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