A Temple Worker For A Day

So, we had changes yesterday.  Elder Avendaño got changed (like we thought he would).  He went to Thompson in Capiatá, Zone 3.  The other 2 missionaries that live with us stayed together.  But the exciting news is I´m training again!  Third time, how excellent!

My companion´s name is Elder Ponce.  He is from Honduras (pretty sweet huh?).  He is just awesome.  The guy came pre-trained.  This is really cool: the day I entered the MTC, September 2 2009, is the day he got BAPTIZED.  The kid has only got a year and 3 months as a member and he´s already on a mission.  What a champ, huh?  His aunt was the first member in his family, and then his sister (who is on a mission in Panama), and then him.  6 months ago in June, he baptized his mom and cousin after teaching them for a few months.  How cool is that?  His dad died while his mom was still pregnant with him, so he never knew his dad.  He has worked away from home for 4 years, so he has plenty of experience being away from home so that won´t be a problem here.  He is just a good guy.  Loves to share the gospel.  I think that this will be my most successful change so far.  We´ll see what happens.

Last Christmas Letter From Paraguay - I'll Be Home For the Next One

So, next week will be the last email I send you guys in 2010!  Christmas is on Saturday, and guess what?  Instead of just calling home, we can use Skype video chat!!!  I am seriously beyond excited, I might just die for a second or 2.  I´m so excited to be able to see faces and hear voices this Saturday.  I wanted to write something that I learned this week, but I spent all my time uploading pictures and making my Skype account so it will wait until next week.  It has to do with a study I did on the prophet Joseph Smith and the First Vision.  You´re going to love it.  There is SO much to learn from that.  I´ll type it all out next week.

Oh you best BELIEVE that I was Santa Claus again this year baby!  Both times for Christmas on the mission Elder Moore was Santa Claus hahah.  The pics are attached.  Like last year, today we went singing in a hospital.  They just loved it.  The looks on those kids´ faces to see Papá Noel walking in was just one of those warm fuzzy moments that you´ll never forget.  There was this one little girl, just like barely 2 years old, and the poor thing had an IV in her hand and it hurt her so she was screaming when we walked in.  But I went over to her and

When God Speaks

So a week from Saturday I get to talk to you guys!  It will be Christmas already, dang.  I remember being in Ciudad del Este last Christmas and dressing up as Santa Claus haha.  Would be sweet to do it again.  Next week I´ll let you guys know what number to call and at what time.  I just know that it will be in the afternoon, because my companion wants to call his house at night time (in Paraguay) which will be afternoon-ish for you guys.  I think you´re 4 hours behind us, but I´ll verify everything and write you next week.  All else fails, I know how to call you haha so either way we´ll talk on Saturday Christmas day!

So I spent all my time putting the music you sent me on CDs (iPods don´t work on computers here...bleh) and uploading pictures, so time is short yet again.  I promise next week to take some time and write something good.  But here´s something I learned in my personal study this week that I liked.

The Great Power of Prayer

Well, just 9 months until I come home.  It has been going by so fast, and I´m afraid how fast it will continue to go.  But I´m super excited to call home this month!  I´ll let you know as soon as I have the date and time figured out.  Plan substitutes for your classes in church, because Mom´s staying home that day hahah.  My mom is the greatest and that´s that.

So, that baptism didn´t happen.  That´s the first time it´s ever happened to me, having a baptism the week of already planned and have it not happen.  With Coco, we were going over the baptism interview questions and asked him about tithing.  He said that he couldn´t accept and would never accept tithing because he was poor and had nothing to give.  He really is very fortunate and well-off, he just wants to use his money to record music (he´s a songwriter) so he says he doesn´t have any.  If somebody isn´t willing to keep all the commandments after their baptism, they shouldn´t make the covenants, so he didn´t get baptized.  With Osvaldo, ugh.  Different story.  His brother Juan Carlos is the first councelor in the branch presidency.  He has been the one who goes and picks up Osvaldo from his house in his car to bring him to church and lessons with us.  Osvaldo had a drinking problem for years, but about 2 weeks ago he stopped drinking and said he hasn´t drank since.  He was so excited for his baptism and wrote down my companion´s name and my name so he could remember the missionaries who helped bring him to the truth.  The day of his interview, Juan Carlos

Pizza Hut - Pizza Buffet

Hey everyone,

So this week there is just one announcement really.  We´re having 2 baptisms on Saturday!!  They are 2 guys named Coco Insfrán and Osvaldo Gonzales.  Coco has been an investigator here for like 4 months, and finally he´s ready to get baptized.  Osvaldo is the brother of the first councelor in the bishopric.  It feels good to have another baptism.  Good way to start December, I´d say.  Pray that everything goes well.

Today was kind of a crazy day, and we have a lot of stuff to do, so I don´t have the full hour on here like usual.  Sorry :(.  But we just got out of Pizza Hut here.  Oh, so good.  They have pizza buffet where you pay 20,000Gs (like $4) and it´s all the pizza you want.  Let´s just say I ate a lot haha.

I have some cool stories for next week as well to tell you all.  I´ll also update you on the baptism how it went and everything.  Love and miss you all!

-Elder Moore

The Lord is Taking Good Care of Me

Short on time this week.  Obrero is still good.  I´m slowly but surely getting used to it.  There are some excellent members here, so that really helps me make the transition.  Even better, we have 3 EXCELLENT families that we are teaching, one of the which we put a baptism date with yesterday for the 10th of December.  I´ll focus my next email on the investigators and stuff that I have here.  The Lord is taking good care of me.

I just want to tell a story that happened to us on Sunday.  It was the afternoon, and we were walking to a teaching appointment.  We were just half a block away from the house, and it was raining like crazy (which is really odd for this time of year).  A taxi pulls up beside us really slowly and rolls down his window.  There´s 2 guys inside, and the taxi driver was like "Elders!  Get in, I´ll take you where you´re going.  You´re going just right here to the church right?  I´ll take you there, just get in" and he reached and opened up the back door.  I felt one of the strongest urges I´ve ever felt that told me that under no circumstances should we get in that car.  It was weird that he offered to take us to the church that was just 2 blocks away, and we were just half a block

Obedient to His Commandments

Hey everyone.  I apologize if I gave you a bit of a scare last week.  I was just kind of in a melt-down mode for not being able to say goodbye to any of those people, and it had just happened a few hours earlier, and I was just still coping with everything.  I´m doing better.  Still kinda sad that I had to leave especially without goodbyes, but I figure that I would have had to leave at some point anyway which I knew was going to be hard.  I´ll get to see them when Dad comes to pick me up anyways, so that will be a big blessing for me.  I wrote a letter to the ward today to explain what happened and apologize for not saying goodbye and to tell them all how much I love and appreciated them, so that kinda bummed me out again and made me think about it, but I´ll be just fine.  I always am.

Here in Barrio Obrero is very different.  It´s completely city, there´s not any open fields or hardly any trees or anything.  Kind of reminds me of downtown Reno with rock-paved streets lol (side note fun fact: "Reno" is actually the spanish word for "reindeer".  Who woulda thought?).  The people here are much more closed off and indifferent.  They are not nearly as kind as the people from the campo.  Everybody had always told me that people are much nicer in the campo - it´s true.  Obviously there´s a lot of good people here as well, we have some good investigators and a few people with baptism dates, but in terms of talking to people on the street and finding new people it´s definitely a lot harder.  The good thing is that we have some excellent members here too.  They´re exceptional.  I gave a talk on Sunday about missionary work to kind of see how they responded and everything, and it went well.  We had branch council meeting Sunday night and it was great.  We should have some great success here.