Saturday, August 4, 2012

The Office - Again.... FINAL LETTER! (Maybe)

Hey. So... I know today is only Saturday. And I know I´ll be home in like a week. Or like a week and a day. But yeah. Seeing as that I kind of use these emails as a kind of journal of sorts, I thought that while I have the chance I should probably make the best of it. 

So yeah. We had a pretty good week. Or should I say that I had a pretty good week. I kind of had a little bit of a mashing of companions for a while here. But, I had fun and tried to work hard for my last little bit of time here in the lovely land of Paraguay. 

Monday I wrote you all from out of town. We had to travel to find internet. But it was worth it. That night after working President let me know that he wanted me to come in as per usual on Wednesday even though I´d be waiting for dad to show up on Saturday. So, that was that. 

Tuesday. Spent the morning packing. I´m still a really slow packer. Did that for a while. Gave away tons of stuff to Elder Svedin. That came in handy later when I didn´t have enough time to effectively finish packing and so I had to just stuff everything in really quick. So, all my clothes are kind of wrinkly, but I managed to fit it all in a lot better than last time. The rest of the time during the day I just got to run around and say goodbye to people. It was a little weird because I plan on going back this week, but I didn´t want to really leave it up to chance either - it would have been really lame if I just disappeared and didn´t make it back, and thus never even gave a quick goodbye to anyone. So, I said my goodbyes. They were nice, but without tears or anything (for the most part) because we all are expecting me to go back soon. Managed to get all of the most important visits in. Probably my favorite visit was to the Zaracho´s. More than the goodbye itself or the fact that the Hermana started crying just because was just being able to notice the difference in them all. From the moment that we showed up to visit them, they just seemed really happy. Not that they weren´t happy people before, but they just seemed to have a different ¨glow¨ to them. That was really special to me. To see how the gospel has really made them happier. They were more talkative, more smiley, and everything. Really cool. Its been such a blessing to have been able to get to know them. They really gave purpose to the last part of my mission. It kept me focused, determined, and its really helped me to feel like I´ve come to a good conclusion. Rather than ending off just thinking about home or what we are going to do this week, it helped me to really be able to fulfill my purpose as a missionary. Now, I feel a little unprepared for this week running around with dad, but to me its totally worth it. I´m super thankful for the blessing that the Lord chose to give me at this time to have been able to meet and share the gospel with them. To end the day we got a ride with all of my stuff to the bus terminal. A bunch of the youth/guys were there to say goodbye. That was really nice too. I felt like people really appreciated the work that we were able to do in Saltos and that made me really happy.

That morning I met up with Elder Svedin´s new comp at the bus station in Asuncion. He finishes his mission in 2 weeks. Poor Elder Svedin. He has to ¨kill off¨ 2 missionaries in a row. Ugh. Hopefully it helps him to talk more and form stronger bonds with the members rather than just get himself trunky. I sincerly enjoyed my time with Elder Svedin. He´s a great guy. Hopefully we´ll be able to get together again after his mission (a LONG time from now. lol) and we can continue to have fun times together. 

That meant that after getting to the office in a taxi and sitting around outside the office all by myself for an hour or 2, the office Elders came and picked me up. Before I knew it, I was one of them again. haha. It´s been fun. For the last couple of days I´ve been running around with them, doing errands, and trying my best to help out. Its brought back a lot of good memories. They´ve even been nice enough to let me drive the van just like in the good old days. It´s been a blast. While I haven´t been helping them, I´ve been reorganizing all of my junk, working on my ¨Final Report¨ to give President, and... I dunno. Bugging the new office Elders. Thankfully they´ve been really patient with me so thats been nice. We´ve visited a bunch of people that I used to visit and stuff like that, and so the work has been good too. 

So yeah. Thats kind of been the week. Its been fun. Now I´m just waiting out Dads arrival. Today is P-day in the office and so we´re just kicking it. We´ll be out to go get lunch. Maybe I´ll reorganize some more. We´ll see. But yeah. I´m pretty excited about the week. We´ll be running around like crasy, but it will be great. We´ll be visiting friends, eating good food, seeing if there is anywhere to see, maybe buying some souvenirs. It´ll be good. 

But yeah. That is basically my summary for the week. It was a good one. More than that though, this is probably my last letter home. Thats strange to me. The time has really just flown by. Sure, some of the days seemed to drag on pretty long and everything, but the weeks went by fast, the months faster, and the 2 years have just passed by before I could hardly realize it. Its been quite the adventure. Good time, not so good times. Awesome times. Tons of great memories. But more than just an adventure, really it has been a super spiritually fulfilling experience. I can honestly see how I have changed and become a better person in the last 2 years. My testimony is stronger and I feel much more prepared for the next stage of my life. I don´t think that there is anything else that I have ever done in my life that has been so worth it, or that has helped me to change as much as being a missionary has. But even if I hadn´t changed at all, even if I had gained no personal benefit from this time here, it would have been worth it just to have been able to help so many people to come unto Christ and change their lives for the better. I´m so very thankful for the opportunity that the Lord has given me to be his servant for these years. To be able to do His work here in this great land of Paraguay. I know that this is His church, and His plan of happiness. I´ve seen how the Lord blesses those that will follow Him and do His will, and how those that choose not to do that in their lives are forced to fend for themselves. I know that He knows what´s best for us, and He always has seemed to bless me with that, even when it doesn´t appear that way to me. I´m so very thankful for all of the blessings that He has given us. I hope that I can always remember and cherish the moments that I have had here as a missionary, because I know that they can and will have a lasting impact on the rest of my life.

So. Thanks to everyone who reads my letters. It made me happy to hear that at least a couple people out there are interested in what I´ve been up to. I hope that what I´ve written has been at least somewhat inspirational and helpful and that you´ve been able to catch a glimpse of the work that we´ve been up to out here since I´ve been gone. Thank you for all of your letters, the packages, the love and the prayers. They have been much appreciated. I´m excited to see you all soon and share time together once again. I´m sad to have to leave behind this beautiful country and these people and friendships that I have made, but I am also very excited to be able to be together once again with all of you. Thanks for everything, love you all a ton, and have a good week. See you SOON!

Elder Humphreys

Monday, July 30, 2012

Saltos - Week 20

Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiii. So. This is it. I´m done with the letters. Thats weird. It went by so fast.... almost too fast. But yeah. Glad that the week went well and that everyones doing good. Just happy and waiting for me to get back... lol. But yeah. Lots to say. Little time.
This week went incredibly well. It was awesome to see how the Lord blessed us for working hard upuntil the end. We weren´t really expecting it, but in the end, we ended the week with 5 baptisms. What a great way to end up a mission. That meant that the week was pretty hecktic and we ran around a ton. But it was totally worth it. Its left me with a kind of spiritual hangover to start this week, after being on such a spiritual high last week, but I´m really happy.
Monday. I realized that my second last pairs of pants has another hole in the butt. Ugh. Thankfully they don´t have to last much longer. By the way dad. I don´t remember if I remembered last week, but another pair of contacts would be great. If you could.
Tuesday. We thought it out and I was talking with the zone leaders and we realized that the family we were working with could be baptized this week and that there was no need to delay. So me and my comp planned out every day and started teaching a bunch of stuff and doing a lot of preparations and verifying. The Zaracho family is awesome and super prepared and so it wasn´t all that tricky. Had some really long lessons and by about friday we had 3 solid baptisms lined up and good to go. That night we also had a super blessing as we passed by a member families house and they offered us dinner and we talked about their daughters baptism. She lives far away and so President had originally told us that she wouldn´t be able to get baptized. But, she called him up after talking, he realized that she was ready and should be baptized. So that was another person to work with. 4 baptisms this weekend.
Wednesday. Taught some long lessons. I also found 20 mil on the ground and so that made me really happy (its like finding 20 dollars but Paraguayan style).
Thursday. Same thing.
Friday. We were doing our weekly planning and realized that one of the other zaracho daughters was ready for baptism, and that we just hadn´t considered it because she hadn´t been to church very many times. But, one easy call to President and he said that it would be a reasonable course of action to have her baptized with her family. Wow. What a blessing. So. We had 5 interviews that day. Rough on the guy that had to come out and do all of the interviews, but totally worth it.
Saturday was the day of the baptisms. We spent all day working. Cleaning all the church by ourselves, cleaning out the font (that was really gross) and running around like crasy. Some good old physically demanding missionary work. But totally worth it. The baptism was awesome and really spiritual. It had tons of things that didn´t go according to plan, like nobody showing up on time, there not being enough baptismal clothes for everyone, the fact that I ripped the crotch of my pants, the fact that some of the baptismal clothes became seethrough when wet, and the fact that the water level dropped a lot right before the baptism, making the baptisms tricky. But in the end. Awesome. Really spiritual. They are great. Even payed their tithing right there at the baptism. I loved it. Elder Svedin did 2 and I did 2.
Sunday morning we went and had the last baptism in the river. Also really cool. I´ll have to send the pics later when I have more time. All of them came to church and were confirmed. Awesome. Great way to end.
Anyways. Today has been a little hectic. Still not sure when I go to Asuncion and how long I´ll wait it out here. Oh well. HAving fun. Super excited to run around and see dad.
Cool news about Elder Patterson, the wedding, hail and efy. Sad that I missed it. The church will pay for my second suitcase so no worries there. It makes me happy that you´re bringing stuff to give away. No need to be nervous. I´m here. :) It´ll be fun. We´ll make it work. Anyways. Thats it. Gotta run.
I love you lots. The mission has been an absolute blast. The Lord has blessed us and me so much and I´ve learned tons. I think I´ll try and write again something next Monday. But. For now I have to run. Thanks for the support and reading all of my letters! Love ya all and see you super soon!!!!!
Elder Humphreys

Monday, July 23, 2012

Saltos - Week 19

HEY! Hows everybody. So I was thinking and I realized that I´d be home soon and so it wasn´t worth writing much this week. lol. Okay, not really, but at the same time, i just spent a bunch of time talking with Elder Svedin about all of the crasy news and letters that he got and so now I´m short on time. As always. Glad to hear that everyone is doing well though.


