Mail Me A Birthday Gift - The Bigger The Better

Well if you ask me, this will be the best letter any of you ever get from me, because it was received on the world´s best and most important international holiday - MY BIRTHDAY!

But that´s just my opinion :)

Thank you all for the birthday wishes (Kitty Kat, I did get yours, but I can´t write back because I can only write family through the internet, but thank you! :D).  It makes me feel at home.  And it doesn´t hurt that like 6 members have offered to feed me and give me cake haha.  But we´re just going to visit the first member that asked me (to be fair in choosing) and just do a small something.  I actually don´t know what they´re going to be doing, but I told them that we´ll still be working today and that I didn´t want anything big.  So we´ll see what happens.  This is my last birthday that really matters haha.  Weird huh?  After 21, who cares how old you are?  There are no more milestones.  I mean, maybe if you hit 100, that´s an accomplishment (or maybe a punishment, depending on how you want to think about it), but other than that there are no fun birthdays anymore.  So I´ll try to enjoy this one and sleep as much as possible :)

Luz Gets Baptized

¡Hola mi familia y mis queridos amigazos!  Hace mucho que no les escribo más en español, y quisiera hacerlo hoy :).  ¡Disfruten el trabajo de traducir!  Quizás puedan llamar a Cristina para que traduzca esto.  Estoy muy bien aquí con mi nuevo compañero.  El es rre-bueno, tiene mucho ánimo y muchos deseos de servirle al Señor.  Estoy leyendo el Libro de Mormón en Guaraní.  Puedo entender la mayoría de lo que leo, pero me es muy difícil hablar todavía.  Esta semana voy a mandar por un libro que enseña Guaraní y estudiar eso hasta el final de mi misión.  6 meses es bastante para aprender mucho Guaraní.  Vamos a ver qué pasa.

Ok, that´s enough of Spanish.  You´ll have plenty of translating to do with that paragraph :).  First news is first: we had the baptism on Saturday!  I´ll attach pictures that Elder Beckett took from his camera.  That little girl is the sweetest little girl I´ve ever seen.  Her family is so incredible as well; I´ve really come to love them.  Her little sister Asir didn´t get baptized yet, but Luz told me that after the baptism Asir said "I wanted to get baptized with you." haha.  She regretted not doing it.  We´ll see if we can set something up for her in the next coming week.  She already has her interview, she could get baptized tomorrow if she wanted to.  Also, one of the friends of Luz´s family came to the baptism.  Her name is Chila.  She had talked with missionaries before, but

In a Galaxy Far, Far Away...

So a quick little news before I forget.  Last week, the company that sends us our letters every week lost the envelope for our area.  So Dear Elders from about 3 weeks ago are lost, and if you´ve sent me a letter in the last month or 2, its possible that it got lost as well.  Bleh, drives me nuts.  But what can ya do?

Some better news: we´re having a baptism on Saturday!  She is the sweetest 10-year-old girl I´ve ever seen.  Her name is Luz.  Her mom, her aunt, her 2 uncles, and both her grandparents are inactive members.  Even though they are inactive, they are just an incredible family.  Luz´s mom told me that her daughters tell her how I´m their friend and also how it´s my birthday on the 28th, so she went out and bought me a cake to thank me and to celebrate.  I about cried, it was so nice.  We´re working with Luz´s little sister Asir as well.  She´s 9, and isn´t quite sure if she wants to be baptized yet or not.  But she comes to church with Luz (they come all by themselves), and the Primary has done a fantastic job making them feel part of the ward, so she likes it and I know she´ll come around.  I hope my package with my camera is in the office tomorrow when we go for Zone Conference so I can take pictures Saturday and send them to you guys.  I´m really excited about that.

My New Companion...Another Trainee!!

Hello my family and friends!  Really though, you´re all my family :)

Ok, so I´ve got some good news and some bad news.  I´ll start with the bad so we end on a good note.

