Monday, May 30, 2011

Winter in Paraguay

Hola everybody. Glad to hear that things went pretty good this week. We had a pretty normal week here in San Pedro. The news on changes came Monday night and... we're staying. Tranquilo. That means that we'll probably have about 9 (now 8) more weeks together, as Elder Chatelain will be heading home a little early a change and a half from now. So thats that. Good thing we get along. The only real problem that that brought was that it meant that we didn't have to go into the office for changes. Which meant that I didn't get to pick up all my reimbursals (not sure if thats a real word...lol. Like money back for all the buses I had to pay for out of my own pocket). And that meant that being the end of the month and having spent all that money on buses and stuff... I pretty much didn't have any money for the whole week. Me and Elder Chatelain even considered not writing home this week just to save the money that we're spending to use internet right now. haha. Jks. But yeah. I had to spend what money I had SUPER wisely. Basically that means that I ate a lot when the members offered us food, and then ate a lot of cheese+bread sandwiches, and oatmeal pretty much every day for 2 or 3 meals a day. Not the healthiest thing you could eat, but thats what multivitamins are for right? haha. And I had some snack food like easy-cheese, smores and popcorn that somebody sent just at the right time. THANK YOU MYSYK FAMILY! haha. But yeah. Kind of a disaster of food and money, but somehow I think we'll make it till tomorrow when we SHOULD (crossing our fingers so we dont get stranded 4 hours away at district meeting) have our next months money to take out. I guess I could take out some money on my debit card or something, but then when the money shows up I'll be too rich and just waste it all. I think this will hopefully just train me better for next month when hopefully we can spend what we have a little wiser. lol.

But yeah. That was basically the highlight of the week. Rough stuff. Sounds like the week back home went alright. Sounds like a crasy lot of driving though. 10 hours... haven't done that since the time we road triped out to Toronto. Hopefully the girls are better trained now and didn't cry the whole way there like last time. haha. Glad to hear that nobody had an accident quading or anything either. lol. What else. Membership clerk. Legit. We could really use more of those in this country. I don't know if its the same back home, but records like that are kind of a disaster. I'm happy to hear that your keepin up the racketball because I'm going to need people to do fun stuff with like that when I get home, because the jumping jacks and pushups just aren't cutting it. And its no fun to get fat. Also crasy to hear that everybodies just trippin off to Ireland. Lucky. lol. Sounded like Sunday School was really good though. I'm sad that I missed it. Oh well. Even just sunday school in general I miss too though. Sunday school here is lame. The teacher doesn't know what he's doing and he often says the same things over and over because he still doesn't have enough words in his vocabulary. And he's teaching stuff he's just barely learning himself. Yeah, thats me. This week it was my turn to teach. We're just finishing up the Principles of the Gospel book, so I had to speak on Exaltation. Pretty deep stuff to try and teach to all new members, including people who were coming to church for their first time. Oh well. I think it went not too bad, and its helping me teach and do stuff better so its good.


Besides that... we had a good week. Not tonnes to report. Its starting to get pretty chilly at times. The thing that I noticed that makes the biggest difference is that here theres no such thing as a furnace or internal heating. So if it gets down to 5 degrees outside, it wouldn't be as big of a deal, except that it means that its only 5 degrees when you roll out of bed. Reminds me of camping. Good stuff. We got some big blankets, hoodies and long underwear so we're all good. lol. Apparently it'll keep getting cooler until July though, so we'll see what happens. I think everybodys just a little sissy, but we'll see if even the Canadian gets cold.


Had a disaster at the restaurant where I spent the last of my money for lunch. The hot sauce kind of exploded when I was strugling to get it out of the bottle. No good. Then even after I cleaned it up, my eye itched and I forgot that I still hadn't washed my hands yet... but it all turned out good because when my eye started to burn and I kinda teared up I think the waiter guy had some pity and he replaced the food that I had soaked with hotsauce free of charge. Nice guy.