Anyways. Our week was good. Changes news came on Monday. We were a little anxious but all is well. We stayed, and we were mercifully saved from being in a trio. Aparently President didn´t know that you wouldn´t be here till the 4th. i might sleep on the floor a night or two, but now he knows so we´ll make it work. Elder Schmidt is training. His kid is really cool.


Tuesday we did a division. Elder Svedin got stuck doing contacts all day. Aparently a lot of people were mean to him. Poor guy. Hope that once I´m gone and stop talking so much that he´ll have more time to practice. I talk way too much. Dang it. I had fun though. I left with Cleverson and we had a great day. Talked to Elder Patterson. Weird to think that he´s home...


Wednesday we had to go medicine shopping. Turns out that Elder SVedin got scabies or something like that. A little mite that lives under the skin. Thankfully we caught it early. Thursday he was in the house all day in bug killing cream with a member and I did another division. Apparently it was SUPER itchy. Hopefully we got it before it got passed to me.... lol?


Thursday was good. It was weird just being with a kid from the ward. Especially when we went to ward night and I was basically by myself with all the members. But I had fun. Got more work done. Lots of lessons with members this week.


Friday we got to teach the Word of Wisdom to an investigator that is looking to get baptized. Hard for her to give it up. But, in an act of faith we fetched the cigarettes from her house and she passed them off to me. So that was cool. Especially because that meant that I had a brand new pack of smokes in my pocket... jk. But that was a new experience. First time I actually almost had a descent opportunity to break the word of wisdom if I wanted. haha. Thankfully we weren´t tempted. We got to break them up and toss them into the river. Hopefully her habits are as broken up and destroyed as those smokes were. But I´m sure she´ll be able to do that.


Saturday was good. We got to visit the family that we´ve been working with. They are doing great. We visited them with members earlier in the week. They talked all in Guarani. Ugh. But it was good for them. Saturday we talked about the Plan of Salvation. The mom is really excited to be baptized, and the girls are following right behind. One even quit her job to come to church this week. Awesome. We had interviews and a really good lunch (thanks to President) that day too in the morning. That was good. He invited me to hold on strong till the end. I told him not to worry about it :). Also had to go to this awkward birthday party at Adrianas house. Thankfully we didn´t have to stay too long .Parties are no fun as missionaries. lol


Sunday was good. I gave my last talk. Talked about the members doing their part to help have real growth in the ward. I think it went alright. The Zaracho´s went and so they are looking really good for baptism next week. I´m really excited for that. Things are good here, and I´m having a blast, while still excited to run around and visit everyone.


Anyways. I gotta run. I love you all lots. Thanks for everything. Weird that I´ll be home so soon. Keep up the good work and have fun at your camps and cabins and whatnot. Love ya. Chau!


Elder Humphreys

Monday, July 16, 2012

Saltos - Week 18

HI! So. We had another good week. Actually, it went quite well. I hadfun. Its great and sad at the same time – it seems like the less time that Ihave left, the more success we´ve been having. We´re still looking for thatbaptism, but for the first time in a while it looks like we have a couplereally seguro (…ready…?) people lined up. So that’s been really great. We´rehaving fun. We´re kind of scared because we have changes coming up this week.Hopefully President doesn´t throw us a curve ball – I´d really just like tofinish here and hopefully I can just stay here with Elder Svedin. But we´llsee. Its in the Lords hands now. 
Anyways. Like I said. Good week. Monday was kind of a disaster. We were going to be done all on time, but then a member called us up and needed help. She stopped by while we were writing and told us about all of her marriage problems and how her husband was cheating on her etc. Ugh. Thats no fun. So we were fortunately able to help her out a bit. Convinced her not to do anything dumb and offered our help. So we were working with her and her family a bit this week. Its a bummer because the hermano should know better. But, we do what we can. That evening.... it was alright. We had helped the Hna and so we got out just on time but didn´t get to do our shopping. Had to jog out and get them Wednesday morningish.


Tuesday went well. Had cow stomach for lunch. I was the only one that ate all of it. One at most of it. The other shamelessly left it on his plate. Elder Svedin... he slipped it into his bag while nobody was looking. haha. At least he did his best to not offend them by not eating his food. lol. Then we had a nice long walk out to one of our main investigators. Shes doing really well, seeing a LOT of change in her life through the gospel. Thats nice to see. I also talked to her boyfriend - he was in jail. Apparently people in jail here have cellphones and everything. Ridiculous. Anyways, apparently he´s a member and everything so we had a nice long chat. He might get out this week. We´ll see if thats a good or a bad thing. Also shared with the Flia Zaracho. They´re doing great. More on that later.


Wednesday we had a fun little lesson when a guy walked in in the middle of the chat. He is a member from Ciudad del Este. Anyways, he talked our ears off and effectively ruined the lesson. Thankfully it was just with a less active member and was understanding. Somehow we just happen to be attracting slightly crasy people to us from all over the place. Had some good visits. Watched Together Forever with the family with problems. My favorite church movie. :) It was kind of awkward though because in the last moment they invited all of the youth from the ward over, AND the dads ex-wife was there with his kid. Weird. But, we made it work.


Fun stuff this week - not sure why but both me and my comp had random dreams with each others families. Apparently in his he came to visit us in Canada in one of his dads cars. He offered to let dad drive it and he refused, but Elder Svedin convinced him. Ya well, in the end, dad crashed it. hahaha. I thought that was funny, and commented that that specific car he was talking about (and deffinately does) cost more than our house. That wierded Elder Svedin out to hear - that was the exact same thing that I said in the dream. lol. So thankfully dream cars are cheaper than real cars or dad, you´d owe Elder Svedin 1.3 million or so. Try to be more carefull next time. lol.


Thursday we got to talk to Adriana again. Shes doing well. Lets just say that shes not married yet but she´s doing an awesome job of keeping ALL of the commandments. Her husband is getting pretty frustrated. She is even getting creative and having her niece over to visit for the night and everything. One of my best non baptized converts for sure. Ward night was a disaster but oh well. Everything else went swell.


Friday. Awesome lessons. We got some members over to visit the Zarachos and they just talked and talked and talked in Guarani. I didn´t understand a thing, but was happy. I think it helped them a lot. We also went back out to our far away investigator. She told us that she really wants to get baptized, because she knows its true. Ended the night accidently ending up and a big birthday party at the church. We left early. Parties here are lame. lol


Weighed myself today. Lets just say that you probably won´t recognize me anymore - I´m fat. As in 10 to 15 pounds extra. Ouch.


Saturday. Little bit of a disaster. The upside being that EVERYONE gave us food. We also got attacked by drunks all night long. I let Elder Svedin take care of the worst ones while I got the references of the better less drunk ones. haha. I don´t think Elder Svedin liked it, but it was effective. I liked it too because the drunks kept asking me if I was Chilean or Uruguayan or something. I take that as a compliment. I don´t seem too foreign anymore so thats nice.


Anyways. Sunday was great. 3 of the Zarachos went. The lady that lives far (Guillermina), and another person we recently found. Lots of people so I was happy. There were a ton of people in church too. It was crasy. So that was awesome. Got some more great visits done. The Zarachos are awesome. The more I look at it, the more I realize that the Lord sent us to their house at least 3 times before we took the hint. Its a bummer we didn´t notice sooner. But really, they are some super chosen and elect people and the Hna and a couple of the kids are really excited to get baptized. I´m sure the rest will follow. Awesome.


Anyways, all in all a great week. I think that it was the first time in my mission that I passed all of my goals (besides baptism), and we can really see how the Lord is blessing us. We´ll see how the changes go. But yeah. I´m out of time. On the computer and on the mission. All my clothes are worn out, one of my shoes are even growing mould (not sure why....lol), and the clock is winding down. But we´re giving it our all. We´ll see how the changes go. But, thanks for everything. Love you tons, and talk to you all next week. CHAU!


