THE Office - Week 20

Hi.

Hope everything is well back at home. We´ve gotten into the habit of writing right away in the morning now so that there is more time to goof around in the afternoon, but nbd. I´ll log on later to see whats up.

We had a pretty good week here in the office though. However, a bunch of the other office guys just told me that I should write shorter letters. That long letters are probably super boring to read, and that I should just be more to the point. So thats what I guess I´ll do to save you all from the weekly rundown.

Needless to say. The week went well. The mission is fantastic. No complaints here. Should have another good week coming up again. Hope you had and have a good one. The church is true! Love ya lots!

Elder Humphreys

Hi.
haha. Sorry about the short one earlier. Really, I just didn´t have tons of time to write right then. Lots to do when your p-day is only 8 hours long! lol. But yeah. Let me know if I should shorten them down for reals. But until then, I´ll just stick to what I normally write...
Sunday was cool. We unfortunately didn´t have any investigators this week in church, but all of the people that missed seemed to have semi-decent excuses, so I think they will probably be there tomorrow. The coolest part of the day though was after church. Normally every Sunday after church we eat, do our studies, and then have our weekly planning. Its a little different because in the field you usually do it Friday, but thats when most people remember that they need something from the office and so they call us up. And there are always people stopping by and so we just move it to Sunday. Anyways, that was recently changed, and so we´ve started this week to plan on Fridays anyways. We´ll see how it goes. Its what President Arnold told us to do. Anyways, this was our last week to do it on Sunday, and it just so happened that President had a little bit of extra time on his hands, and decided to pay us a visit. Fortunately we were warned ahead of time, and so we had time to make sure that our room was nice and clean. lol. Anyways, he joined us for our weekly planning. It was pretty cool. He gave us lots of great advice, and at the same time got to see how the things that we´ve been taught are really carried out in the actual work. So it was good because he got to see how it really goes, and we got to learn and get advice on how we can do things better. Cool experience. What else. Oh, we also had our missionary correlation meeting for the first time. It went pretty well. It was funny though - our ward mission leader has gotten himself all excited about a talent show activity that he wants to have. We´re all up for helping him, but its funny because he has super high hopes for it. The part we didn´t tell him is that after all of the work that we put into the movie night a couple weeks back, we had a total of one active member family show up. Ouch. So we´re trying to be optimistic, and yet realistic at the same time. I talked him down to only having it one night, and that each organization (primary, relief society etc.) only should have to do one presentation each, instead of 4. Hopefully it goes well. He´s pretty excited, so we´re going to help him out with it...
Monday was super fun. Lots of errands to be run during office hours. Had to return some tables, go to the bank, get sick peoples lab results from the hospital. Something else, but I can´t remember what. Oh. I think that was when we got to go out to my old zone (Mariano Roque Alonso) to drop off a cell phone. That was fun. Exciting to see a place that I loved and miss. Then in the afternoon we got to work. Went well. There is a new family in our ward, so it will be exciting to work with then. Really young recently married couple. They don´t really fit in with the style of our ward (mostly nearly-deads), but its fun for us to have somebody exciting to visit. Anyways, after all of that, we got to go to a dinner visit. That was really out of the usual because nobody eats dinner