Monday, October 26, 2015

Deportes Acuáticos

We've had another great week here in Juan de Salazar.

This week has been a lot of heat, but we've been received more than we have ever been before, or since I've been here anyway, so that's been really nice. We've been working hard trying to help our investigators learn the gospel and know it's true for themselves as well as finding new people to teach.

On Wednesday we contacted a house who had two baby goats. We got to watch them play/jump-run around for a minute and the family let us pet them - that was definitely a highlight of my week. Later that same day we visited one of the menos activos we are working with and while we were talking with her she just started giving my comp a mini-manicure. That was a good/funny day.

Every Friday we have weekly planning and to celebrate we usually make popcorn to snack on. When we poured out the popcorn kernels into the pot there were a TON of these little black beetle-like bugs. Luckily we caught them before they spread into all of our food - we cleared off the shelves and mata-todoed everything. We're now thoroughly inspecting all of the bags of kernels we get from our dispensa.

Later on Friday we decided to go contact a different part of our area and we found a looonnngg street that reminded me of the fields of america. While we were walking it became SO humid, we felt like we were breathing water. Our joke of the week has been, "Does walking in 100% humidity count as deportes acuáticos? cuz that's against the rules."

This Sunday we had a great turnout. Lots of our menos activos came, one of the families we've been working to reactivate received callings and we had a contact that actually came to church!!! For every 500 contacts we make we usually only have 1 actually come to church. This Sunday was the day one came!

As a companionship we've been working on contacting. The more we contact people and the more we explore our area, the more we find menos activos and old investigators that know the truth of the gospel and have let go of the truths they know. They choose to neglect their spiritual progress and it breaks my heart. Really, there's just three things you've gotta do to stay active - a) Pray, b) read/study the scriptures and, c) attend church. If you've got these three things, por lo menos, you're on a good track. Don't let anything get in the way of your spiritual progress with these three things!

With love sent from Paraguay,

Hermana Carr

p.s: It's Sandia season!!!!

Ponderize scripture this week: Salmos 40:8




Monday, October 19, 2015

TotesMyGoats

¡Hola Familia y amigos!

We started off this week on a low - it was super rainy and our lunch appointments had been canceling on us. Knowing we wouldn't have lunches with members we bought some ravioli's from Stock - a chuchi grocery store that opened near our area. The raviolis ended up upsetting our stomachs and making our Tuesday somewhat of a struggle. My comp also left her agenda in the capilla where we have our district meeting and that didn't help anything either. After planning on Tuesday night I decided to check on a pain I'd been having on one of my big toes. After making sure my nails were still well trimmed and examining my foot more closely I found another spot of pique and this time there were two piques under to the top of my big toe nail! That was gross. With the help of Hermana Getz I didn't freak out and we got the pique out - I have been watching my feet to make sure there aren't any more.

On Wednesday things started turning around - whenever you're at a low that just means a high is coming! We received a call from one of our recent converts who has not been coming to church and has not received us for over a month. We were able to visit her and she is now back on track reading her scriptures and saying her prayers - we're hoping to help her get back on track and to stay on track with the gospel!

On Friday while I was filling in my agenda during weekly planning my comp looked through the Area book and found a registro of an old investigator who lives close to the house of our Friday lunch appointment. We finished weekly planning early and went to contact the street listed on the registro in the hopes of finding her. We walked in the street a little ways and decided to clap at a random house to ask if the investigator on our registro lived close by. The random house ended up being hers! We had a lesson with her and found out she understands the importance of baptism and expresses desires to follow the commandments. Calidad! We are so excited to work with her! We probably never would have found her if my comp hadn't left her agenda in the district meeting - the Lord works in mysterious ways.

Later that day we went to visit the Abuelito of the Bosque, a menos activo who has been coming to church these last few weeks. Lessons with Abuelito are usually a little random, but this time Abuelito told us about his plans to further the missionary work by going out in groups to different countries and sharing the gospel. Due to our inability to speak Jopara, we weren't quite able to help him understand how missionary work works in the church, but we were able to help him give some advice on how to share the gospel in his neighborhood. At the end of our visit he asked us what we thought of his plans and all we could say was they were very nice. He then told us he was determined to present his plans in the second class of church. After our lesson we could not stop laughing - our Sunday School class did not know what was coming.

This week we also got a new ward mission leader. Hermano Oviedo is SO COOL. He was baptized a few years ago and is very humble in this new calling. Even though he is unfamiliar with his calling, he has the spirit so strongly with him and really understands that we need to work with the ward in order to help our investigators be truly converted.

On Saturday we did service for the familia Dure. We helped them take down part of their current house and carry it over to their new land where they are building a new house with the same materials. Afterwards we did some yard work in another member's house. We were sore and sunburned the day after, but it always feels good to do service.