Cleversons baptism


Me and Elder Svedin in our matching shades



Elder Humphreys

Monday, July 9, 2012

Saltos - Week 17

Hello hello. Another week. Another adventure. Glad you had fun. We had a good week as always. Da gusto to be a missionary. Fun to think that we´ll have our own Crossfox. I think it´ll work well. I always thought they looked nice. Sorry. It´ll probably cost a little more. But I think it´ll be worth it. The roads here are just made of dirt, and so we´ll definately use the offroad capabilities, and then I think we´ll be doing some real road tripping and so I think a nice little crossfox should be able to get us around pretty fast. I´m assuming its faster than our van, and so if thats the case, we´ll get everywhere in no time. Weeeee. I miss Paraguayan driving. haha. As for the package - thanks again. I really wasn´t expecting anything so that was a nice surprise. Especially because I didn´t recognize the name of the person and I don´t know anybody from Montana and so that kind of caught me by surprise. lol. I´m also glad to hear that Toby is staying fit and that he gets the occasional walk. That you had a fun b-day week too. Sounds like a blast of stuff. Sad that I missed the Stampede again, but oh well. Weird to think that I even miss that disaster. lol. I can´t believe that there is another Spiderman too. Now I have soooooo many movies to catch up on. Good thing that there will be lots of time for that. Its funny because I had no idea who a couple of the people you were talking about are. Either you have tons of new friends, or else I´ve been away for so long now that I´m just forgetting people. lol. Oh well. Anyways, the week was grand. I spent the evening on Monday running around near my old area with one of my old office buddies, Elder Roberts. Great guy. I more just limped around though because my jammed toe from soccer was hurting like heck. But I survived. Got the late night bus back. It was funny because we met an American family in the terminal. She ended her mission in the south mission a month or two after I got here. Now shes married and back to visit with her husband. Weiiiird. I´m not ready to get married. Anyways, I slept like a rock on the way home. I was still suuuuper tired though. I only got like 6.5 hours of sleep in 2 days. Oh well. Worked anyways. I´ll have some sleep to catch up on when I get back. I got the the Terminal in Saltos really early and the guys were too lazy and tired to pick me up and so I had to wait it out there for a while. It was actually nice though because I got to see as the sun rose over Brazil and the river that runs between us. Really beautiful. Tuesday my toe was fortunately doing better. Its super bruised, but I walk fine. Its just not fun to kick things with it. Oh. And I remembered a funny moment that I had a weeks back - all over the places are little corner stores built into peoples houses. Well, the other week I walked in to one and it looked kind of funny. The lady came out and I talked to her for a second. Then I realized that they had shut down the store and I was just standing in some random ladies house. Oops. That was funny and awkwardish. What else. Oh yeah. So I´ve been meaning to write people back letters but I realized its too late. Dang it. So I guess if anybody had a question I think I´ll just try and answer it through this email and hopefully they notice it. For instance, the one that I can think about right now just had a really good comment about how we can take advantage of the atonement in our lives, even if we aren´t in serious need of repentance or are passing a really hard moment in our lives. Anyways, I was just thinking about that and I really liked it. It reminded me of this talk that I really liked from the April 2012 Liahonna by Elder Bednar. He talks about how we can use the atonement for 2 main purposes in our lives. Really cool. I reccomend it. What else though. Oh. We had a chance to talk with this family that we had found on Sunday. They are really cool, and appear really prepared to recieve the gospel. The Familia Saracho Gonzales. They are a family of 8. So we´ve been talking a bunch with them. Its really hard teaching that many people at a time. Especially when the dad doesn´t understand Spanish. So thats been interesting. I FINALLY got to give away the Guarani book of Mormon that I´ve been carrying around since the MTC. Hopefully we can use the members enough so that he can get his own testimony too. Wednesday. There were some big soccer upsets, putting the two biggest teams in Paraguay in the running fr the championship. But more on that Sunday. We had a cool moment we got to watch the restoration with some of our investigators. Love that movie. However, the day was kind of sad in the end - one of the less active members that we´ve been working with had been in Asuncion with his wife for a couple of weeks. She had been sick for a month or so. I actually gave her a blessing maybe 2 weeks ago. Anyways, I´ve been calling him to see how he´s been doing. On Wednesday morning I called and she had fallen into a coma, and then later that day he let me know that she had passed away. So that was pretty sad. Especially because he was doing everything he could to give up his smoking problems and such so that they could go to the temple. But yeah. He´ll be back tomorrow, and so we´ll be passing by to see what we can do to help. Hopefully he´s okay and we can help him feel better and stay on track. Poor guy. Thursday. NOt that much new. Tried to work hard. Had limited success. But thats how it goes. I don´t know if I remembered to mention it last week, but last week on the way home we ran into this drunk guy. I wasn´t going to pay him much attention until he started asking for help, and said that he felt like commiting suicide. That caught my attention. So I tried to find out where his house was, but he was too drunk to discribe it good. So I got him to walk us there. But, in the end he was WAY too drunk to walk straight and was stumbling everywhere. So, I sucked up my pride, and i grabbed him by the arm, and we walked to his house, either arm in arm or hand in hand depending on the moment. haha. We got some funny looks, but it was all I could do to find his house. Anyways, we shared with him a couple of times during the week. I´m not sure if he´s super interested, but he didn´t seem to get drunk like he normally would have, and he says he´s happier. And he didn´t commit suicide, so I´m happy. Worth the walk. Anyways. Gotta hurry. Friday we had kind of a rough day, but the highlight was the morning. We got to build a house. Or should I say a small shack. Well... I´ve seen dog houses that are nicer, but they were happy. lol. I had a blast. It was fun. Basically we just eyeballed and cut some scrap wood and really thin plywood and slapped it up. Its funny because they didn´t really want to measure or anything like that. It was full of gaps and terrible, but they didn´t seem to mind. Made me thankful for the house that I´ve been blessed with. And we had fun just helping out. Also had another good visit with the Saracho family. Satruday. Kind of normal. Sunday. Really cool in that we had 6 investigators in church. I think thats a new record. lol. That was cool. Some of the Flia Saracho, their neighbor, another lady we´ve been working with, and a friend of a member. So that was cool. The only bummer being that with the cold and whatever other excuse there could be, not many members were there. Oh well. Hopefully everyone wants to come back. But yeah. After church was the HUGE soccer game. Basically nobody was home. And then after the game, mad partying. Thankfully we thought ahead and did all of our studies at night to avoid the meyhem. Today we had our meeting. I think it went well. We played soccer. Probably my last time. Bummer because I didn´t really play very good but oh well. Hopefully I can find some people to play with when I get back. But yeah. Gotta run. Happy Birthday to CHLOE btw. Hope its grand!!! lol. Love you all very much, hope you have a good week, and talk to ya soon! Chau! Elder Humphreys

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Saltos - Week 16

Hello hello. Glad to be able to write this week. I´m in slightly unusual circumstances this week. But good ones. Strangely enough, I write you once again from one of my favorite computer/office spots in the world - thats right. My very own/former office desk. Ah. How I´ve missed this place. My home away from home. But I´ll explain later.
This week went really well for us. Monday I was without Elder Svedin. So I was going to have to go out with the other guys. But then in the middle of the day a recent convert/20 year old kid asked if he could go out with us. Jackpot. We went out and ran around for the night. That was the start of our success. Usually you only get a little done on P-day night, but somehow we managed to get a bunch more done. So that was good. Picked up Elder Svedin that night. Made it back alive with only a couple mishaps. Hes a good kid. I got lucky.
Tuesday. Had our district meeting and whatnot. It went okay I guess. I´m not the best district meeting teacher. But, that afternoon we went and got to work. Got a bunch done again. Crasy. Had a couple good successfull days in a row. Left with the same kid. Went great.
I don´t know if you´ve been noticing the news but there has been a little unrest here in the country lately. Thankfully, it has had basically no effect on us at all. The only possible thing being that if they stop shipping gas into the country, me and my comp might have to hitch a horse and buggy back to town. I´m not going to lie... we´re super excited. haha.
Wednesday. Our lunch visit fell apart on us for the second day in a row. But we didn´t let that slow us down. That day I did a division in the other area of Saltos.... things are going a little rougher over there. So... we basically just talked to strangers all day and hopefully found somebody that will progress in the future. It was fun. A little challenging when people don´t want to let you in and you have no back up sit down plans. But, it went well. Thanks to a full day of contacting new people, I was able to reach the goal we have of talking to people during the week. So that was good. I learned a couple of things from Elder Schmidt, and hopefully he learned a thing or two from me too.
But yeah. Back to my area. Thursday. Another great day. We took a gamble and took a really long walk to talk to somebody in the morning. Thankfully we remembered to call this time and so it all worked out. Great. Then we had ward night, which usually takes a lot of the wind out of our lesson teaching sails, but somehow, we were able to have another quite successful day. Really, we could see the Lord blessing us this week. Met lots of new people, and were able to share with many about the gospel. Always is great to be able to do that. That night the ward activity kind of fell apart, as the people that were supposed to be there never showed up, and we weren´t able to plan the cool activity that we wanted to do. But oh well.
Friday. Another pretty good day. Met lots of new people. The people that we already knew are doing decently well also. Adriana is still SUPER actively involved in the church and such. Her husband... still not really at all. Oh well. We keep praying and hoping we´ll be able to find a way to help him change.
Anyways. I mismanaged my time this week and so I have to hurry. Saturday had a really cool experience. We got to talk with Cleverson. He was going through a really hard time. But he told us that he took our advice and prayed to know what to do. Later that week he quit his job so that there is nothing that could keep him from going to church on Sunday, and the Lord blessed him so that his family didn´t even get super mad at him like he thought that they wood. More details to the story, but it was really cool to see how by his faith his prayers were answered. He´s awesome. He shared with us his feelings and thanked us for all of our words and guidance. Apparently he keeps a journal of all of the important things that we tell him and how they have blessed him. Awesome. Almost got me tearing up. Almost...
Sunday was good. Not as many investigators as we had hoped for, but a good turn out anyways. Cleverson got called as the Executive Secretary of the ward. He makes his missionaries proud. Then after going to go out and work, we had another miraculous day and found a couple cool families to teach and work with. In the end, we had one of the most successful weeks of my time here in Saltos for sure, and maybe even in the last while in my mission, at least as far as the numbers show. So that was great. I´m not quite sure why the Lord decided to bless us so much, but we´re planning on doing everything that we can to keep the ball rolling.
Happy birthday to Grandma Humphreys this week! Also, sorry to write so late, but Happy Canada day too!!!
Today was really cool. They decided to have a special meeting for all of the zone and district leaders here in Asuncion. It was really good and I´m excited to apply it. But the other thing I really loved was just that the majority of my favorite missionaries were there. It was just like a big sweet family reunion. We got to play soccer, and we played as the team of old oficinistas. We kicked butt, only losing one game. So much fun, even though I did get my big toe nail kind of destroyed. It also meant that I got my letters and packages more early than normal. That was awesome. I love the package so much, especially because I wasn´t expecting anything more to come for me. It was super fun too. We had a blast trying to guess the numbers and figure it all out. Great stuff. Thanks!!!
I´m excited. Fun stories for the week. Fun choir meal, congrats on the Elementary grad, the fun hotel search, more awards (Great job), and crasy Triathalon stories. I enjoyed it. Have fun.
Anyways, I gotta run. Thanks for everything. Love you all a bunch. Have a great week! CHAU!