here. But there was another family that moved in a month or two ago - and they are from the states. Jackpot. The Lloyd family from Utah. We went to their house which was one of the nicest houses I´ve been in in a while. I was minorly freaking out. It was funny. We ate spaghetti, homemade cookie things, and oreos. It was LEGIT. But the even cooler thing is that they are super hard working, and want to help out the ward in any way that they can. Wow. Something that nobody else around here is really interested in doing. So thats super cool. Right now we have them trying to help a really tricky less active member that lives close that nobody else will visit. Once their car gets shipped in from the states though, it´ll be out of control. lol. I´m really excited to actually be able to work with members that have animo to work. Should be good.
Tuesday was the opposite day in the office. There was tons of paperwork and stuff to do in the office. President, the hermana and the assistants went on a road trip this week to do mini zone-meeting things with all of the zones that are farther out. So that meant lots to get done so that everything was in order, there was money in the safe etc. Tons of reimbursements to do. So that was that. But President was at EFY all day, so that meant that we had to go to his house so that he could sign the checks before he left. Awesome. The hermana won´t let you go by their house without making you stop and eat something. She spoils us.
I honestly don´t remember what happened Wednesday. It was about this day though that were just driving randomly down one of the busy roads in our area and saw one of our investigators who had reluctantly accepted a Book of Mormon a couple days before, sitting out in front of his house reading. So that was cool. Don´t know if anything will come of it, but it was a little exciting. Most people here really aren´t into reading, and so usually people don´t just pick up a book and read during the day unless you´ve really convinced them to do it, or they are just exceptional people. lol
Basically as far as the actual work of proselyting goes, it hasn´t been our best week. Not sure why, but we just have had a really unlucky time finding our investigators at home this week. Kind of frustrating. Lots of walking, getting shut down, thinking of plan B´s and having them fall through as well. Oh well. Seguimos adelante. Me and Elder Thomson were actually talking about one of the big problems that are in the mission that actually relates to that. One of those problems that can´t really be fixed, and so we just have to work around. The problem being that making appointments with people usually brings little or less success then not setting times to visit at all. Its funny because back at home, you typically have to call ahead of time, set apointments with the families that you are going to visit, and then you go to their houses when you said you would. Here on the other hand is a little bit different. You can try and phone people and plan things. But typically no matter the way that you try and set up a visit with someone, they don´t really do anything to help themselves remember. Nobody has a day-timer, or a calendar or anything like that. So you rush to get to their houses when you planned, and they either aren´t there or they are busy with something and just can´t talk at that moment. Really frustrating. So rather than be direct with people about what time you are going to visit them, you usually try and say ¨We´ll probably try and pass by maybe this day at about this time¨. That way you don´t have to stop in the middle of a lesson or run across half of your area to get to their house. Instead, the culture usually just has the people let you in to share with them any time you happen to show up at their houses. But that has its downsides too as you show up and there still aren´t people there or when 3 visits in a row fall through, you quickly have lots of time with a lot less to do. But, you do your best. Try to be prepared and yet flexible. Planned and yet ready for anything. Makes things exciting.