Sunday was probably the highlight of the week. We had a pretty good turn out for the second week in a row. Had some good investigators finally come to church and they liked it. Set them up with some baptismal dates, so hopefully we'll have a couple more baptisms in a week or two. Yeah!


I've also been really enjoying my studies lately. I'm just about to finish reading Preach My Gospel cover to cover after President challenged us all to read it in 3 months. Good stuff. Finding all sorts of parts that I've never noticed before. Also reading a lot in the book of Mormon and enjoying that. I've really liked the part on Nephi and Lehi in the book of Helaman. Super good and underrated missionaries. Now I'm in 3 Nephi and reading all about the teachings of Christ. Great stuff.


But yeah. Things are going well. Loving life here in San Pedro. Even when it gets lonely. Tryin our best to work hard and do what we can, even when my comp gets a little trunky or the members make me want to cry by pumping the Taylor Swift music so loud that I can hear it even with my ears plugged. haha. Sharing the gospel is great. The Lord is really blessing us and we're having a great time sharing the gospel and seeing it bless peoples lives. Being a missionary is great!


But thats all for another week in Paraguay. Gotta run. Love you lots and keep doing whats right and sharing the gospel!


Love,


Elder Humphreys



PS Happy Birthday to Theo. Wherever you are....

Monday, May 23, 2011

Last Week Before Transfers

Hoooolaa.

Had a good week. Really quick though. Sounds like you all had a great little weekend. Had a blast I´m sure. I´m excited for when we can all have fun going shopping at West Ed again. Okay, really more excited to go to West Ed and eat food and enjoy a fancy new Hardy kitchen, and not to mention sleep on my favorite couch, but you know what I mean. You´re going to have to help me out with my geography though because its been a while. Slave Lake? Northern Alberta or somewhere up in North West Territories? Still pretty crasy sounding. Church buildings never burn down! lol.

Anyways. Like I said, we had a pretty good week. Not sure if you guys were listening to the same crasy news that we were listening to here, but one of the distinguishing parts of the week stemmed from some priest or pastor guy in the United States. Some guy from the Evangelical church or something like that? We didn´t really get the details, but we did get every person we talked to asking us if the world was really going to end on Saturday. We probably said 100 times that ¨yes, it is true. The world is going to end..... but nobody knows when. So I wouldn´t worry about it being this Saturday. But we do know that the 2nd coming is getting near, and that we need to be prepared physically, mentally and spiritually¨. Something like that. Most people seemed to think it was a lie (which was a little surprising because people around here seem to be quite gullible), so our answer didn´t change much for them, but there were a few children that were really worried about it.

Tuesday I got to go on another division. This time I was put with a guy who´s actually from Paraguay. He grew up in my first area, but always went to church in the south mission because the church was closer. But that was kinda cool. He knew a lot about Paraguay and so we talked about that, and then I also got to tell him a lot about Canada. He was only baptized 4 years ago with his brother and they are both here. They´re probably going to both spend all of their missions way out far like we are now. His name is Elder Escriva and hes 24. Old guy. lol. But yeah. It went well. He worked hard and we had a successful day. Its cool to see how much more the people open up to him and how much easier it is for him to be a good teacher just with his Paraguayan background. It´ll be really cool to see in the future when people can serve closer to home. It won´t be as fun for people like me maybe beacuase we wouldn´t get to go on long distance adventures like this, but I think it´ll really help the work grow when they are able to have missions full of latins, and keep all of us North Americans back closer to home. lol.

Found a really cool person this week. She called us over while we were walking down the street. I had read about her in some of the notes some missionaries from before had left us. She was baptized like 10 years ago in another town. They were teaching her husband but right before his baptism they moved about 20 km from town. They are really poor and don´t have a way to get in for church, and so nothing more happened about it. They were waiting on getting some papers so that they could get married and everything. Anyways, we looked for them once to see whats up but we ended up just wandering around for a couple hours and not finding them. Anyways, now we have better directions to there house and now we can visit them. Sounds like their paperwork came through and so they can now get married. Want to move back into town and he really wants to get baptized. Sounds almost too good to be true. So we´ll see what happens with that. We´ll probably get off the bus early one of these days and try to visit them. Hopefully everything goes through.