Elder Humphreys

Monday, June 25, 2012

Saltos - Week 15

Hola. Hows life everybody? Thanks for the update. Sounds like you´re all having fun.


We had a pretty cool week here. It doesn´t really show through the numbers we got, but really its the changes and help that really count if you ask me.



Monday was good. Pretty tranquilo P-day. We went out and got to work in the evening. Had a really cool lesson with this couple that we are working with: Francisco and Marisel. Neither of them are members but they have been to church 3 and 2 times respectively. They really like it. She knows that its true. He´s having a little bit of a hard time giving up his Catholic beliefs and such, but they are coming along. They really liked church last week. She told us about how she had learned about the importance of the law of chastity. So we got to talk about families and them getting married and such. It went really well. A couple days later she told us that she had read the pamphlet and that it had brought her to tears of happiness and of wanting to repent for living together. So hopefully they can get that worked out soon. She really wants to get married. He wants to, but isn´t in too much of a rush. They would of come to church this week but had to take a surprise vacation with his work or something and to visit his mom. Oh well. Next week.



We also had a fun moment where we found one of the members dogs in front of our house. It had got lost but somehow knew where we lived. It didn´t want to follow us to his house. But then when we went in our house it just barked and scratched at the gate. So we got frustrated and I had to walk the dumb dog home by his collar. Its funny because the streets are really territorial here. Its like living in the dog version Compton or Brooklyn or something. haha. So I had to walk in home, almost dragging it through the sketchier parts while Elder Svedin practiced his baseball skills and scared off all of the gangster street dogs with rocks. He almost killed one or two. Needless to say, that was an adventure. Something that I had never imagined that I would do on my mission. lol.



Tuesday we almost spent the whole day on the bus. It left at 8. We got there at 12:30. Had a 2 hour meeting. Got on the 3:30 bus. Got back at 8ish. Ugh. But, thats the life. I actually really like bus rides now. The part that was the worst was that they were showing movies the whole way there, and then some movies and music on the way back. Way distracting and not really spiritually uplifting. I did catch up on some of my reading though in Preach My Gospel so that was nice. The conference on the other hand was just grand. Thoroughly enjoyed it. We learned about how to meet the South America Souths goals, how to have better ward councils, and the importance of working with the men and fathers of the families. Great stuff that we applied later in the week.



Wednesday was a little bit of a bummer. Most of our plans went right down the drain when a couple of things got mixed up. Adriana is still doing great though. And her boyfriend agreed to get married!!...... in December. Noooo. So now we have to try even Harder to talk with him. She´s being a great missionary though. She brought her cousin to church with her again this week, and so we´re working with her too. Thats awesome.



Thursday was a little rough too. We made a sacrifice to go visit someone that lives a ways away. And... she was sick. Dang it. Then we had the ward activity that night and so there went most of our time. The president didn´t show up either and so our plan of watching a movie fell through. So I had to make a last minute game plan, and we played some gospel pictionary kind of thing, and made a game out of memorizing a scipture. Close one. Apparently we should have made a bigger emphasis in memorizing the reference too though because I can´t remember where it is. lol. ¨Let no man dispise thy youth, but be an example of the believers.....¨



Friday we had some really good plans. Most of them fell through as well (lame), but we were able to make the best of it and do a bunch of visits that we had needed to do, but just didn´t have time for. So that was nice. Cleverson is going through a little bit of a rough patch with work and his family and stuff and so we were able to share with him which was nice.



Saturday was really cool. We cleaned the church but it went really quick with everyones help. Then after our studies we got out to work. We went over and were talking with Adriana about how we were going to be able to ¨get at¨ her husband. Well, at that exact moment he showed up from work. I wasn´t sure what to do, but I remembered the example that President had given us at the meeting we had had about just asking for a little time and then giving a solid testimony to try and get their attention. So before he could run away, I told him we just wanted to talk a little bit. He still ended up walking away, and we thought we had lost. But he came back out in a couple of minutes. At first it was a little bit rough going, but after a little bit we were able to get a little flow going. Promised lots of blessings. Talked about the need he had to take action and know for himself. About WHY we were getting Adriana so excited and demanding to get married. In the end I think it went really well. He accepted the invitation to get baptized when he knows its true, and we had a nice little kneeling prayer at the end that he gave. The only bad thing being the fact that they neighbour had his music SUPER loud the whole lesson. You could hardly hear Elder Sveding when he was sharing. But, nothing you can do. Thankfully the spirit speaks louder than words. Hopefully we see some progression there.



After that we went and bought a bunch of stuff. We´re all out of money, but fortunately I had some personal money and I took out some more today. We bought the stuff for an investigator who is going to quit smoking. We had some goofy stop smoking lesson and hopefully if he sticks to it and uses the stuff we gave him he´ll be able to stop by the end of the week. For good. So that was nice. I really think he can be a great leader in the future. Recent convert that has fallen away for a bit because of work and the smoking problems, but is willing to do anything to come back.

 
We also got to give this large print bible to a members grandma that night. She absolutely loved it. lol. That was fun.



Anyways, I´m basically out of time. Sunday was good. Adriana and her cousin went to church. Francisco was out of town. But, thats how it goes. I had to teach the class and give a talk with little preparation, but oh well. People said that they went alright. or decent. Or good. I don´t know. We finally had ward council and so we also got to apply all of that. Hopefully we get more support from all that.



But yeah. Gotta run. Luckily I had some time here and so you didn´t have to wait. Have a great week and write you again next Monday (hopefully). Love you lots! Chau.