We had another short term office addition this week. A sick Elder who got pulled out of his area far away to be closer to the doctors and on a better diet. Put with us until changes. Well, basically, it made things a little interesting here. Not to be rude, but its been a long time since any of us have been put with somebody that moved so slow, complained so much, was so bad at sticking to his diet, or distracted us as much from our work. haha. We tried really hard to be positive, but wow. It was a challenge that we werent really prepared for. That occasionally made things a little tense in the office. Thankfully Friday, after a good morning of weekly planning and homemade pizza for lunch, I got another fun day of errand running to do. Its nice because I´m now almost the most experienced office Elder, and so I have the most driving practice (it takes practice with such crasy streets), and I now have a pretty decent idea of where most of the areas and people are and such. So that puts me as one of the more designated drivers for now. Something I enjoy. Only had one close call with a very typical, Paraguayan style, unlabeled, invisible speed bump. But we came out alive. haha. So we got to do a huge route around the mission dropping things off, and helping people out with stuff. Had to drop off shoes, maps, teaching supplies, and buy some proselyting bags. Took all day. lol. Fun stuff. I remember that back in the day I hated errands, but now its one of the numerous benefits of being an office Elder, and help the work move forward in a different way. Don´t get me wrong though. Can´t wait to get back to the good life. Working on 100% missionary work day in and day out. Good stuff.
Side note, but when you´re with your comp for a really long time, you get to know a lot about their very unusual previous life. Anyways, my comp and the other office Elders have now seen Mamma Mia. All that good stuff. Anyways, Elder Thomson now requests a picture or two of ¨Elder Humphreys in Overalls hits up the beaches of Hawaii¨. But only if its not that big of a hassle. haha.
Anyways, that basically brings us up to today. Today was pretty tranquilo. Basically the boringest p-day in a while. But I guess thats not all bad. Typical soccer in the morning for exercises. Emails in the morning. Only got a bit done before going out for lunch. TGIFridays. Delish and expensive as always. Tried our best not to get distracted by the TVs, but I will say that Dakar and the X-games looks like something that I will be excited to watch on the big screen. AFTER the mission. Also, Elder Patterson kind of had a funny moment today that we kind of got involved in. I hate to share it and ruin the story. But basically one of the companions in the area nextdoor to them has had some sort of brain problems in the past. Tumors or something that seem to have been all fixed up. But his comp tried to wake him up this morning and for one reason or another he wouldn´t wake up. They had to call a taxi and rush to the hospital (more reliable than calling an ambulance). He was fine, just for some reason out of it. Finally woke up in the hospital. Somehow he had also had a sleep walking moment and shaved a large chunk of his hair and his eyebrow off. Weird stuff. Then I had to take Elder Patterson and his comp back home and whatnot. Crasy stuff. So that kind of took a large chunk out of the day. Oh well, we would have probably just wasted it playing sports or something anyways.
But yeah. That was kind of the week. All of our investigators are basically in  the same places because we couldn´t visit them this week. Lame. Oh well. Hopefully more results this week, and people in church. Wish us luck! - Aka, you can pray for us whenever you want :) But yeah. Changes this week. Should be crasy as always. Thankfully small groups leaving and coming. Good to go.
Anyways, gotta run and get some groceries. Love you lots! Thanks for the letters. Have a good one!

