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

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

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

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