Another really cool guy we found on monday. Named Jorge. Contacted his house. He looks like he´s got a fair bit of money. Anyways, he seems pretty interested. Already has a friend in the church. Wasn´t able to come to church because he had to go on a business trip, but acutally basically skipped work just to come to our English class. Told his friend that he´s really interested to learn more and looks really sincere. I´m excited to work with him too.

That of course only as long as I don´t get changed. Haven´t found out just yet what the changes are. More realistically though, its more likely that either Elder Chatelain leaves and I get a new comp, or he stays and we´re together for another change and a half before he goes home. We´ll see what happens. They say there are a lot of changes going on and that a lot of people are going to have to go up to senior comp this change. I´m kinda scared about that because I´m starting to get closish to the point where I might be going up. I don´t feel ready for that yet, so wish me luck that my comp next change is somebody with some experience! haha. If not, make sure you pray for me. lol. Scary stuff. Anyways, out of time. Love you lots. Have a great week! Sorry there weren´t too many exciting stories this week (didn´t eat anything wierd...lol).

Love you!

Elder Humphreys

Monday, May 16, 2011

Chewing the Fat

Hey, hey, hey. Hows everything going? Things are doing great here. Nothing too terribly exciting happened this week but we´ll see how this goes...

First of all though, sounds like home life is going swell. Sounds like Marissas getting a little bit spoiled here though. I dunno.... iPhones. Whats up with that?! I´m just getting a little bit jealous here....lol. But I´m glad to hear that the party went well. Sounds like a blast. Cool little concert thing and everything. Dad, I liked the email. I´m all down for being the 3rd member in your allstar go-carting team if that every gets ¨rolling¨ (haha. funny?). And I liked the Clash-ness. That was whitty. haha.

But whaaaaaaat? Diana??? That doesn´t wierd me out or anything...... at all. Woah. haha. Its like, I´m not shocked that she´d get married (thats what people do after all...), but uh. Now I feel old. And like... thats gunna be wierd to come home and have a new cousin. That I´ve never met. Thats like, older and not just still a baby or anything (because every baby is the same basically right? lol) But huh. Mind boggleing. But CONGRATULATIONS. Hope everything goes well. Send me a picture? lol. Thats like, going to be the first person that I knew pretty well thats going to be married. Wierd. wierd. Now just nobody else get married and I think I´ll be able to handle it. Especially sisters. Don´t get married. Yet. Huh.

ANYWAYS. Good week. Only ate a couple of gross things. Yesterday I grabbed a big chunk of meat to find out it was just a huge steak sized chunk of fat that they threw on the BBQ. But I assumed that if they had put it on the grill, they must have expected it to be eaten, so I was forced to cut it up into bite sized pieces, prettend chew for a bit, and then just swallow all these chunks of fat whole..... Mmmmmm.... And then I had a pizza today with Tuna and ¨Palmitos¨ on it. Still not sure what the palmitos were, but i think it was just some kind of plant or something. Nothing too crasy.

This week was kind of noisy. This week the country turned 200 years old, and so there was a parade on Saturday. Basically everyone was there. Not to mention every school in the town has to walk in the parade. And the only thing that they do is twirl batons really sissily, and the guys play their drums really loud. And they all spent all week practicing in the streets at night. So it was pretty loud. But cool. The parade was the boringest thing I´ve ever seen, but it made me think of the Stampede parade and then just stampede in general. Wierd to think I´d miss that all that much.