Elder Humphreys

The Office Week 19

We climbed a mountain

The other guys

The view from the "Mountain"

Me and the other mountain man Elder Pearson

True mountaineers

Howdy there. Hows everybody doing. Glad to hear things are good as usual. We had a pretty crasy week here with lots of fun adventures.We´ll try and see how quickly I can get them out. We still have to go home and get showered and everything before going to work...
But. Fun to hear its cold back at home. Thought that was fun. Have fun with the driving and keep up the good b-ball work. Funny because as the letters go on, I feel like I seem to know less and less of the places and people that you mention. Guess its been a while now and that I´m kinda out of the loop. lol. Hope you´re all getting excited for the trip and that it all goes well. I think you´re right though - as far as getting tickets to come find me, maybe just giving the lady at the MTC that books all the tickets a ring might be beneficial. Just so that everything works out smoothly.
This week was pretty interesting. Sunday was fun. We had people in church. AGAIN. It was a miracle. Unfortunately the people from last week weren´t able to make it this week, but we had a different investigator with whom we´ve been working for some time finally come to church. She really liked it. So thats great. She has this really complicated doubt where she wants to get baptized, but wants to wait first because her daughter is getting married in the catholic church, and is going to be SUPER offended if she doesn´t take the Catholic sacrament. But our investigator understands that once she gets baptized, she needs to be a representative of the church and of her beliefs at all times, and thus doesn´t want to mock God by participating like that in another church. She wants to be 100% committed forever. So thats cool, and yet, it keeps her from getting baptized right now. We´re going to try and see if she´ll be able to just not take the ¨communion¨ at the wedding. Pretty cool though.
That afternoon we got to go and do visits with the Bishop to see some members and investigators. That was really cool. He´s a great guy. Convert. Hard worker. Really knows how things are run. Returned missionary. Is a pharmaceutical representative guy that sells medicine to pharmacies. Likes heavy metal music. lol. Anyways, that was great to be able to go and do visits with him. It also worked out really well for him too - this week they had their very first EFY in all of Paraguayan history. The youth have been saving up money for a really long time and doing everything possible to be able to go. Well, since the program is new, there have been several mistakes, and a couple of kids didn´t get into the first session like they were promised. Turns out that they just got signed up for the second week. Well, the kids here just didn´t understand. There were major temper-tantrums from all sorts of kids who thought that it was their bishops fault that they wouldn´t be going at the same time as all their friends. People threatening to never go back to church and ridiculous stuff like that. So we got to go around with the bishop and help him explain to the kids that the world wasn´t going to end, people aren´t perfect etc etc. Fun stuff. Then we went and picked up the van from the assistants house. That was where we got hit with some fun news. President Arnold of the 70 decided that while he was here for EFY, he wanted to stop in and pay us a visit. Wow. That changed a lot of things. Zone conferences cancelled, and a special zone leader and President Arnold meeting planned. Crasy.
Monday. Good stuff. Had my quarterly interview with President. I really liked it. He showed me ways that I could improve, while still congratulating me on our new found success. Nice. He also gave me some new news that I wasn´t expecting - turns out that the Lord might have mercy on me and let me out of the office earlier than I thought. lol. As in President is thinking that probably mid-March I´ll be out of the office. Still a solid 4 and a half changes, but not the 5 and a half or 6 that sometimes fall upon the Financieros. Cool beans. Not that I don´t like the office. But just exciting to be able to get back out and work full days in the field again... something every oficinista dreams about.
Also had a fun FHE night with some members and investigators.  I think it went really well. Good stuff. With the same member family, we taught them later in the week and found out why they don´t all go to church - turns out that the parents who have been together for almost 60 years just fight all the time and never get along. It was hard and weird to try and counsel two Fully grown adults about how to be happy and get along. Ugh. Fortunately, we just were able to stick to following Jesus Christ and how that will help everything in the long run. Weird.
Not sure what I did all of the other days. It was weird. Its been a pretty tranquilo change and so I actually haven´t had tons to do in the office. But that did mean for some fun adventures this week. We had to go back to Mariano Roque Alonso to drop off a new cell phone for some Hermanas that got robbed. That was fun. Drive around and see places I was a year or more ago. I´m excited to go back and actually talk to some people. Then we got to run around like crasy trying to find a chapel that was both open and had long tables that we could borrow for the conference. In the end, we just had to go to the south mission office and borrow some there. Crasy how hard it is to find some basic tables in this country. lol
