This has been a great week to be 20! :D
First off, my birthday was a great day. We found a new investigator that has TONS of questions!!! (Those are my favorite kind) We also had a powerful lesson on the first vision with a menos activo that allowed the spirit to confirm to me the truth of the restored gospel. It's true and I am so grateful for it. In the evening we had Noche de Barrio and they sang me "cumpleaños feliz" and Hermana Jara (Relief society president) gave me banana bread/cake (almost as good as my mom's banana cake) and Isidora (the investigator we contacted a few weeks back) made us a pizza to take home and eat. Hermana Arrua (member and the reason for my growing panza) bought us a small cake/sweet roll as well. Needless to say, I was not hungry on my birthday.
Wednesday marked the beginning of my new snack addiction: Mate dulce. We shared with some recent converts and they offered us some and later that night we were able to successfully replicate it with sugar water instead of sugar-milk and I have been drinking it every other night since. Mate dulce is usually made with carmelized sugar mixed with warm milk drank through shredded coconut. As a snack I just use a little sugar mixed with warm water and the shredded coconut. Yum!
On Friday we had our Zone conference with interviews with President. We learned more about how to love the people, use our agendas more effectively and how to work better with the member references we receive. Member references are the best - it is a much easier transition for converts if they already know people in the church and we, as missionaries, are able to teach with their friends and/or family present to help.
Story time: On Saturday we were on our way to our last lesson passing through the dirt streets in the dark when my companion gasps and pushes me forward. Alarmed I looked back to see what happened and saw a HUGE spider crawling in the road where I had been just moments before. Ciao-cito so ran Hermana Carr. From my safe distance of half a block away I stood and watched as my ever so curious companion threw pieces of kro - a street snack we eat - and informed me it probably wasn't a tarantula because it didn't rear up on its legs. We reached our next lesson's home to find that they weren't home and my companion had lost her agenda with various phone numbers, lesson plans and other valuable information. Putting my brave pants on and calling myself Hermana Indiana Jones we went trekking back, retracing our steps (even past the sighting of the spider) looking for the agenda. After a good 30 minutes of looking in the dark we decided it was probably best to just head home and plan, just using my agenda. As we passed by a girls soccer game for the third time a contact we made two weeks ago named Rosanna called us over. She asked if we had lost something and we said yes, and then proceeded to tell us that she had found my companions agenda in the street and remembered it because it had so many pictures of Christ on it. She picked it up to give it to us later and then saw us coming back down the street.
Miracles do happen. Heavenly Father loves us so much, he is looking out for us even in the little things and is always directing everything to be for our good. (DyC 82: 8-10).
With love sent from Paraguay,
Hermana Carr