The week was strang ish because we had some really good days and got a lot done, but then we had some rough days. Spent a lot of time walking around and finding nobody home. Having the backup plans to our backup plans fall through. But it did kind of lead to a cool experience. At one point we were all out of ideas, and too a quick sit on the parkbench. Realized that there were a lot of names in the phone of old investigators that we didn´t know, so we started contacting by just phoning random people, inviting them to church, and then asking them where they lived and if we could go visit them. It was kinda awkward, wierd, and a little fun. But after talking to a couple people and using up all of our phone money we had to give up. Anyways, walking through the streets the other day and some lady stopped her motorbike and said ¨Hey. You called me¨. Turns out I had talked to her on the phone. Anyways, now we have better directions to her house, and she said that she liked the church, but just didn´t get baptized because she had to work a lot before, but now she doens´t work sundays. So that might have some promise. We´ll have to see. But it just was an example of something cool that I´ve noticed a couple times this week and a more times on the mission in general. After all of our plans fall and we´ve done everything, we´ve stopped to change our plans again and somebody we now or wanted to visit or that is interested in the church comes out of nowhere and we happen to be in just the right place at the right time. Its really cool. Theres a scripture somewhere... that says something about how in the end we´ll be saved by grace after all we can do. Or something like that. I think it refers more to the final judgement or something, but I think about it in times like this. We get the blessings after we´ve run around, failed, and continued to run until we´re out of ideas. And then because of the diligence we put in, the Lord puts someone in our path that needs our help. Good stuff.

Anyways, basically out of time here already. Dang it. Yesterday kinda fell apart - it was mothers day and so all the members travelled to visit their parents moms and family. That meant that hardly anybody came to church. Just try and imagine holding a meeting with only 11 people. lol. But at least a couple of the people giving talks showed up. Some old lady wanted one of those hello´s where you give them the kiss on both cheeks. The Sister missionaries have to give like 100 of those each day, but usually the missionaries get off easy. Well, I didn´t know what to do so I just leaned back and shook her hand. haha. She looked kinda offended but I hope she gets over it. She was kinda crasy anyways. She stood up in the middle of my class, told the member that she came with that she was going home (we hadn´t met her before), and then asked the whole class to give her a round of applause before she left. haha. Funny stuff.

But thats all. We´re teaching this really smart guy right now, and its wierd to actually have to answer good questions. Most people here aren´t that on top of things, but this guy really knows his stuff. We´re working on his testimony of the Book of Mormon so that he doesn´t have so many doubts. Hopefully that works. His names Roque. Cool guy, and we´re praying lots for him.

Besides that. How are all my other mission buds doing? Haven´t heard much from them. And did the Hockey playoffs already come and go? Who won that if it did? lol. Just interested in the winning team and maybe where we placed. Don´t want to get distracted, but it seems like I´m missing something in my life without that information. Anyways, love you lots, and have a good week!

See yah!

Love, Elder Humphreys

Monday, May 9, 2011

The Day after Letter....

Hi! Long time no speak! Sorry if its a lame letter this week. Its always a little weird writing the email the day after a phone call, because you feel like you just told everybody everything. But thats all right. I didn´t really talk much about the week or anything like that. To start off though, it was a pleasure talking to you all. Sounds like you´re all doing great. Sorry that I probably sounded like a goof and that I couldn´t really hear everything you said, but oh well. Thats how it goes right? No worries on not calling back. That kinda was my fault after all, blabing about something unimportant instead of saying a proper goodbye like I should have. Oh well. Hope you all got the part where I either did, or meant to say ¨Love ya! Have a good next 8 months! Thanks for callin! Its been great! Be good kids, but not so good that the nanny is getting payed for nothing! And take it easy on my spelling okay? I´m busy writing as fast as I can and sometimes little things slip through! haha. I´ll try and send you all your birthday presents in a week or two, but knowing the mail system it might take a while! Have a happy mothers day evening and don´t eat too much cake - you´ll get fat, just like I am....lol. LOVE YOU!¨ ... or something like that.

But anyways. Just to clarify things up - my current comp (Elder Chatelain) is from the fantastic, Salt Lake City Utah. He´s like the 3rd Salt Lake comp I´ve had already, but oh well. They aren´t as bad as you´d think...lol. Just kidding. He´s really good, and we get along and are working hard.