Had ward council the first time in a while. It was actually really cool though because it seems like the leaders are a lot more animated after such a long Christmas break. Everybody is excited since there are actually non-members in church and stuff like that. It was also fun because after the meeting we got to go out with the bishop again and visit some new members in the ward. They are from the states, and its exciting because they are actually really excited to work and help out in any way they can. I´m excited to see if we can help put them to work.
Had a weird experience Thursday night. We were out working and then President called us and told us that there was an Indian ¨Nivacle¨ person that was at some chapel and needed us to pick him up, take him to the bus terminal and then buy him a bus ticket. Its kind of a weird relationship that we have with them. They are sometimes very needy, or will come here for meetings without bringing money to get back home. Anyways, we all got in the car and searched him out in the South mission. Then we had to drive him around to all of these places. We bought him the ticket. Then he said that there was another ticket that he would need to get from where the bus stopped to his home. Then that he hadn´t eaten all day. President told me just about buying the ticket, but then everybody just told me that we needed to get him food, pay for his other ticket etc. Anyways, it was late and so we just trusted the guy and gave him some money for the ticket and some food. Oops. Turns out that he wasn´t even a member and that in the words of president ¨He probably just went out and used the money to by beer or something like that¨. Dang it. I knew that I shouldn´t just let him have it, but I gave in to peer pressure on that one. And my charitable side. lol. Anyways, lesson learned. NEVER just give people money on their word. lol. President felt bad because he didn´t tell me. I felt silly. Oh well. We learn.
Oh yeah. I got the package from Grandma and Grandpa btw. THANKS! I have all the pics up on my walls. I´ll have to remember to take a picture. And I get to drink my juice in the office every day. Love it.
Friday was kind of crasy. We showed up in the office and Elder Arnold was already at work teaching the zone leaders how things should be done. Intense. They had to come fasting, and so they had 5 straight hours of meetings. Where he talked the whole time. Wow. Pretty intense. Apparently it was super spiritual. We really wanted to be in there but weren´t invited. We were just at work as usual. But with the little bit of fear that if you got distracted from your work for even half a second, that President Arnold would be there to tell you to do your job better. lol. In the end, I only talked to him for half a second, shook his hand, and passed him in the hall once. haha. He´s a great guy and a very spiritual man. The craziest moment though was when the Hermana told us that we needed to bring her Presidents car. That meant going into the meeting, interrupting and getting the keys to the car. Thankfully Elder Thomson was willing to do that. President Arnold stopped the meeting and told him that he should be better prepared and not interrupt meetings like that. Ouch. I think I would have cried. haha. Thankfully once President found out why and told it to President Arnold, neither of them were mad. Close one. The best part: turns out that there was a spare key in Presidents desk all along.
That takes us up to today. Yesterday Elder Pearson went out on a limb and asked President for special permision to go to a city named Aregua and climb a hill called ¨Cerro Ko´i¨. The closest thing that they have to a mountain here in Paraguay. Surprisingly enough, he told us to ask the zone leaders who subsequently gave us permision. Wow. Super cool. So today we got to make a little road trip and do a small hike. In the end, the hike was really just a short walk. But the hill was really cool. It had some really interesting rock formations. Some guy told us that there are only 3 or so mountains in the world like it - apparently one is in Canada. I dont really know. Anyways, we got to go up there and take some fun picks. Great view. Maybe I`ll go back with dad if he wants. As usual, all of the pictures of me looked kind of stupid, but oh well. I sent you a couple. Enjoy. But yeah. Fun adventure of the day.
Anyways, that was the week. Tried our best to work with the people and get them ready for church. Hopefully more people go. Its sad because we still only get to teach a couple lessons a day with the limited time, and so there are less fun lessons to mention. But they are almost always great. I really like how me and Elder Thomson teach together. We are really trying to teach by the spirit, and I think most of the lessons go pretty well and that both us and the investigators leave edified. Its great to be able to share with the people and be a representative of Christ in all that we do. I`m excited to get back to the field, but at the same time, am really enjoying all of the adventures here. Should keep coming. I`ve realized how little time I really have left and so I`m doing everything to make the best of it. It really won`t be long at all before this is just a past memory. I love it, and I cherish every day of it.
Anyways, gotta run. Hope you have a great week. Love ya tons! Keep up the good work!
Chau!!!
Elder Humphreys