Yesterday during changes I met up with Elder Patterson who is in Guarambaré (my old area). Do you remember the story I told you all about, about that old guy (the dad of a member family) who hit my companion when he was drunk and how we had the chance to teach him a few times?  Well, Elder Patterson told me that he died about a month ago.  He was lost for about a week and didn´t come home, and they started to worry.  They started looking for him. 2 or 3 of his grandkids found him behind the cemetary.  He was murdered :(.  Elder Patterson told me that they described the body, and he was brutally murdered.  It was really savage, so I´ll save you the details.  Poor guy.  The family is doing well and continue active in church, thank goodness.  The missionaries are visiting them almost every day.  They are coping well and learning to depend on the Lord, so they are moving on little by little.

2 Men Dressed in White

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAPA BEAR!!!  You 21 year old champ you ;).  I think everyone who reads this letter should go and give my dad a gift for his birthday.  And if you´ve already done it, well...do it again!

I just wanted to tell a cool experience we had yesterday.  There are these 2 girls (Luz and Asir) we are teaching who are part of an entire family of inactive members.  Luz is 10 and Asir is 9.  They always come to the Wednesday branch activity night where we teach them English, but they have never come to church.  Luckily, their mom is going to allow them to be baptized.  The family is really great -they always receive us and they´re really nice - but they don´t attend church because they have problems with the members in the branch (not such a good excuse for me, but we´re working on it).  Sunday, the little girls didn´t come to church, so we had planned to go see what happened as our last visit for the day.  We had an impromptu meeting with the Elder´s quorum presidency that ran over about an hour and 15 minutes, which put us way behind.  We couldn´t cancel our appointments in order to have time to visit Asir and Luz because they were with one partly inactive family and one family where the husband isn´t a member but the rest are, and we promised we were going to come by on Sunday.  So we run out of the meeting and blaze over there.  Turns out that the inactive member

We Worked Our Little Missionary Tails Off

Hello to everyone this week!  Hope all is just peachy with my long lost family and friends.

The work has progressed here in Obrero by leaps and bounds this week.  We committed ourselves last Sunday to teach 40 lessons total this week.  Blistering heat tried to slow us down.  Thunderous rainstorms tried to keep us indoors.  Punk teenagers tried to throw mangos at us.  But we worked our little missionary tails off, more than doubled the amount of people we talk to every day, and we ended last week with 42 lessons in total!  Does it not show that I´m excited? Haha.  As dead tired as I am - and believe me, I´m completely whipped - I have a real feeling of inner peace and extreme happiness that comes with working to your limits and doing the will of the Lord.  I am finally starting to feel like I´m doing what I came here to do.

But, as with all things in life, there are still obstacles to overcome.  As hard as we work, as much as we study, and as obedient as we try to be in order to qualify for the blessings of the Lord, we just cannot get these people to come to church.  The culture and tradition here isn´t quite so...active haha.  They are excellent

Come Partake of Salvation

Hello family and friends!

We had a zone activity today.  It was really great, really inspiring.  We went over some details that President Callan told the zone leaders in their last leadership council.  Then I spent the whole time talking to Hermana Sargent hahah.  I can´t even tell you how weird it is...the Hermanas that were in the MTC with us only have ONE CHANGE LEFT before they go home.  She finishes this change, and then next change is her last one and she goes home in March.  That is really really strange to me.  I have so much to do and so little time left.  But it was good to talk to her again, it´s always nice to talk to an MTC buddy :).

President seems to be tired of not having success here in Paraguay in this mission.  He is fed up with the lack of obedience, the lack of baptisms, the lack of success.  And I don´t blame him.  Paraguay is a prepared country with hundreds of prepared people in every area, it´s we as missionaries that aren´t cutting it.  For the past 2 weeks or so, my companion and I have tried to be strictly obedient and talk to more people during the day, and really we have seen miracles.  I´ll tell you about one that happened yesterday.