Hey family and friends. Hows it going. Sorry if this a shorter one. This is Elder Cerda (one of the assistants) last P-days, and so we´re trying to make it a good one. lol. We just got back from this cool Paraguayan t-shirt store, and then eating at TGIFridays. It was excellent. I forgot how awesome Frenches mustard and Hienz ketchup is. Not to mention the rest of the food. lol. It was good. Now we´re working on gettin ready to play some soccer, and hopefully there is some time afterwards to make sure this isn´t the lamest letter ever. I guess thats an interesting point though. Elder Cerdas going out. We´ll be shaking things up here again shortly as far as the office crew goes. That´ll be interesting. Christmas preparations are also in full swing. Its funny because we're in one of the least Christmas-y countries that I can think of. But at the same time, being in the office makes it interesting. We´ll be helping out with the Christmas parties (they do a little one with each of the zones so that you don´t have the least Christmas-y Christmas ever), and we actually have a Christmas tree and a couple decorations. We´re also making the transition from EFY music to Christmas music in the car and in the office. So it´ll hopefully be more Christmas-y than ever. I also got another Christmas package this week (THANKS MYSYKS!!!), though I haven´t opened any of them yet, just to save the suprise.
Okay. So we just got back from the laziest game of missionary soccer and basketball that I have ever played. We basically just sweated for nothing. I basically just walked the whole game. Zero hussel. Oh well. Good times.
We only have an hour and a half though before P-day is over so I better be hurrying up. We still have to go shopping and shower and whatnot. So yeah. Glad you all had a good week. Nothing too crasy. The wind sounded fun though. I thought the garage door story was kinda funny. Hope your feeling better Grandma! Your right dad. Time is just flying by like crasy. Its weird how it does that.
Thankfully we had a pretty tranquilo week in the office. Basically nothing out of the ordinary went down, and so we could just do the basics. Usually its not the stuff that really makes up our jobs that take the time and make things stressful. Its the things that we don´t really plan for. This week, the only thing that really went down was that an angry landlady came in to collect the rent money. The missionaries had recently moved, and she was angry about this that and the other, as landladies usually seem to be. Its hard, because we obviously need to be nice, loving and representatives of Jesus Christ in all things that we do. But that doens´t mean that we can be pushovers either, and squander the lords money on people that think they can take advantage of us. So that makes things fun. Thankfully I´ve been here for a descent while now, and so I was able to handle the situation quite calmly and without being taken advantage of. Just 5 or 6 weeks ago I totally would have been flustered and it would have been a disaster since I had to handle everything alone since the Hermana Madariaga wasn´t here. Everybody was just sitting outside of my office looking in at the lady with disbelief on their faces, baffled by how crasy the lady was being. Threatened to use her lawer-ly powers to take us to court and everything. In the end it all turned out well, and we didn´t have to waste the Lords money, nor was she losing anything that was rightly hers. So thats nice to know that I´m finally really getting the hang of things here.
This week in district meeting we talked a lot about talking to everybody. Something thats really hard to do. Sometimes we miss the opportunities to share with the people right in front of us, and go looking for them in other places like in their houses and stuff, where its really easy to reject us. So we tried that a lot more this week and it went really well. Taught a couple of lessons that we otherwise may have missed out on. Even got to teach a guy that was sitting out front reading the newspaper in just a towel. haha. Its getting really hot in case you were wondering. REALLY hot.
Other exciting stuff - Thursday we got to go on a division with our district leader. Normally the office elders just do divisions after office time and so divisions are typically short. This one was a little different though. Since we didn´t have way too much to do in the office, we were able to do a whole day division. Its funny because our district leader (Elder Gallacher) lives with the assistants. So I slept at their house where I´ve already lived before, then played soccer in the morning with all the same guys, and then worked in a familiar-ish area. We´ve actually been playing soccer every day this week. Its been fun. We have to get up a little early to do it, but oh well. Its fun and its good exercise. But anyways. We went on this division. It was actually pretty fun. I was working in the other area, and so I just got to follow him around and see how he teaches and whatnot. Very little pressure and just fun to get to know new people. It was actually fun to be able to work a whole day (thankfully it wasn´t too hot), and be ¨Real¨ missionaries again. Had some fun experiences. Ate chicken kidneys for lunch (not that good at all, but not gag worthy or anything). Didn´t have a crasy successful day, but got to teach some good lessons. Its crasy what you can get done in a whole days worth of work! lol. Also fun to work with Elder Gallacher. We came at the same time (different MTC districts), and it was fun to see how the mission has gone for him, his view on things etc. It was funny though - I was really worried for our area. Our area doesn´t usually get worked every day and there really aren´t that many people to visit. Not to mention that people have jobs during the day and this and that. I thought it might be a VERY long day for my companion. At the same time, division days often are just randomly some of your most successful days of all. And luckily they were blessed with that. Elder Thomson and his comp were actually able to fill the day, get lots done, teach some great lessons, find new investigators, and best of all - find a supposedly awesome family to teach that are just great. Elder Thomson said that when he saw the house, something felt really familiar about it. So he contacted it, and told the guy that he felt like he should go and meet them and everything. In the end, they accepted the invitation to be baptized on the 24th. So thats super cool. At first it made me sad because it seems like all the success always happens after I leave an area, but Elder Thomson reassured me that they did nothing better than usual, and that he actually would have appreciated me having been there to help him out. So that made me feel better. And so I get to go meet them today. Should be great.
Yesterday we decided to try something new. As you probably all remember, I´m not a very creative guy. But with the help of Elder Thomson, we were able to try a fun new activity. When we left to work, we walked across the street and set up a table with all sorts of books and pamphlets and stuff. Then we tried talking to everybody. Inviting them to read more about Jesus Christ and his gospel. Got some cool referrals and met some cool people. Unfortunately, most of them live in other areas, but oh well. We´ll be sending the referrals out and trying to follow up on the people that we met that live close. Hopefully something comes from it. We´ll see. We might try it again in coming weeks. It was weird because at first it was just a little awkward standing in front of a grocery store trying to talk to people, but in the end we were able to really get into it and meet new people.
Anyways. Thats all I got for this week. Otherwise it was pretty tranquilo and ordinary. Things are going great, and are even starting to look up. I´m really enjoying working with Elder Thomson and I think things are going to start improving here in the area soon. Sorry that there wasn´t much exciting to tell. But, things are great. I love being a missionary. The church is true, and Heavenly Father answers our prayers. Hope everything continues to go well for you back at home. I love you all and you are in my prayers! Love ya lots!!
Elder Humphreys
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