´t stay long, not wanting to confuse the poor woman with two different sets of missionaries teaching her, but we planned on giving the Elders a chewing out and claiming her as our investigator ASAP. Later that night, the Elders called us. Apparently, they´d gone back to visit that woman again today, too! "Hey!" they said, "What´s with you stealing our investigator?" "Hey!" said Hna. Tua´one, "What´s with you being in our area?" There was silence for a second. "...Um...you see, it was dark..." They totally knew they were in the wrong. They hadn´t been positive about the area line, and they were hoping we wouldn´t notice if they were in fact trespassing. :) Poor, confused woman. She IS definitely in our area (we triple-checked the map just to make sure), and the Elders now know their place. It was just funny to realize how territorial we really are. We plan on leaving pamphlets with our names on them in every house along the edge there from now on just so the Elders don´t make that mistake again. :)
I saw my first pet monkeys this week at Hna. Sanchez´s. It was really bizarre and very cool. I´ve only ever seen monkeys like that in the zoo before. I´m so sad I didn´t have my camera. Hopefully I run into them again on a P-Day.
Hna. T and I are having fun this week psyching people out. On Friday we had like five people stop us in the street just to ask Hna. T about me, "What nationality is she?" It was getting so annoying that we decided to have some fun with it. Now when people ask, "What nationality is she," I say in my best Paraguayan accent, "La Hermana Tua´one? Oh, she´s from the States. She doesn´t speak Spanish yet." Then Hna. T pretends like she really has no idea what we´re saying. It trips people up so badly when the blonde is the one talking and the darker girl is quiet. I´m so sick of being stereotyped as a foreigner who can´t understand a word of Spanish.
It´s getting a lot colder here. We can see our breath now, outside. But I´m fine in a coat and scarf, and at night we have lots of blankets and a heater. The heater wasn´t working before, nor our hot water, but when Hna. T came our landlords fixed everything up. Now we have hot showers every morning and long, warm nights. Hna. T is also addicted to hot chocolate in the mornings and our study is lit up with Christmas lights and the only CD we have when my iPod is dead is a Hillary Weeks Christmas album, so it feels a lot more like December than June. (By the way, that Hillary Weeks CD is awesome. I may just have to buy it someday.)
I´m so glad that you got my package in the mail. Now I´ve received a package from you and you´ve gotten one from me, I think it´s safe to say that mail to and from Paraguay is pretty secure. Thank you Mom for sending me all those addresses, and thank you Grandma and Grandpa Springer, Teresa, Laurel, Mom, Dad, Amanda, Sarah, and Ashley for your e-mails this week. I hope you´re all having a wonderful start of summer. It´s weird having opposite seasons here. I can´t imagine you out in the sun when my sky is cloudy and cold. :)
An observation I´ve just made this week is that the difference between those we teach who progress and those who don´t progress at all is their desire to learn. Society, families, the church, and everything depend on our desire to learn more about God and what we can do to be better people. Those who accept the Book of Mormon here in Paraguay are those who get excited to learn that there is more scripture than just the Bible. The rest are those who say, "A bible, a bible! We have got a bible and we need no more bible!" (I always want to read that part in 2 Nephi but it´s never the right time...) Reading the Bible, I´ve found so many references to lost scripture and prophecies that haven´t been fulfilled yet. Anyone who really searches and wants to learn from the Bible and wants to learn more about God will embrace the Book of Mormon as more words from more prophets. I´m really excited for more scripture to be revealed. We have the prophets giving us more every time the Ensign comes out, but I wonder if someday we´ll have the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and something else. I wonder what that would do to the Church--how many people would embrace new scripture and how many testimonies would fail... Just food for thought. :)
Well, have a wonderful time at the ranch and wherever else you´re going this summer. Don´t forget to write me. :) I love you all!
---Hna. Springer
Dear Family,
Wow this week went by so fast. I feel like I just barely wrote you, but I´m so happy for every opportunity I have to do it again. I love Mondays. :)
We´re going to see a baptism this week! Finally. We haven´t seen a baptism since the beginning of April if you can believe that. Despite a headache, Hna. Sanchez made it to church with us yesterday, and we got special permission to baptize her with only two asistencias. She´s so ready. She loved testimony meeting yesterday, and told us afterwards that she´d wanted to bear her testimony too but decided not to. Then she recited it for us right there in her house, complete with, "Good morning, Brothers and Sisters..." So cute.
We´re also seeing a lot of progress with Griselda Ibarra (I´m pretty sure I´ve mentioned her before). We thought for sure she wouldn´t be coming with us because on Saturday we went to her house to find her sprawled out on her bed with bad scrapes on her hip and ribs. But she´s such a trooper. She was all ready to go when we passed by for her yesterday morning, and she made fast friends with the young women in the ward. She also brought her six-year-old brother. It´s never too early to get them ready for baptism. :)
Griselda´s family is way supportive of us and the church. Not only do they have an active member cousin (who´s moving into our branch soon--yay!), but they´ve just grown to like us a lot. Griselda got those scrapes because she was with a friend who got drunk on wine and nearly got them killed out on the busy road. The friend made Griselda buy the wine because she looks like she´s 18 despite being only 13 years old, and Griselda feels like her fall is God´s chastisement. She didn´t drink any wine herself, because she remembered her cousin teaching her the Word of Wisdom, and her mom was really proud of her and grateful for the Church for teaching her daughter such standards while the 15-year-old friend is running around the freeway drunk.
We finally found and talked with Veronica again this week. She likes Hna. Tua´one a lot and basically admitted that she knows the church is true but is afraid to join right now. Her dad is coming to stay with them for a while and he really doesn´t like us, so she apologetically told us not to come around until he leaves. Sad day. But I still have hope for her. Talking with her this week was like chatting with an old childhood friend. I still love her a lot, and I know she loves us, too, deep down.