Elder Humphreys


Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Salts - Week 14

Hiiiiiii. Glad to hear that you had a great week. Sounds like lots of fun stuff went down. How exciting that I will be able to be there for the temple stuff. Glad to hear that I didn´t miss EVERYTHING. Wow. As far as the card goes... I´ll try and take some out today or tomorrow. Hopefully it works. Its not like I´m desperate, but its hard to not buy stuff when your comp is buying every week. I´m holding back a lot, but it doesn´t help that I´ll be needing to get a lot of stuff in the future soon anyways. Fun stuff about the wedding and everything. I´m kind of sad that you didn´t send pictures or anything, but I´ll be patient until next week. haha. Cute about the song at church. Too bad I missed it. Also nice work on the money raising. Great job. I´m sad that I missed the breakfast - for some reason when I think about it, it the pancake breakfast has always just been something that we did EVERY year. Its like missing my last Christmas all over again. I would definitely suggest paint balling, but don´t practice too much because I still need to be able to win we play after I get home. I can´t believe that you guys are going a triathalon. That just doesn´t sound fun at all to me. haha. I did realize this morning though what a little practice does for you. We ran to the laundry ladies house and I didn´t break down out of breath on the way there. Im pretty sure I wouldn´t have been able to run nearly that hard or long before my mission. As for the Hotels. I promise that they will be cheaper than back at home. By a long shot. they should all have AC too. There really aren´t all that many mosquitos anyways. You´ve definitely missed the bad season. Its pretty tranquilo now. Hopefully we´ll have time for the falls... it´ll depend on how long it takes to visit all of the people. I´ve been going through all of my old planners and stuff recently. Remembering all the people I´ve met and the places to go. Fun stuff. The week started out pretty normal. Our shower was broken for a couple of days, so that was kind of a bummer. Not fun at all when you have to shower in ice cold water. So I skipped a couple days and the other days I just splashed myself with the water and tried to get all the soap off. Ugh. Thankfully the guy that takes care of the houses came and fixed it up for free. I also realized that I´m basically down to 2 pairs of workable pants - 3 have holes, 1 is too small, and I think the wash people lost another pair. So that means that I have to be careful to not get my pants dirty until the other ones get back from the wash. haha. Its a fun little rotation. Thankfully I´m almost done so I dont mind too much. Lesson teaching was kind of rough this week. Its tricky because there are a lot more people that work in this area than is normal. So almost anybody that we want to visit is only free from 5:30 till 8ish. So that makes it fun trying to fit people all in in that time. During the day there is lots of time, but when it counts it just doesn´t go far enough. Speaking of the clothes though - as kindly as I possibly could, last week I told the wash lady that I was missing my pants, a jersey, a pair of shorts, and the bed sheet that went missing a long time ago. I made sure not to be angry or blame her for anything. But everytime that I saw them the looked mad at me. Then on Saturday they said that they didn´t want to do our clothes or clean our house anymore. Wow. Well, I didn´t really care about the house clean. That was just for fun. But the clothes was kind of crasy. I wasn´t mad at all because I was planning on leaving all the clothes here anyways. But she blew it all out of proportion. So I had to explain to them a bunch of times how it wasn´t a big deal. Blah. I hate drama. Really, more than anything I just don´t want something dumb like that to get in between them and liking the missionaries or the church. It happens way too often where something blown out of proportion ruins a persons faithfulness in the church. So hopefully they forgive me and they can look past it. The thing that really bugged me more than anything is just the fact that I tried so hard to be unoffensive - There are a lot of things I do just because i don´t want to offend people. I always eat all my food, I try and never speak in English in front of them, I try and be really friendly and happy always. But yeah. That was kind of a bummer. Hopefully we can all just be happy :) Other scary moment this week. Sharing glasses or straws or whatever here is never a big deal. Sometimes even people will just bring out one glass for you and your comp. Anyways, I´ve grown accostomed to that. So it scared me to death when AFTER having shared some stuff with my comp, he tells me that he has Mono, and that if it becomes active or whatever in 10 days I´m infected for life. Dang it. I don´t really know anything about mono so I just had to trust him. Well, he started feeling sick the other day. Dang I was scared. lol. But apparently it is just the common cold. Theres a lot of that going around lately. So hopefully I´m still clean. I won´t be sharing any more from now on. We learned that one of our investigators got put in jail this week. Hes 15. Probably good for him so that he doesn´t get in any more trouble. Also have a new investigator who just got out of jail a couple months back. So thats fun. Fortunately they are really good people. lol. Friday we met up with Cleverson. Apparently he just finished the Book of Mormon. Hes reading tons. And he also told us that he found a scripture that really hit him, and now he´s really excited to serve a mission. Right now he´s just working really hard to save up to go. Saturday we cleaned the church. My comp was feeling sick and the other guys didn´t seem to be very excited or into the work. That meant that I spent a long time mopping. Oh well. The best part was Sunday when the branch president complimented us on how good the place looked. Made me happy for a job well done. We tried to do a visit with the ward mission leader that night too. We showed up at the time we were supposed to be at the investigators house. Then we waited for them to shower and get ready. We showed up over an hour late. Ouch. So it was a short lesson, and it was kind of awkward because everyone was half asleep. But oh well. It was worth it to get them some member support. Sunday was great. Adriana, her friend, and Francisco and Marisel all came to church. Not a bad turn out at all. Not a bad turn out in church as far as members either and so all in all great. Great meeting with the ward missionaries that night too so that was great. Good progression here. Today. Lots of rain. Yeah. They oppened up a new huge import store here. We were super exited for macaroni and cheese, peanut butter, easy cheese etc etc etc. For me not so much, but my comp was about to explode with excitement. In the end, the food section was almost non existant. It just had clothes and electronics and such. Lame. haha. But yeah. Studies are great. I´m almost done the new testament and loving it. Also read probably my 2nd favorite talk from conference: The WHY of Priesthood Service. Loved it. But yeah. Gotta run. I know its kind of near the end of the week, but HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!! Wooo. Hope its swell. And of course, Happy Birthday to Tara too. You should have a party together. lol. But yeah. Have a great week. Sorry to everybody for never writting back.... Love you guys lots! Thanks for everything. Keep up the good work, study hard and see you soon! Elder Humphreys

Monday, June 11, 2012

Saltos - week 13

Howdy there. Sorry if this is a shorter one. I have a decent headache from all the physical activity that we got in this morning. Its distracting me from diligent typing. Glad to hear that all is well. Teaching all sorts of lessons - I hear that practice makes PERFECT. lol. I like how the more you teach, the less big of a deal it is when somebody just jumps you with a lesson. Nice work on the musical stuff. I liked the video. Its weirding me out that classes are ending. Seems like just the other day that you were all on family vacations last summer. Time flies when you´re having fun. Does this mean that you might get to sing at the temple dedication? That would be really cool. Any word on when that will be?
This week was good. Started out a little rough, but was really good in the end. Monday - the rain. Tuesday, the cold struck hit. It was awesome. My comp almost died of the cold, but I was really happy. We visited a less active family who are really trying hard to come back to church. They have problems with the word of wisdom, work etc., but its great because at least they have sincere desires to change. The local missionary in our district had his last day Tuesday. Cya Elder Cristian Lopez. Bienvenidos Elder Enrique Bailon. Elder Bailon is from California but his parents are from Mexico, so that gives the best of both worlds. English and spanish.
That meant that Wednesday we were in a trio. I´m basically companions now with Elder Schmidt. We had a great lesson with our main investigator Adriana. Shes great. She has all the desires in the world to be baptized. Her only problem is with her boyfriend. He doesn´t really want to rush getting married. So thats slowing her down. But shes telling us to visit all of her family and friends. She accepts everything. Bummer on the marriage, but we´ll be fasting for her this week.
Thursday was fun. We had a great comp study. Learned lots. The thing we practiced came up in one of our lessons and I got super excited. I set Elder Svedin up perfectly to share his part... .and then I found out that he was daydreaming. haha. That reminded me of my early days as a missionary. Its hard when you don´t follow their stories very well to keep focused sometimes. That was funny. The day went kind of rough, but we had a fun ward night to finish it off. I thought that no one was going to come because of the cold, but there was a good turn out. We watched some of the extras from the Joy to the World video. They were really nice.
Friday - normal. I´d tell more but I´m basically out of time.
Saturday we had an awkward moment were we accidently told two families that we would come to lunch. In the end, to not hurt anyones feelings we had to eat twice. Bummer. lol. Fortunately we were able to jam enough food in to make both families think that they had fed us. Oops. We almost got to eat Armadillo for lunch. I was super excited. But it still had to cook for 5 or so more hours. Bummer. We also set up a bunch of lessons with member and they all fell through. Oh well. We tried. Saturday in the end went really well though. Lots of good lessons. Its always super tricky to find someone to teach when it gets past 8, but we managed to make it work.
Sunday was really cool. We met up at the church early and took a trip out to a neighboring city for district conference. The conference was super good. Cleverson got the Melquisidec priesthood. Adriana took her little son and they loved it. We even got the chance to see a whole bunch of ostrich off on the side of the road. Awesome. I love taking trips with the ward. That night we got to drink this drink made out of bat. Well, thats what they tricked us into thinking. I finally got it after not too long, but the language barrier left Elder Svedin in the dark for a while. haha. What a bad trainer I am. Fun stuff though. It sure tasted good for bat.
Today we had a blast playing soccer. We lost in the dying moments, but we had a blast anyways. Bought a goofy baseball hat today - 5 bucks. Couldn´t pass it up.
But yeah. Gotta run. Things are great here. We have a pretty good teaching pool so I´m happy. We´re working hard and doing our best. Making the best of every moment. But, I gotta run. Love you lots. Have a great week and talk to ya soon! Chau.
Elder Humphreys


Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Saltos - week 12

Hiiiii. Sorry for writing late again this week. This time we had a slightly different problem. Monday we had a holiday here in Saltos - everybody took the day off of work and there was a little protest about some random things that people wanted changed. A new road and I think a power plant or something so that we don´t have to worry about the power going out on us anymore. So yesterday we decided to work hard while everybody was at home taking the day off and the internet cafe and shops would be closed. Great plan. If only it hadn´t rained the entire day. We got WET. haha. Fun stuff. But yeah. So we´re taking our P-day today. Anyways. We had a pretty good week. Can´t complain. Glad to hear that all is well back at home. Having fun with the visa (I didn´t realize that you´d have to do all that stuff too). Yay for having a place to stay. I really appreciate that one. Hopefully the room is nice and quiet and I´ll be able to focus and study better than I did before the mission. lol. I love how you talked about real growth in the church. Thats sometimes something that gets missed here a lot. The missionaries baptize a bunch but the members don´t neccesarily focus on the retention and a lot of people get lost. Sad to hear about sister cooper. Hope that the family is well. Congrats to Emma for the good work in classes and awards. Also glad to hear the the grand-p´s got back safe and sound. Hope that was a blast. Crasy to see my own plans. Thats crasy. Still lots of time though. Time to keep working hard till the end. I´m not really tooo worried about coming home and stuff. I feel good about what I´ve been able to do here. Lots more that I wish I could have done, but I think thats all part of the learning process. But, there is still time left to work, so I don´t plan on calling it quits yet! As I said this week went pretty good. Tuesday we were able to go out with some of the young men and do visits. That was an adventure. I enjoyed it. We were able to get some extra work done. It was kind of scary having to send out poor little Elder Svedin to the wolves, but he enjoyed it. He´s great and hads a good attitude. The funniest part though was that he told me about this really wierd guy that they contacted and taught. Said it was a really wierd lesson and didn´t feel very good. I found out later that I knew who the guy was - it was the really strange gay guy that sells chipa in the streets. Elder Wheatley had warned me about him. Looks like I had forgotten to warn Elder Svedin. Thankfully he was just really wierded out and nothing more. We probably won´t be going back... haha. I honestly don´t remember much about the earlier parts of the week. But thats okay because the second half was much more exciting. Thursday was Cleversons birthday and there was a big activity at the church for him. That was nice. He fits in like a member of many years. So thats really nice. We also got to meet another one of their friends there, so maybe that will lead to something. We´ll see. But Friday is where it got much more exciting. We had a kind of disorganized day and were running around. We ran over to the church near the end of the day to visit with Cleverson. Turned out we didn´t have the keys and so we had to sit on the sidewalk. We planned on teaching about tithing just to make sure that he remembered it. Not only did he remember it, but he already had it set aside to pay this Sunday. Thats my boy. So we left happy from that. We were going to be late so we were walking fast but happy. We ran into some members, and were forced to reject the offer for some free food to make it home on time. But rather than food, we got the cooler blessing of running into our top investigator, Adriana. She was on her way home from school. Anyways, she told us a really awesome story that made my day. She had followed our advice and studied in the book of mormon. She said that she read the part we marked and really liked it. Then she asked God to show her something that she needed. She opened up and happened to read a part about baptism. She took that as a direct answer from God. Reading praying and going to church last week put together, she has decided that our message is true. If that isn´t awesome enough, she told us how she realized that she would need to get out of work to be able to go to church. So, she decided that she was going to put her faith in God and just quit her job. Well, a few days later, the boss came to her with a form to sign. Something about giving up some of her workers rights. She said that she wouldn´t sign it. He threatened to fire her if she didn´t do it. She happily obliged. By getting fired he had to pay her all sorts of money for this that and the other. That meant that she had enough to pay off all of the debts that she had that she was worried about. That meant she was free of work, free from her debts and able to stay and home with her kid and go to work every Sunday from now on. Wow. What a blessing. The Lord definately answered her and our prayers. Awesome. One of my favorite parts being that as she came to put her faith in the Lord and sacrifice whatever was neccesary, he blessed her more than she (or we) imagined that he would. So now everything is looking really promising with her. She has a problem with the fact that she isn´t married, and her boyfriend that she lives with isn´t too excited on getting married, but I´m sure that with the faith that she has, she´ll be able to work something out. Awesome. So that was kind of the highlight of the week. Now I´m short on writing time...Friday we were running around like crasy to try and visit everyone. No fun to run, but it means that we actually have a descent amount of investigators that we´re working with for which I am really greatful. We got to do a visit with a member to Adriana where we talked about the law of chastity and everything. She wasn´t able to make it to church this week because she had to go to a family thing in Asuncion but she has promised to us (and herself and God) that she will go every week from now on. Sunday we were blessed to have somebody else in church. Something we were really blessed with this change. I also had the opportunity to read one of my all time favorite conference talks - the one by Elder Scott in this past conference. Super helpfull full of information I´ve never seen anywhere else and just packed with good information. I think I marked over 90% of the talk. haha. Oops. Out of time. HAve to run. Have a great week. Happy birthday to ADAM (I´m going to see if I can call him - if not... let him know). Talk to you again in less than one week. Love you lots. Be good people and share the gospel! Love ya. Elder Humphreys

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Saltos - week 11

Hola. Hows it going with everyone? Sorry for not writing yesterday - the internet was apparently out in this entire section of Paraguay. Fun stuff. Fortunately our leaders have had mercy on us and we have been given permission to write today. That way you won´t be wondering how we are or if I died or anything. So thats nice. We had a pretty good week. It went by super fast. This has definitely been one of the fastest (if not THE fastest) change I think I´ve ever had. We are already almost half done the training program that the new missionaries go through. Just one week left and we´ll be half done. Its a 12 week program, So after thats finished I´ll only really have about 2 weeks left. The time is going by WAY too fast. Just trying to make the best of it with every day that I have left. Super good to hear that you got the tickets. What a relief. I´ll try and think a little (without distracting myself) about how we´ll use the days we have. I really just kind of want to see my old areas and the people there. Besides that there aren´t all that many sights to see. Just the giant water falls. Maybe if we have time we´ll go there. Besides that... the temple. I think thats it. lol. As far as booking hotels, I wouldn´t stress too much. I don´t think any hotels out here will ever fill up, and I´m not too worried. I was just telling my comp that I think that maybe rather than getting a hotel we´ll just sleep in the rental car. haha. We´ll see how it goes. I think it´d be probably good to have a car the whole time though. Just because my areas are kind of spaced out, and we don´t have tons of time to waste sitting on buses and stuff. I am super happy to hear that all of my doctorness is all ready to go though. It will feel weird to have clean teeth, I´m all out of contacts, and I haven´t met a single missionary that hasn´t been at least a little sick throughout his entire mission. haha. So that will be a good way to start fresh. The only other person I´ll need to visit is the pedicurist, but I don´t think I´ll need an appointment for that. Only other thing on that note - I can´t believe that you saw the Avengers without me. We´ve been staying as focused as possible, but at the same time, there has been a lot of chatter about that one. Heard it was a hit. lol. Anyways. The week. Last monday was pretty normal. Bought some cheap matching sunglasses with my companion. They´ll be great for our Italy trip. Tuesday was an unusualish day. Things were all just kind of out of order and messy. But we got quite a bit done. We left and did a bunch of visits with a member. That was great. It got a little bit rough at one point where a lot of our plans had fallen through, but after some thinking and some needed inspiration we went and contacted a referral that we had gotten a couple of days back. Turned out that not only did we happen to find her at one of the only days and times that would have been possible, but also that she was good friends with the member, and had talked a lot with missionaries back in the day. So that was a small miracle.We also got to know the kid of a less active member that we´re working with. He just moved back from Asuncion and supposedly really wants to get baptised. So we´ll be working with them and see how that goes. Wednesday was all rainy and nasty.. The best part was that it didn´t look too bad when we left the house, and so we got caught in the rain without rainjackets or umbrellas or anything. Oops. But in the end, the rain turned out to be a blessing. I had gotten all mixed up about the time at which one of our main investigators would have time to visit us. I didn´t realize until she should have been leaving for school that I had made the mix up. Man, I felt dumb. But fortunately the rain meant that she didn´t leave to go to school and that we still got to have a really good lesson. Besides that, the day was kind of a disaster, but the blessing of still being able to teach our most important lesson was really nice. This week we tried to work a lot with the members. Unfortunately things just didn´t work out. The rain, the members or the investigators - always one of those 3 things would come up last minute and have a reason for it to fall through. Bummer. But we´re going to keep doing everything we can to get their help. I´ve definately seen the difference it can make to have their help. Thursday was another typical rainy day. During the night, I think it rained harder than Ive ever seen it rain here in Saltos. We have a tin roof so that doesn´t really help with the sleeping. But I realized what a blessing it was just to have a house that was dry and didn´t leak. There are a ton of people that live around here that don´t have that luxury. That night the rain slowed down and we were able to have our ward night. There still wasn´t a great turn out, but we had fun anyways, and played our simplified version of Scatergories. A Paraguayan classic called ¨Tuti Fruti¨. Its tricky to play in Spanish though. Friday - Another busy day. Left again with the same member. Fernando - getting ready to go on his mission. Convert of ...3 months. Great kid. Finished the night off strong teaching him and Cleverson about fasting and challenged them to a fast with us so that they can find good work where they wont have to work on Sundays - something SUPER hard to do here. We also had to talk a lot about their group of member friends and how they were going to fix all of their problems. Its great because there are a bunch of 19-21 year olds in the ward that have the ability to do a lot of good, but at the same time, they´re having a really hard tiem getting along. Me and my comp are constantly just trying to keep them all from falling apart. So saturday we started our fast with them. That was really nice. We planned to run around and do a bunch of last minute visits to get people ready for church. Those plans kind of had a wrench thrown into them when all of the power went out in the city for an hour or two. It was pretty dark. lol. Thankfully the cell phone has a little light on the top. We managed to get into a lesson though where we taught by candle and flashlight until the power came back. Fun stuff. Taught another great lesson with our main investigator. Shes great and is really wanting to know that the church is true. Her name is Adriana. Shes got a ton of obsticals in her way to baptism, but she has tons of faith and really wants to follow God, and so nothing is imposible. Sunday, Adriana came to church. She loved it. The only bad thing is that she had to move her day off to Sunday to be able to go to church - that means that we won´t be able to visit till Sunday. Ugh. Bummer. But oh well. I think she is really starting to see that the church is true and is getting excited about her progression. Anyways. Yesterday was pretty good. We got to have our small zone soccer activity. It felt SO good to be able to go out and run again. I love it. Bummer about the internet but oh well. Anyways. Thats that. Got to get out and do some missionary work. Big old shout out to THEO GIBB. Birthday wishes from a really lame friend that never writes. Have a good one. But yeah. Things are going great here. Glad to hear that all is well back at home. Love you all tons. Have a great week, and talk to you in less than 7 days! Chau! Elder Humphreys