On Sunday I gave my first talk in Spanish! It was on missionary work and I talked about how we can be missionaries as members of the church in our daily lives through knowing the word of God/studying the scriptures, being good examples and fellowshipping new members and less active members.

Sunday afternoon we decided to "explore" a part of our area and find new people. We had a few good contacts and will be following up on those and we also saw a bunch of goats. Later that night we saw a goat standing on a table or something, just chillin. We have no idea how it got up there. or how it would get down.

The days are long, the sopa Paraguaya is as big as my face, and this work is satisfying.

With love sent from Paraguay,

Hermana Carr

Ponderize scripture for this week: DyC 31:5-6




Monday, October 12, 2015

#estadoParaguayo

¡Hola!

We have had a full week of sun/heat and then rain/cold.

At the beginning of this week I got a little sunburned because I forgot to put on sun block and the sun was super strong, so the following days I decided to use my umbrella. What started out as protection from the sun turned into protection from the rain- it's been sprinkling/misting/raining pretty steadily for the past few days now. Hermana Getz and I decided to trade mark the hashtag "estado Paraguayo" for all of the occasions when we need umbrellas. I have definitely been super grateful for my rain boots this week- they help with all the mud and wet and cold, loving them!

On one of the hot days a future investigator we visited gave us a thing of "dulce de batata". Dulce de batata is like Thanksgiving in a chilly jello/jam-like block, it tastes just like candied yams. SO GOOD!

On Thursday Hermana Gomez gave us cow hoof again... this time Heavenly Father had my back- I'd been prompted to bring a plastic grocery bag to put my scriptures in if it started to rain again, but instead my compañera and I slyly put the parts of lunch we couldn't stomach in the empty grocery bag and then later threw it to some dogs. #blessed

This weekend we've had a rough time finding people ready to receive us because of the rain. We started "exploring" the limits of our area trying to find more people and we found a SUPER Catholic lady that told us she prays for an hour every morning and goes to church three times a week. We had a nice lesson with her revolving around our common beliefs about the importance of family and strengthening the youth in this generation. We left her with a Book of Mormon and are hoping to follow up this week.

On Sunday it was rainy and our lessons were few and far between, but there we saw a full-arch rainbow that was way bright that made our day.

I hope all is well at home!

Much love sent from Paraguay,

Hermana Carr

My ponderize scripture this week: 1 Nefi 17: 2-3





Monday, October 5, 2015

It's Problablamente Conferencia

Dear Friends and Family,

This week has been a long and awesome one.

Last P-day we made a trip to a chuchi supermarket store called "Stock" and we found expensive peanut-butter. Instead of buying the peanut-butter we opted to buy toasted peanuts for a third of the cost and we made our own en casa. I don't know if I'm ever going back - homemade peanut butter is so good! We've been snacking on peanut butter and honey sandwiches and peanut butter with apples throughout this week.

On Tuesday we had Zone Conference and learned about working with members. Our mission president also animated us for this change and ministered to our Zone a bit - last change we didn't do very well with the numbers, but this is a new change! We are working with more focus in the work and with more obedience so we can see the blessings.

On Friday it rained off and on all day and Juan de Salazar turned into a rainy ghost town - there was no one out in the streets. We still had a few lessons and after planning we made Malta - a bitter/sweet hot drink I've found I love from here.

Saturday and Sunday was General Conference. I paid attention through all of the meetings and learned a TON -  I feel very instructed and more able and animated to share the gospel after viewing conference. What a blessing we have to have this modern revelation here for us in our day! So cool!

Funny story: Sunday morning Hermana Getz and I woke up, got ready for the day and went out to try and have some lessons before conference. We were eating breakfast and the Elders called us and said (translated to English) "the hour of Paraguay changed - the ward-sponsored collectivo to conference will leave at 11am instead of 12". Thinking the time of the transmission of Conference for Paraguay had been changed and knowing we had been telling people all week the collectivo would leave at noon, we booked it to the nearest houses to spread the word. We passed by the bishop's house to get a number of one of our menos activos and he informed us that the time of the transmission from Salt Lake hadn't changed, it was the global time change that'd happened! Que verguenza. We went back to the houses we had passed and corrected ourselves. Even though we're pretty informed, every now and then we forget about time changes and the language barrier leads us astray.

Today while doing compras we found the Paraguay version of Ramen Noodles - ¡Aji-no-men! We don't have a member feeding us lunch tomorrow and we are excited to try it out.

En serio, if you didn't get to view all of conference or you just want some more direction/solace in your life, go watch Conference! The apostles and our prophet are truly called of God and have given us guidance for us today.

With love sent from Paraguay,

Hermana Carr