Mariela is doing loads better. Thank you all for your prayers. Apparently she had a long talk with Hno. Gomez and he immediately paid the judge to finalize the divorce. He apologized for taking so long, and now they´re scheduled to be married at the end of this month. Her baptism should quickly follow. I´m so happy for her. I hope I´m still in town to see that.
We had a hard week working with members. None of our part-member families were to be found, and none of the youth could go around with us. We had super low numbers. Saturday was the worst. We spent the whole morning just wandering around this one neighborhood. Everyone was home, but it was around lunch time so all the women were busy making the meal and all the men were busy watching TV in preparation for the meal. House after house after house we were turned away. Nobody was ever mean to us, thankfully, but we still just wanted to teach already. Finally we reached the far corner of our area, and Hna. T saw this little old woman a couple houses down. "Let´s go talk to her," she said. "I have a feeling we should go talk with her." So we did. It took us a while to find a way to her house because there were a bunch of yards and barbed wire in-between (it´s a less developed neighborhood), but finally we made it. The woman let us in (hallelujah!) and said, "I just talked with you missionaries the other day." We´d been hearing that a lot because the Jehovah´s Witnesses have been tracting around there recently, so we were like, "Nah, it wasn´t us." "No really," she said, "The day before yesterday, your hermanos were here." We were like, "Okay, sure..." Then she went into her house and came back with a pamphlet about the Restoration. Hna. T and I suddenly believed that sure enough, we missionaries had been there, but surely she was mistaken about WHEN we were there, because I couldn´t remember ever having been there before. So we turned the pamphlet over and saw--to our chagrin--the ELDERS names on the back. Those poachers! We didn´t stay long, not wanting to confuse the poor woman with two different sets of missionaries teaching her, but we planned on giving the Elders a chewing out and claiming her as our investigator ASAP. Later that night, the Elders called us. Apparently, they´d gone back to visit that woman again today, too! "Hey!" they said, "What´s with you stealing our investigator?" "Hey!" said Hna. Tua´one, "What´s with you being in our area?" There was silence for a second. "...Um...you see, it was dark..." They totally knew they were in the wrong. They hadn´t been positive about the area line, and they were hoping we wouldn´t notice if they were in fact trespassing. :) Poor, confused woman. She IS definitely in our area (we triple-checked the map just to make sure), and the Elders now know their place. It was just funny to realize how territorial we really are. We plan on leaving pamphlets with our names on them in every house along the edge there from now on just so the Elders don´t make that mistake again. :)
I saw my first pet monkeys this week at Hna. Sanchez´s. It was really bizarre and very cool. I´ve only ever seen monkeys like that in the zoo before. I´m so sad I didn´t have my camera. Hopefully I run into them again on a P-Day.
Hna. T and I are having fun this week psyching people out. On Friday we had like five people stop us in the street just to ask Hna. T about me, "What nationality is she?" It was getting so annoying that we decided to have some fun with it. Now when people ask, "What nationality is she," I say in my best Paraguayan accent, "La Hermana Tua´one? Oh, she´s from the States. She doesn´t speak Spanish yet." Then Hna. T pretends like she really has no idea what we´re saying. It trips people up so badly when the blonde is the one talking and the darker girl is quiet. I´m so sick of being stereotyped as a foreigner who can´t understand a word of Spanish.
It´s getting a lot colder here. We can see our breath now, outside. But I´m fine in a coat and scarf, and at night we have lots of blankets and a heater. The heater wasn´t working before, nor our hot water, but when Hna. T came our landlords fixed everything up. Now we have hot showers every morning and long, warm nights. Hna. T is also addicted to hot chocolate in the mornings and our study is lit up with Christmas lights and the only CD we have when my iPod is dead is a Hillary Weeks Christmas album, so it feels a lot more like December than June. (By the way, that Hillary Weeks CD is awesome. I may just have to buy it someday.)
I´m so glad that you got my package in the mail. Now I´ve received a package from you and you´ve gotten one from me, I think it´s safe to say that mail to and from Paraguay is pretty secure. Thank you Mom for sending me all those addresses, and thank you Grandma and Grandpa Springer, Teresa, Laurel, Mom, Dad, Amanda, Sarah, and Ashley for your e-mails this week. I hope you´re all having a wonderful start of summer. It´s weird having opposite seasons here. I can´t imagine you out in the sun when my sky is cloudy and cold. :)
An observation I´ve just made this week is that the difference between those we teach who progress and those who don´t progress at all is their desire to learn. Society, families, the church, and everything depend on our desire to learn more about God and what we can do to be better people. Those who accept the Book of Mormon here in Paraguay are those who get excited to learn that there is more scripture than just the Bible. The rest are those who say, "A bible, a bible! We have got a bible and we need no more bible!" (I always want to read that part in 2 Nephi but it´s never the right time...) Reading the Bible, I´ve found so many references to lost scripture and prophecies that haven´t been fulfilled yet. Anyone who really searches and wants to learn from the Bible and wants to learn more about God will embrace the Book of Mormon as more words from more prophets. I´m really excited for more scripture to be revealed. We have the prophets giving us more every time the Ensign comes out, but I wonder if someday we´ll have the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and something else. I wonder what that would do to the Church--how many people would embrace new scripture and how many testimonies would fail... Just food for thought. :)
Well, have a wonderful time at the ranch and wherever else you´re going this summer. Don´t forget to write me. :) I love you all!
---Hna. Springer
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
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
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
Monday, May 23, 2011
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
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
Friday, May 20, 2011
Week 20 - Asuncion Paraguay - Mariano Roque Alonzo
May 16, 2011
Dearest Familia,
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!!
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