Monday, May 21, 2012

Saltos - Week 10

Heeeey. Hows it going everybody? Thanks for the good weekly update. Glad that all is going well back at home. I´d say the only thing that was too bad about the letter was that it apears as though the family countdown has started... that means that my time is growing close. Not a fun thought... Glad to hear that things are working themselves out with the flights though. Hopefully everything keeps going well with that! Glad you´re all having a good time though. That the trips and weddings (wierd) went along well as usual. What fun.
As for this week. It went quite well. I am unfortunately a little bit less prepared to write my letter this week, but we´ll see how it goes. I think I´ll be able to remember most of it...
Last monday we had a blast. After our district meeting, all of the elders from the two districts closest to here (ours, and the one near by), got changed and we went and rented out an artificial turf field to play soccer on. It was kind of expensive, but with 9 guys covering the price it wasn´t too bad. Anyways, we played our gutts out for an hour and a half. It was a blast. I realized how much I missed the soccer playing days of the office. I was kind of rusty, and even fatter than I used to be. But I did manage to make a couple really sick goals and a handful of great plays. So that was fun. We were honestly sore though for the next 3 or 4 days. Thats what happens when you have great mission bodies like ours. haha. That afternoon I stuck my poor newbie companion on a bus all by himself to go off and do a division. Poor guy. Thankfully he had the phone and managed to get along all right. That meant that for the next day and a half I was on a division as well. Always fun to be with the zone leader. On one hand, hes a great missionary and its fun to be with him. On the other hand you get that feeling like your being judged all day. Oh well. Things went swell. The only bad part being when one of our main investigators just decided to hide from us. But I´m kind of used to that by now so oh well. We found some really cool people who should hopefully progress in the future.
Other fun news that day was that special changes hit our district. Fortunately me and my comp are pretty locked in with the whole training project that we do. The only way we´ll be effected by changes will be if I get demoted for doing something super dumb. So no worries there. However Elder Thomson got the change out. Thats kind of a bummer. He was the last of the original Saltos crew that was here when I showed up. Really good guy. That lead to a little bit of a mess. First him and his comp went in to the office. Then it turned out that his old comp (elder Schmidt) has yet to have a new comp. So, we had to go pick him up, and then we spent a day in a trio. Always fun like that. Even better when you have 2 areas that you have to cover. So we planned everything out to try and make sure that everyone that needed a visit got one. After one kind of crasy rushed day, we got a call that said that he´d be getting a local companion. So now we´re back to 4. The local Elder should be with us for about 3 weeks until he gets his visa to Argentina, or at least until changes.
As for that... the week was pretty normal. We did our visits. Tried our best to help others come unto Christ. Rewarding as always. Nobody came to ward night. That was kind of a bummer. Tried to do some visits with some of the members... the majority fell through on us. Oh well. We just keep doing what we can.
Friday I had a fun moment. Thursday my companion was telling me how at his house he has an entire room dedicated to art and deep thinking. Obviously being the person I am, I couldn´t just let that go -  I had to ask him all sorts of questions about it. I was liking the idea a lot until I found out that all 25 pieces or so of art are of splash painting. I thought that that was humorous. It turns out that I really just don´t have a good understanding though. He explained to me the feeling that can be found and understood from splash art. I was still kind of skeptical. So Friday we continued on the theme. He told me to come to Italy with him and he´d show me all about it. I told him that I didn´t have that kind of money. He told me that he would take me there with him, as long as I promised to have an open mind and try and feel the beauty of the art. So its a deal. Not sure when the trip will be but its set. We have a deal. He even sign the place in my planner where I made the note. haha. So thats how it goes. I´m pretty excited. It sounds like the suit rentals for the actual art show might get a little pricey, but oh well. Its a sacrifice that I´m willing to make.
But yeah. Thats life here. We´re actually working with quite a few really cool investigators right now. This week was kind of a bummer because they all seemed to have really good excuses for not going to church, but I´m hoping to continue to see progression. Doing what we can and working to do our best. Having a blast. My mind keeps betraying me by reminding me about how little time I have left, and my body keeps trying to tell me that I´m tired and that I should just rest. But my heart is still totally here in the work. I really love working here and doing this work. Sometimes its hard, tiring, even disapointing at times. But the moments where you see that you´ve made a diference in somebodies life makes it worth it. I really love the people here. Sometimes the culture and just the way things are, are humorous or even quite backwards. But the people themselves are just great. I really am just so thanful for the oportunity to be here and serve. I´ve honestly learned so much in just the last handful of months. Lots of change. Lots of progresion. Lots of room to go. Theres nothing that I´d rather do. I love you all and thank you so much for your support. You´ll have to forgive me for not staying in touch as well as I should have, or not always sharing all of my true feelings for this work. But I really do know that this is the Lords work and I love being a part of it. Love you all, and hope you have a great week. Work hard, play hard, and don´t forget to be great missionaries!
Chau!
Elder Humphreys

Monday, May 14, 2012

Saltos - Week 9

Hey. Long time no write. Or talk. Hopefully I make it through this letter because the lady just sprayed all of these toxic fumes under my desk to try and kill all of the mosquitos. I´ll probably die a year earlier than I was supposed to, but oh well. Anyways, I have to be quick because my comp has to go catch a bus for the division that we are doing. Fortunately I already told you all of the more exciting things that happened this week on the phone.

I just showed my companion our Mamma Mia vid. Now he knows how goofy we really are. haha. I think he probably thinks less of me for it, but oh well. It makes me proud every time that I watch it. Good times.

Anyways. We had a pretty good week here in Salto del Guaira. I´m having fun. We´re working hard. All the studies are kind of throwing me off still and I´m having a hard time keeping up with everything we need to do. Oh well. Last week the recent converts and less active members were gave us a really hard time because we had neglected to visit them. I tried to explain to them the best that I could that we didn´t forget them. But that with the conference and trying really hard to help people progress and get baptized there just hasn´t been enough time. I think most of them understood. Its still rough though because I´ve promised them all that I would do my best to visit them AT LEAST once a week. Not going to lie, I´m kind of freaking out as I try and keep up with the needs of all of the people that we know. But oh well. We´re doing our best and thats what really matters. We´ll do what we can and I´m sure that the Lord will do the rest.

We had some really good days and some trickier days this week. We had some guy demand that we visited him at a certain time and place last Sunday. So we went to meet him on Tuesday like we had planned, and after having walked as fast as we could across the entire city almost, we showed up just in time to find out that he wasn´t home. Apparently he had forgotten. Ugh. But oh well.

Fun fact. You went to McDonalds in Japan right? No promises, but theres a chance that you visited one that is owned by Brother Svedin, dad of my comp. I´m sure there are lots in Japan, so it probably wasn´t. But you never know. If only he owned a few in Canada....

Wednesday morning we moved all of our stuff. Fortunately it was´t a very far move and so we managed to get everything done in the morning. That was nice. It did kind of use up a lot of our day but oh well. Thats how it goes. I think we are significantly more focused now which is really nice. Its not like we were really wasting tons of time before, but its just tricky sometimes when the one companionship is getting ready to leave in the middle of your study time. Conversations ALWAYS come up. So now its a little less fun, a little bit of a smaller space, and whatnot, but I think it was a good move. Its not like we don´t see each other anyways. We eat lunch together, we do service together, we go to church together. P-day together. Thankfully they are really good guys. Elder Thompson and Elder Schmidt. Love them. Good district.

Thursday I started ready the book of mormon again in Spanish. We´re doing a ready challenge with some of the youth. We´re taking notes on what we read and comparing at the end of the week. My comps idea. Good kid. Anyways, my favorite part so far has just been the testimony of Joseph Smith. The first time I read it in Spanish it was HARD. He uses a lot of tricky words. lol. So it was really fun this time to see how much my spanish has really improved. I just looked up a few words to be sure of their meaning. Fun to see how much I´ve really learned. I thought I hadn´t learned all that much in the last year or so, but it looks like I was wrong.

Thursday we also got to eat ¨Chura¨ (cow insides) again for lunch. That was a fun experience for my comp. lol. Everyone was being babies and so I had to eat the most. Good thing I´m kind of used to it now. I´m not going to lie though... it was still pretty bad this time. I think it was the large intestines that were the worst if I decifered what it was right. The small intestine was the best followed by the stomach. Still something I´ll be happy to be without in the future. I´m actually kind of afraid though that North American food is going to give me a hard time though when I get home... we´ll see.

