I've Got A Legacy To Uphold

Hello everyone!

This week has been good.  Started off kind of rough though, because I had to travel to Asunción on Tuesday to sign my immigration papers to maintain temporary residence here (now they CAN´T kick me out...haha), so that took the whole day and we lost that day of proselyting.  We had some good experiences this week in terms of lessons and such.  There is Gloria (the daughter of a recently re-activated member) who has a baptism date for next week, so I´m way excited about that.  She turns 9 that week, and she is just the cutest little girl.  Very smart, likes to draw, and loves Primary (even though there are only like 4 Primary-aged kids in this branch haha).  So that should happen next week.  Then we came in contact with a member who got baptized with his wife about a year and a half ago who just moved into our area, so we´re helping them get situated and into the habit of coming back to church.  There are some great things that can happen here in the next few weeks.  The only difficulty is that we´re a little nervous about inviting investigators to church here haha.  We have church from 8:30-11:30, and Sacrament meeting is the last hour.  We only invite investigators to Sacrament meeting so they show up at 10 haha.  The problem is that there are so few active members here (about 20) and they almost all come late.  When 8:30 came yesterday, there were 2 members who had

Last Round of Letters

Wow, it was so great to see and talk to everyone yesterday on Skype.  A nice little motivation to hold me over until the my end of my mission!  To those I didn´t get to talk to, I love and miss you all too haha.  I´m sending out my last round of letters this change (besides letters I´ll respond to if someone writes me), because if I wait too much longer, chances are you won´t have time to write me back haha.  So if you want to write me and want a response from me, better do it now!

This area is probably my hardest in terms of challenges and things we have to do.  But still my favorite =P I´m glad I have a lot to do.  The members here seem good, but the normal church attendence is about 20 people.  Yikes!  Lots of work to do, I'm really glad I´ll be busy until the end of my mission.  Elder Alvarez and I came up with some really good, solid plans to help out the members here and start generating some activity.  We´re first going to

Encarnacion - Nauvoo Paraguay

Alright, I can´t lie.  I am beyond excited to see you guys on SKYPE this Sunday!  I mean, phone calls are awesome, but SKYPE is just taking it to a whole other level.  Taking it up a notch, thanks for the quote Chef Emril.  Yes, we have permission again to use Skype.  This will be my last phone call home.  I know I say this every time, but it really is weird.  I´ve had my last General Conference on my mission, I´ll be having my last phone call on the mission this Sunday, and next month will be my last temple trip on the mission.  But let´s not talk about the end of my mission, I don´t like that subject.  Changing to happier things :)

So this week were changes, and I got changed.  I left Obrero after 6 months (holy cow, I do not miss packing and unpacking my life in a suitcase...), and I´m now in what I imagine will be my last area.  It is a city called Encarnación, and I´m absolutely in love with it.  It´s like when I went to Reno and fell in love with it from day 1, it´s the same thing.  This city is amazing.  It is similar to Obrero, but a little bit more city-ish.  I am on the banks of the river that separates Paraguay from Argentina, so you can call it Nauvoo Paraguay haha.  My companion

Baptism Of Osvaldo

Where oh where is 2011 going?  Slow it down, speed racer!

Osvaldo was baptized last Saturday!  Oh, it was excellent.  It was raining, and I´m sure I´ve said in the past that when it rains here, the people act like it´s raining fire.  They don´t leave their houses and almost all the businesses shut down.  So I thought nobody was going to come, and I was freaking out.  The two people we had assigned to give short talks called us and bailed out 3 hours before the baptism.  2 hours before, the person who was going to offer the last prayer called to say he wasn´t going to come.  More freaking out.  But, luckily enough, a lot of people ended up coming.  Just not the people who had responsabilities haha.  He, being a bit older and kind of fragile, couldn´t be baptized standing up and being dunked towards his back.  So we brought him a chair, and he was dunked forward sitting down instead of backward.  His head wouldn´t go all the way down, so they ended up doing it a second time sitting down but backward, and he went under.  Took a bit of effort, but he got baptized haha.  And then after that, he got up and gave a beautiful testimony

Coolest 3 Minutes Of My Life

This past week was excellent!  I hope everyone´s week was as good as mine.  Here´s the rundown of what´s going on.

Yesterday, we had 6 investigators at church.  More than I´ve had in one week in a long time.  There is a kid who comes to play soccer with us at the church on Mondays, and we decided to go visit him last week.  We found his house, along with 2 other families that live in the same rental.  They all have 3 or more kids haha.  We decided to gather up their kids and teach them all something, and then ask their parents if we could bring them to church with us on Sunday.  Surprisingly, they said yes haha.  So Sunday morning we rounded up the little rugrats (I mean...children of God ) and took them all to church.  They loved it.  We showed them the video of the Restoration and then sent them off to Primary for the 3rd hour.  They had a blast.  There are even more people in their houses that we want to visit this week (especially their parents).  The parents of some of them went to church 2 or 3 times a few years ago, so that is a great entry point to talk with them.  They´re good kids, I hope to be able to get them in the water so they can grow up in the church environment with the Gospel in their lives before the temptations come too seriously and strongly.  Future missionaries they are :)

Wake Up Obrero!

Hey everyone :).  Good to write again this week.  There have been some changes here.

We are 4 missionaries here in Barrio Obrero (2 companionships).  Elder Yañez is in the other half if the area, and he has been here since I got here.  We lived in the same house for 5 1/2 months, and both went through a few companions but us two stayed together haha.  Well, because the amount of missionaries leaving this change is more than the amount that is coming in (and also because of the slower progress of the branch here), some areas have to be closed or joined because there won´t be enough missionaries to cover them.  Unfortunately, the other half of my area is one of them :(.  We got the call from the assistents yesterday, and they´re closing Obrero 1.2 and joining our 2 areas into 1 area.  Now we´re just one companionship here, my companion and I.  Bummer.  Our area just got wayyy big, and we have a lot of area to cover now.  And it´s a lot more lonely with just us 2, because Elder Yañez was a funny guy and we got along really well.  The funny thing is that he went to Republicano, and he´s going to be companions with Elder Ponce, the missionary I trained 2 changes ago who he lived in the house with haha.  There are good things about the change though.  Now we

Prayer and Practice

Another week down.  And thank goodness that this week it was a rockin´ one.

First, on Wednesday we had interviews with President Callan.  Those always motivate me and help me to focus myself.  That man is such an inspired person, it blows my mind.  The Spirit just radiates from him.  When he talks, you feel it just hit you in the heart.  But in a good way haha.  That animated me a lot.  Kind of sad to think that I´ll only have 1 or 2 more interviews with him.  And then he renewed my temple recommend.  It is reeeally weird to think that 2 years ago I got my temple recommend.  It definately doesn´t seem that long ago.  Don´t know when our next temple trip will be, but I hope to be using that new recommend soon!  I have a royal ancestor that is waiting patiently for me to perform these ordinances on his behalf that he can´t do himself.  That will be a really special moment for me, and I´m excited for it.  One of the strongest parts of my testimony is the temple.

Then with General Conference this passed weekend, how could it not be a rockin´ week?  Every single time, I think "No way this Conference will be better than the last one".  And it always is.  It was really cool too,