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