Friday was another rougher day. Oh well. There was a huge rainstorm though so that was fun. Thankfully there are lots of good days to make up for the days that don´t go right. :)

Saturday we got told that we needed to go and visit a reference by a member. We went and taught him and his wife. They are great and made it to church on Sunday. Younger family. So that was fun. Hopefully they can keep progressing. My comp also talked to his family. I´m glad I didn´t have to worry about if our vid was working and that you didn´t all stare at me for the 40 minutes. I dunno. Still not my idea of fun. lol. I did really love talking though. I like how we´re better at knowing what to talk about than the first phone call. Weird to think that its the last one. AS for dad coming - I´m pretty sure that I definately would like you to come. Hope its not too much of a hassel. I´m really excited to be able to go and visit all of my old friends. Not sure why I even hesitated over the phone in the first place. Let me know if its going to be too big of a deal though.

We had Sunday lunch with a less active family. That was nice. They are kind of goofy but I really like them. Sad to see that the last Elders didn´t really give them a chance. We might even be able to get a baptism with them since one of the kids moved back from Asuncion so thats fun.

Had another really good lesson with a newer investigator yesterday. Fun we are finally starting to meet a bunch of new people that look like they really might continue progressing. Hopefully they keep showing such promise. We´re doing our best. Keep praying for us!

Anyways, gotta catch my comps bus. Thanks for everything you do. I love you lots! Have a great week!!

Love,

Elder Humphreys

Monday, May 7, 2012

Saltos - Week 8

Hola everybody! Glad to hear that things are going great back at home. Glad to hear that all is well. Weird to think how long I´ve not been there. Feels like I don´t really know what it must be like back at home anymore. Everything has changed so much. Oh well. As for my companion - his mom and dad live in Utah, but his house is in Arizona and he spent some of his childhood growing up there. So he´s kind of from both. As for my week. It went just swell. Unfortunately I have very little time today, but realistically, there isnt too much to say about the week, and we´ll be talking in no time and so we can just talk then. lol. Monday was fun. We had another hot dog roast and nap off. Went swell. Tuesday was a big holiday in the country. We got to go to the church and eat free BBQ. That was nice. As for the day, it acutally went pretty good considering that people were either trying to make tons of money by working while all the Brazilians came to town, or they were completely drunk. Wednesday was kind of weird because nobody at all was working in the town center. Wednesday went not too bad. Lots of drunks, but what can you do right? Got to help give a blessing to a younger member girl that had got into a small accident on her motorbike. Pretty typical in a country with so many bikes, uneven roads, and no rules on the streets. Thursday had a fairly scary moment - while taking the shortcut to lunch through some field, I managed to step on a board with a nail sticking up out of it. That didn´t scare me at all.... lol. Fortunately it was more to the front of my shoes and so it just ended up poking one of my toes. Close one. The heels on both pairs of shoes are basically gone by now, and so fortunately I didn´t step on it further back or it could have gone worse. Bendiciones! We had an unfortunate situation where we were the only ones with keys and so we had to spend our evening going to the church to have a really boring ward activity. Really bad turn out. Ugh. That night we left to go to zone conference in Asuncion. Fortunately I wasn´t sick this time. Showed up bright and early in Asuncion (5ish). Had my interview at 7. Thats always nice. President is great. The conference was swell. Depending on how the calandar goes that might be my last one. Weird. Then we got to go to the temple. That was great as always. I love the temple. We also got to go shopping and I dropped a ton of money buying books and stuff for the members. Thankfully when it is changed to dollars, it really wasn´t that much to sacrifice. Got to eat yummy Asuncion food and then had to wait till midnight to catch our bus. That was a bummer. Fortunately some lady came and sat down with us and talked to me for 2 hours. She didn´t have too much good to say and she didn´t really accept our message too well, but it helped pass the time. She tried to make me buy her food. Thats against the rules so I bought some food for myself and shared. She tried to tell me off for not being a better Samaritan and giving of myself. I had to explain to her about 5 times the rules. When she finally understood, she felt kind of bad. haha. Oh well. I liked being able to help her out and still keep the rules. That made me happy. We got home at about 7 in the morning. 2 nights of just bus sleep. Man I was tired. But, we cleaned the church and got our study on. We´re trying really hard to work hard and effective. Taught a good lesson to the lady that came to church last week. Sunday we were looking pretty good for people in church. As usual, most people that had promised to come didn{t, but there was one lady who is living with some members that came. She really liked it. In zone conference we talked a lot about how every companionship needs to be doing everything possible to baptize this month, and so she´s our most hopeful one. Anyways. That was the week. Sorry that it wasn´t that crasy. Hope you liked it. We´re having fun, trying hard, and I´m having a blast. Training is super fun. Elder Svedin is great. Anyways, continue to have a great week! Talk to you on sunday! Chau! Love ya, Elder Humphreys

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Saltos - Week 7

Hey family and friends. How goes it! Hope everything is well. We had a pretty cool week here in Saltos. At least I did. Can´t speak for my comps... lol. But yeah. I´m really short on time so I´ll have to make it quick.   First of all I forgot to mention that last week I finished the Book of Mormon in Spanish for the first time. Took a while, especially at the beginning when it was really hard to understand. But that was really fun. I love the book of mormon and its awesome that no matter how many times that you read it, you still leave knowing and really being able to feel that its true. Awesome.   Monday. Worked hard. Normal. Kept wondering about changes. Got home and they didn´t show up until really late. That was annoying. But................................ I found out that.............. I would be training! How cool is that right? Kind of nerve wracking too though but oh well. Elder Humphreys is now a daddy. But more on that later.   Tuesday we just spent with a quick district meeting, then lunching, last minute shopping for Elder Wheatley and then packing. Sad to see him go so quick. He was really great and I really relied on him a lot as far as our plannning and everything went. Great guy. Spent the day saying goodbyes and everyththing. Managed to miraculously get them all in and just in time. Grabbed a couple of things for our training meeting and went to the bus terminal. Well, packing little didn´t pay off. Didn´t bring my usual travel pepto bismol or imodium. Well... payed for that later. Just as we were about to get on the bus I realized that I was pretty sick. Too late to turn back though. Got on. Worst bus ride of my life. Fortuately managed to survive it and only had a few panicy moments. Hardly slept at all though.   Made it to Asuncion alive. It was really fun to go back to the office and see tons of people that I knew from my office days. Miss the place. So many good memories. Elder Richins is doing a great job though. Really proud of him. Had a great training meeting. Really cool to know that the Lord trusts me to help train one of His new missionaries. Means that the presure is on though. No room to slip up or be the least bit inobedient. Not that I wasn´t shooting for 100% obedience before, but yeah. Gives you even more motivation. Learned about the importance of training with obedience, hard work and with the spirit. Anyways. My kids name is Elder Svedin. He´s from Utah/Arizona ish. Hes great. Hes got an awesome testimony, a great attitude, a incredible conversion story, hes really motivated by his love and testimony, he´s not afraid to work hard or open his mouth (even though hes just started learning spanish in the last couple of months). Not to mention that, but hes really humble, he likes some really cool stuff, and best of all, he´s willing to put up with me. haha. I´m super happy that I got so lucky. I feel bad... it sounds like Elder Thomson (my old office comp), got a slightly lazier, not as motivated comp. I didn´t really get to know him, but he was Elder Svedins MTC comp. All I know is that I feel really blessed for what the Lord has blessed me with, especially in the case of my missionary ¨offspring¨. haha.   Started getting to work with Elder Svedin on Thursday. Had fun. We have this cool study program which I´m sad didn´t exist at the beggining of my mission. We spend 2 extra hours in the house each day which is a bummer, but I really think that its going to help him to be a pro in no time. We will be together at least until the very last 2 weeks of my mission. So thats kind of interesting that my destiny is kind of decided now. We had a great day. Had a Ward night at the end of the day. It was fun. Bad turn out but oh well. The only sad part was that a bunch of the kids had fun at Elder S´s expense. But he´s got a great sense of humor so no worries there. Thank goodness. He´ll pick the language up soon enough. Anyways, the rest of the week was really fun. The only slightly discouraging part is that when we do something like service or weekly planning and then we have our extra studies, it feels like we hardly have any time at all in our area. thats kind of a fun sucker. I´ve been having a hard time balancing everything out with the time we have - visiting members, investigators, contacting etc. But I´m sure we´ll be able to smooth it out in time.   Saturday night we taught a quick lesson with a family we had met. Sunday the lady miraculously showed up at church. That was really cool. She left early because her kid was being a disaster but hopefully she liked it. Church was kind of a disaster, but oh well.   Anyways. Gotta run. But.... HAPPY B-DAY TO MARISSA AND KEVIN THIS WEEK! LOVE YA! Hope that they go great. Turns out that while I´ve been gone, everything at home has all of a sudden become super technologically advanced, and that all these cool movies are out and all of this other crasy stuff. So hope that you have some cool hi-tech birthdays full of technology and cool movies. And then we´ll enjoy them when I get back. lol.   Anyways. Glad you had a great week. Crasy that Riley is already going on a mission. Hard to believe. Great work on tthe play. Thanks for the work on the house. Sounds great. Funny that you visit Edmonton so much when you didn´t even visit me when I lived there. haha. Anyways. Have a great week. Love ya.   Elder Humphreys