The Office - Week 18

Hey everybody. Hows it going? Glad to hear that all is well. Bad news - I just went to look for the notes that I usually jot down so I remember what happened this week.... well, looks like I forgot them at home. So hopefully I can remember the most important things that happened. Not that there was anything out of the normal as far as I can really remember.
Anyways. Sounds like things are going good back at home. Getting back into the swing of things. Lessons and practices. Good stuff. We´ve been going to a decent amount of those ourselves. lol. Didn´t get much soccer in this week, but today we played a bunch of this game that they play a lot here. Called ¨Piki volley¨. Its basically a cross between volleyball and soccer. We played the version with a short, maybe 2.5 foot net. Basically it has all of the same rules as volley ball, but you use your feet and head a lot more than they do in volleyball. And obviously no hands. Good stuff. You see a lot of people playing that in the neighborhoods and such. Its fun because we never would have had enough ball control back in the day to play it. But now we get some pretty good rally's going. But anyways, thats nothing too important. Good luck on the basketball! And the driving and the weather. lol.
So... what happened this week.... We had capacitaciones this week. Not sure how that translates. Basically, they were like mini-zone conference training meetings. That was good. I enjoyed what we learned a lot. Created a little bit more action in the office, but not too bad. Thankfully most of the meetings were out of office, and so it ended up being a really tranquilo week in the office. There were even a couple times where I found myself with very little to do. That got me thinking of my new goal: If there isn´t anything to do, think about how you can help your investigators or plan better of how to help them in the future. Often we get really caught up in the office work, and by the time we hit the street, I realize that I haven´t thought about our area all day, that we forgot to get more pamphlets or a Liahona or whatever, and that we aren´t as prepared as we could be to do our proselyting work. And so I think that helped us this week, as we had a little more time to prepare to work with the people. It also meant that I actually got in a little time to study the language and other stuff like that.
Other fun news. With little to do one day, that put us in place for designated drivers. That was cool because we got to run an errand pretty far away to a little town called Villa Hayes. The funnest part being that it is in the part of the country called the Chaco, which is basically the deserty unpopulated half of the country. I´ve only stepped in there once, and so it was fun to see some new stuff. It also meant that I got to drive past my old area and see a place that I haven´t been to in more than 9 months now. Benefits of the office. So that was cool..
We also got a new guy in the office today. Elder Thornton is out, and Elder Roberts is in training to be able to replace Elder Pearson in about 3 weeks. It´ll be sad to have Elder Pearson leave because we enjoy his company tons. But fortunately Elder Roberts seems like a good guy, and in the end, the change is good. We´ve all come to realize how hard it was sometimes having Elder Thornton with us. He was a great guy, but usually wanted things his way, and wasn´t the most obedient guy by any means. So although we miss him, things are a lot easier going here, people are a lot happier, and we´re all helping each other out to be as obedient as possible. Thats great. Obedience is always a personal decision, but you realize what a big affect people have on you when you´re with a companion all the time. If your comp wants to be disobedient, sometimes the best you can do is try and keep his nonsense to a minimum, and push him to work as hard as you can. But when your comp wants to be good, you push each other to be better. Something we all take note of when thinking about who will be our future wives. hahaha. Or maybe just about the friends we will choose to hang out with when we get home. Its always about associating with people that push you to be better than you are.
Had a super sad experience last night. It was raining on and off, and as we were walking down the street we found a bunch of baby kittens just sitting on the side of the street crying. We felt bad for them because they were abandoned, so we played with them for a couple of seconds. Just nudging them with our feet. Well, didn´t want to waste time, so we decided to let nature do its work. But then as we left, we found that we were being followed by one little kitten. It was running as fast as it could, following behind us, meowing. Awww. Every little kids dream. So we had to speed walk away trying not to cry as it got stuck trying to run across the uneven road. Poor little kitties....lol
