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