What else. Monday was crasy. Running around, paying all sorts of bills and paying off debts, and the usual groceries and stuff too. Then we had to get on a bus at 10:30 at night to travel to Asuncion. Double Decker. Pretty legit. The seats are basically like big beds. Showed up in town at 5 in the morning or something like that. Ridiculous. At least I got to sleep a little bit. Then we had interviews with President, and after I got to go to the temple AGAIN. Legit. Got a package while I was in the office, but it basically all got thrown out because it was soaked and just destroyed :( Oh well, its the thought that counts right. Had a super legit zone conference. Learned lots. The coolest part was a talk by Elder Holland that they showed. He gave it at the MTC a couple months ago. It was super good. I don´t know if you can look it up on the internet or what, but I think he gave it in January or February. Not sure. Talked about how this generation of missionaries have to be better than ever before, and how you really have to be converted yourself before you can share the gospel. Not like before when there were set lessons and you could just go in and ramble the whole thing off without feeling anything. Stuff like that. It´d be a good one for those guys that will be heading out in a bit here maybe. I dunno. 


Spent a lot of time this week just meeting new people, doing contacts, trying to build up the investigator pool. That was fun.... lol. Contacting is probably the least enjoyed part of working, but I´m actually starting to kind of enjoy it. So thats good. Talking to lots of people, and trying to get to know those people that are ready to recieve the gospel.  Had one of our most successful days of this change on Thursday because of it. Its really cool because we´re starting to see the work pick up a lot. After contacting late and in the dark we were able to teach a lesson to one lady who was really down because her husband past away and said that she had really lost faith in God for a while. We were able to share about the plan of Salvation and I shared some personal experience, and I think it went really well. We haven´t been able to talk to her again yet, but I´m hopeing that she´ll be able to progress and start coming to church. Her names Margarita, and she´s already got a friend or two in the ward. I think she´s got a drinking problem though, so we´ll see what happens.


Friday was a mess. The old landlady is crasy and we´ve been having a hard time getting rid of her. We´re trying to be nice and accomodating and make up for where the last set of Elders made a mess, but she´s kinda trying to take advantage of us. Thats no fun. Wasting a lot of time with that. All I can say is that I think I´m going to want to spen the least amount of time possible renting houses when I grow up, and a lot more owning my own.... hopefully I win the lottery or something like that....


Didn´t eat anything too weird this week... had a little frog jump in my oatmeal right after Elder Chatelain warned me not to poke it... I ate it anyways. haha. Today I rolled the dice and ordered something that we didn´t know what it was at the restaurant. It was just a platter of really small chunks of food. So I ate my olives, ham and cheese pieces, fries and little meat things with a toothpick. Fortunately no one was there or I think I would have been kinda embarassed.


Met some people that told us they couldn´t talk to us because the Catholic church was giving their kids food on the condition that they didn´t talk with anyone from any other church. I almost tried to clarify that with her by asking if they were really just getting payed by the church to not talk about the gospel with us, but I decided to let them be, considering that they looked pretty hungry and I didn´t think it´d be very Christlike to sass them like that. lol.


Anyways. Thats all I got time for. It was a blast chattin on the phone. Hope this e-mail had something in it worth reading. I´ll try and think of something deeper to write about next week. Love you lots, and have a great week! Things are going great here and I´m lovin being a missionary!


Chau! Jajotopata! (sp?- Nobody knows how to spell in Guarani... lol)


Elder Humphreys


PS. I´m trying not to think tooooo much about it because it gets me all thinking into the future and not enough in the present and such, but I´m super stoked to be picked up at the end. I just keep thinking of all the fun things we´ll get to do and saying goodbye for reals to all the people I already miss. Stuff like that. We´ll have to plan more in the future. I´ll think about what day would be best to call it quits. Love ya, bye.

Monday, May 2, 2011

Oh, and btw, is propane bad to breath?