What else. Oh. Our investigators. They are doing pretty well. I think. It was one of those weeks where you do everything you can to visit the people that are or should be progressing, but you basically just can´t find them at home or with time to talk. Lame. I think a lot of it probably had to do with the intense heat, followed by downpours and out of control humidity. Oh well. We did what we could. Tonight is our movie night. Hopefully it goes well. Supposedly people should start showing up in about an hour or so. But if we go by Paraguayan time, the majority will probably show up about an hour or an hour and a half after that. We invited all the members, investigators, everyone we know, and a bunch of people that we don´t know. We´ll probably watch the movie about Joseph Smith. The new one that's about an hour long. Hopefully the people like it, that people actually show up, and that it turns out as a success. We did get a chance to talk to our number one enemy this week though - Gabriela´s dad, who doesn´t want her to get baptized. Well, we were kind of expecting this evil bully-ish guy. But he turned out to be quite nice. And Gabriela has permission to come to the movie tonight as long as she can find somebody responsible that isn´t a member to go with. So hopefully things will keep improving with her. She has all of the faith, testimony, and understanding of a well seasoned member, but she just lacks the ability to follow what she nows to be true. Anyways, her dad seemed nice enough, and then when the conversation was ending we kind of had a silly moment. He was kind of saying bye, mumbling about something or other, and had his hand out kind of to the side. Seems that in the end, he was really just trying to point something out to us. Well, in one of those awkward misread situations, my companion got the mis-impression that he was opening up for a hug. hahaha. So Elder Thomson took it in full stride and gave him a big squeeze. haha. Fortunately the guy didn´t seem to mind too much. Maybe it softened him up a little bit too. lol.
Anyways... I can´t think of much else. We had a missing/runaway Elder situation at one point this week, but I wasn´t really involved in the rescue crew and so I´m still a little out of it as far as the details go. President has been doing interviews non-stop for the past 3 days, and has a ton lined up for this next week too. He came back really late from some and found out that not only did he have to interview almost 35 missionaries, but that there was even one that took a whole hour and a half to do. Wow. President works SUPER hard. Great guy. Had more fun listening to fun stories about how him and the Hermana met, and got together and dated and everything. Turns out that she met him a week before his mission, that they wrote letters for basically his whole time, then he got back. They wrote more letters because they lived far away, only dating once and a while. Then before they could get married, the Hermana went on her own mission. haha. Talk about patience. They must be good at writing letters or something because in the end, it seems to have worked out well. lol.
Oh wow. I forgot about one of the coolest things about the whole week. For the first time in forever, we actually had people in church! It was fantastic! We´ve been fighting forever and just waiting for the blessings. The coolest part though is that 2 weeks ago in his talk in church, my companion invited the people to fast for the missionary work. Well, last week was fast Sunday and some of the people actually took his invitation to heart. And wow. Did we ever see the blessings. One was an older getleman named Dario. The other two was a mom of about 40 and her daughter of about 24. As far as I could tell, all 3 really liked it. The members did a good job of getting to know them. Elder Thomson was kind of in charge of staying with them and answering questions. I kind of took the roll of finding people to say hi and make them feel welcome, and trying to get the rest of the things running smoothly. Turned out great. So I´m really hoping that they all can make it again. It was a real testimony builder though that fasting really does work and help. I don´t think it was any coincidence that the fast and the results happened in the same week. For the whole beginning of the week, the zone leaders and district leader were congratulating us on our great numbers, people in church and the like. But it all seemed so silly to me. They didn´t realize that we didn´t have basically anything to do with it. We did nothing different the last week. We just kept working hard as we could like normal, and I think the Lord just blessed us with what we needed. That and the fast put together was the true cause of our success. I´m just really thankful for the blessings that the Lord gives us. We talked a lot about that in the conference - as missionaries, we don´t have control of what success we get. True success is when we give everything that we got, we do all that we can do. And then the Lord blesses us and the people as He sees fit. Its not always something magical that we just have to do or change to all of a sudden just baptize tons of people. But what we can do is just put our whole hearts into it and leave the rest up to the Lord.
Anyways, I gotta get running. Change out of my gym clothes and start helping on the movie set up. Thanks for the letters, love and support. I now that this is the Lords work and that He is in control. That we are super blessed to be in His service, and I really do enjoy every minute of it. I hope you all continue to have a great week. Make good decisions, be good missionaries, and stand for what is right! Love you lots! Have a good one!
Elder Humphreys
PS. Tell my sisters that they can write whenever they want. If they haven´t forgotten about me already that is....haha