Hey fam and friends! Hows it all going. Things are just fabulous here. Had kindof a crasy week, but it was pretty awesome too. Monday. Became an old guy. Already mentioned that. Tuesday we got up early and had to take a 4 hour bus ride to the nearest set of missionaries to have a meeting with them. Pretty cool. I´m pretty sure that we are the most issolated set of missionaries in the whole mission. Not the furthest from the office or anything, but the furthest from anybody else. Makes you feel kinda legit. The only problem with that is that it costs a lot to travel. Not like tonnes, but it adds up quick when you only have a little bit of money, and you´ve been waiting for weeks for a months worth of money in re-embersals (don´t even know if thats an english word...) to come back from the office. So basically we were living off of what little personal money I had for a whole week. I´ve never felt so poor in my life. It was a fun experience. lol. I almost regretted buying everyone a little birthday present before I left my last area. I´ll have to try and send those in a week or two.

Didn´t eat anything exciting this week... sorry to dissapoint. But Wednesday I did try something new. It failed. Theres a kind of soda flavour here called GuaranĂ¡. Its really good. But it would cost a lot to send it. So I bought the juice powder and thought maybe you could make your own by putting it in Carbonated water. So I decided to try it out first. Well they didn´t happen to have any carbonated water, so I bought tonic water. Gross stuff. Then when I put the powder in, the whole thing nearly exploded. What a mess. Not to mention that I tried to catch it from spilling on the floor with my mouth and it went all up my nose and stuff like that. Not fun. haha.

Thursday, the shower broke. Everything in our house started to breakdown the minute we decided to move. First I showered cold. Then the shower head melted a bit. Then Elder C tried to bend it back and it snapped in like 3 places. Then he broke the bathroom door off its hing too. A disaster. Oh well. We just payed some guy to fix it on Saturday when we moved.

But before that. Saturday. BAPTISM! Super cool. It seems like forever since I last had one. It was a lady named Clotilde and her son Adrian. After tonnes of problems trying to line up a taxi and everything we payed some guy to give us all a ride in the back of his truck. He drove us like a half hour to our ¨font¨. AKA the river. Super cool. Got changed into white in an abandoned house and then took turns wading into the river for the baptism. Really cool. Thankfully I didn´t get eaten by any paranas. Apparently there are some that live in the river....lol

Also this week was the planned temple trip for the ward. That was a disaster too. The people from the ward that we are a part of, 4 hours away, didn´t plan basically anything. After 2 weeks of getting the members all ready they almost didn´t get to go. Then at the last minute they sent some guy in this ghetto van to pick them up. We had to stay up till 1 in the morning to get them all out. Then we got woken up sat morning to find out that an hour out of town the van broke down and they were stuck on the highway for 4or5 hours in the dark trying to get home. Nobody went. :( But fortunately they will all be going again this Saturday supposedly. Hopefully its planned a little better. It was almost the happiest day of the mission until they couldn´t make it...

Saturday was a mess. We spent the entire day moving houses. The old house was a mess. I got stuck cleaning up a pile of half burned garbage. It was disgusting. Fortunately one of the members helped us move. Oh, and btw, is propane bad to breath? There was a little mishap with the stove when we went to move it....lol. But now we´re all good and settled in our new house. Its awesome. I haven´t had a shower that nice for years.

Besides that.... its actually pretty cool now. less than 15 degrees last night for sure. And its different here because the houses aren´t sealed or anything and there aren´t furnaces. I´m loving it right now. Elder Chatelains a little cold. lol. I´m excited to see what winter really gets like. I hear its pretty chilly. Tonght we have to leave for Asuncion at 10:30. Should get there ridiculously early in the morning. But it should be worth it. I get to go to the temple. AGAIN. Awesome. I got lucky. Then we get to go to zone conf, and then I get the interview with the president that I missed. Should be a blast.

By the way. Heard that Bin Laden died. Whats up with that? Sounds like you guys are eating well. Don´t get fat! lol. I´m eating alrightish but I think somehow even with all this walking and such I might be getting chubby. I still have to weigh myself, but we´ll see. Congrats to Tanner. Thats legit. A TOTALLY different mission than this one for sure.

But yup. OUta time! Love you lots. Have a great week! Talk to the fam this Sunday! Should be SICK! lol

Love you,

Elder Humphreys



Me and Elder Chatelain
PS. Happy Birthday Uncle Kevin........And Marissa too I guess!!!!!! lol