The Office - Week 17

Hi.
Hope this week was good for you all. We had a pretty good one here. Maybe not the most memorable or filled with crasy moments. But for the second week in a row now, we´ve been super blessed, and able to get a lot more work done in our area then we typically can. Things are looking up here in Campo Grande, and hopefully that can continue on in the coming weeks. For the first time in a while, it looks like we may actually have some investigators in church. Good stuff.
Last Saturday went well. We were able to meet a referral that President gave to us. He used to teach President Guarani, and the missionaries used to talk to him. But he never ended up getting baptized. But recently his wife just had a baby, they are going through rough times, and it looks like they are more prepared to accept the gospel. So thats cool. We´ll see how that goes. After that we got to go to Presidents house for the last super of the year. It was fantastic. The Hermana and her daughter spent basically the whole day just cooking for us. It was awesome. After which we got to watch the video that we made for all the missionaries with some pictures of all of them in it. That was fun. Maybe I´ll try shrinking it down and sending it to you.
Last Sunday on the other hand was a little bit funny. Church was at the typical time of 8AM, but unlike usual, there had been a LOT of partying going on the night before. So there basically weren´t any youth there at all, and that left the missionaries in charge of the sacrament. And I had to conduct like I do every week. And there was nobody there and prepared to teach Priesthood.... lol. But we managed, and it was actually one of the best weeks we´ve had in church for a while now.
After that.... I don´t know. Like I said, there wasn´t tons of crasy things that happened... But we did get to teach a lot of lessons. Were able to find an investigator or two that we haven´t been able to make contact with for a while. And I think I like it better that way. So thats been really nice. I´ve been able to have some really good study time too. I finally got my own copy of the conference Ensign and so I´ve been reading in that a bunch. Also I´ve been reading in El Libro de Mormon every day and have been loving that. Good stuff.
I guess there were some stranger moments though. We showed up at one part member families house justamente at the same time that there dog was having eye surgery. In the front yard. On a box. By some of the neighbors. Super professionally done. haha. Recently the dog had had babies, then got sick, then had flies lay eggs in its eye. One thing lead to another, somebody told the owner to put diesel in its eye, and I´m sure that helped.... lol. Anyways, by the time we had gotten there, there was nothing left of its eye, and half of its face was filled with maggots. And so we watched as the guy pulled out the maggots one at a time with a big pair of tweezers. It was pretty cool, not gonna lie. I think in the normal world it would have just been easier to put it to sleep, but the ¨vets¨ probably wanted to make more money, and so they went ahead and did the ridiculous surgery. That same night, Elder Thomson saw somebody that he thought we knew about a block away. It was dark, but he shouted and asked her where she was going, when she´d be back home. And then found out that it was somebody he had never talked to before. haha. I think she was probably a little freaked out. Thats alright though. Because I got it worse this week. I was at the place to pay the light bills, explaining my situation to this lady at the till, and out of nowhere, she just really loudly says ¨Ahh!! You have SUPER pretty eyes!!!! Hehehe!¨ Gosh. I just said nothing for a second, made a confused face, and then continued asking my question. hahaha. Sometimes people are ridiculous with the missionaries. Makes things more exciting though I guess. lol.
Worked hard in the office this week. Lots of errands to be run. Bills to be payed. People who need food. lol. There was a little problem last week that meant that the rent money for the houses didn´t get put on peoples cards until wednesday. Thus Monday and Tuesday my phone was ringing off the hook as almost every companionship in the mission called to ask or advise me that their card wasn´t working, or that I had made a mistake or that for some reason, they just couldn´t get the rent money off of their card. Ugh. The office does a great job of teaching you how to be patient. haha
Wow. I´m already out of ideas. Today we ate at a place called Paulistas. Its a Brazilian place near the office. I´ve only been there twice before since it costs a whopping $17 a person, which is almost enough to feed small Paraguayan family for a week. And it typically takes a huge chunk out of the money you have for the month. But today was Elder Thornton´s last day here in the office, so we went out and got a treat. Its SUPER good. People just walk around and bring you all sorts of cooked meat. Its all you can eat. There´s a guy that makes you personal salads, and another one that makes personal pasta dishes. All sorts of dessert. Legit. I´ll make sure that me and dad eat there in the time we have si o si. Afterwards we played some more indoor baseball and such. Now we just have to finish our emails, buy a little food and call it a day. Well, kinda. Then we´ll be out to work. Get people ready for church tomorrow. We were going to make some t-shirts, but looks like that will have to wait.
Glad you had a great week. Sounds like fun. Road trippin, and just hitting up the province sounds like a blast. Glad you made all of your trips safely. Hope you said Hi to everyone for me. My condolences to the Courts and Olsens, and hope sister Cooper is feeling better. Hope you all have a fun semester. Weird to think that there´s like one more semester and half the summer and I´ll be back. I don´t know how I feel about that. lol. Things are doing great here and are really looking up in our area. I´m really enjoying my time as a missionary and I love learning, coming closer to Christ and inviting others to do the same each and every day. Miss you lots, but staying as focused and diligent as possible. I know that this is the Lords work and that there is nothing more important than this. Always representing Christ in all things that we do, and helping everybody, whether they are family, friends or any other person to come unto him is one of the most rewarding things that we can do. I love this work, I love you all, and I hope that you all have a great week. Talk to ya next week!
Chau!!!
Elder Humphreys