Week 2 in Villa Hayes, Paraguay

Dear Family and Friends,

Life here in Paraguay is sweet. I love it! Though the food... is at times a little hard to put down (I'll get to that in a sec). But really, I don't feel like I'm suffering a whole lot yet... Because my mom wants me to be open and frank, I'll go into the boring details like my health and trials and whatnot super quickly. First off, I've had some minor stomach issues and tons and tons of mosquito bites. For real, I think the mosquitoes here are especially attracted to white people, because I've never seen a mosquito bite on a local! I'm also drinking the water here... so far, no problems. I hear that the water in Paraguay is only actually bad out in the Chaco, where you have to separate the parasitic worms and the water before you drink! But then, the missionaries out there in the middle of nowhere are having the most baptisms, so... I'm crossing my fingers to go out there someday!

This week in one word: HOT. I'd say it feels about like the hottest part of summer back home pretty consistently. But that's not all. This is only spring. In the words of my wise and experienced companion: "Este no es nada." (Or: "This isn't anything.") Apparently, in December, January, and February it is A LOT hotter. Yikes. That really scares me because this past week, pretty much everyone is like, "Oh man. It's hot today." But then when I ask, "Does it really get much hotter?" the answer is always, "Yes. a lot hotter." If the people that have lived here their whole lives can acknowledge that it's hot right now, but that this really isn't very hot compared to how hot it gets... it must get super hot. I'm not too excited for that because I already sweat more than I have in my entire life every day.

But aside from the heat, pretty much everything is great. This week I had some of my first interesting food experiences though... haha. I ate fish and cow. Lets start with the fish though: It wasn't fish like you'd see in the states. This fish was cut into cross sections (perpendicular to the spinal column). The father of the family literally had the head of the fish in his bowl of soup! Surprisingly, that meat wasn't too hard to put down. It had a sort of weird taste, but with the soup, it was actually sort of pleasant.

What was hard to put down was the cow. It wasn't steak. It was cow stomach. They have a name for it down here, but I forget what it is. But you know that smell that hovers around cows and other farm animals? It's like one part wet animal, one part hay, and one part manure. That's what cow stomach tastes like. It reminded me of the smell of the animal section of the fair each year. That was a little bit tricky to put down. Haha.

This week was a really good week for me though as far as missionary work goes. So much happened that I don't know what to talk about...

I'll start with exchanges: Last Wednesday, I spent the day with one of my zone leaders. His name is Elder Rios, and he's actually a native Paraguayo. (If you've ever read Heroes of Olympus by Rick Riordan, picture Leo and you'll have a pretty good Idea of what Elder Rios looks like and acts like.) He does know how to focus on the work, though. We walked over 10 miles that day (yes Mom, I am using my pedometer). We had some cool discussions, but most cool of all, I had some good contacts. Contacts have been a pretty big focus of this last week. My goal is ten a day and... that is really hard. Wednesday was really cool because I got 8 contacts and they were better contacts than I've ever had before. I'm still struggling with the language (especially understanding people) but I'm starting to talk more, especially during lessons.

One of the things I love most about the mission so far is that you can never be comfortable with where you're at. Once you accomplish one goal or have a cool experience, you realize that you have something else to work on. After serving with Elder Rios, not going to lie, I thought I had contacting down pretty well. Elder Rodri­guez wiped that notion out of my mind pretty quickly. Right now, I'm only contacting people. I'll say: "Hi, whats your name? We're missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ... We have a message for you about..." Every time. That isn't good because 1, it's awkward, and 2, people already know you're a missionary. They already know you have a message. What they need is for you to show you care by conversing with them like you'd talk to your best friend. Elder Rodr­guez calls this a "conversacion religioso." It's just like a normal contact, but better because you actually talk to people. Elder Rodriguez is really good at them. How can I tell? Because when he contacts people, they smile. When I contact people, they stare at me blankly.

Knowing that I've needed to work on my contacting skills, I put a lot of effort into it the past few days and... it payed off. Yesterday, Elder Rodri­guez congratulated me on having my first "conversation religioso". It was with a 23 or 24 year old woman whose name started with an A. All I did was ask about the weather: "Does it really get hotter than this??" and then brought the conversation around to "We're missionaries... etc..." How do I know that it was a real "religious conversation"? Because she smiled. It was a super good feeling.

We're going to have two baptisms this month! One is this Saturday with a teenage boy named M. Then, the week after that, we're going to baptize a 12 year old girl named S. What's cool about S is that 2 of her siblings are members, so she already has a support system. What's cooler than that? She has one other sister that isn't a member but that just accepted the baptismal challenge last night!! If everything works out, before too long, the whole family should be members! The lesson last night was cool because for the first time, I spoke up without Elder Rodriguez telling me to share my testimony or part of a lesson. We extended the baptismal invitation, but Elder Rodriguez forgot to invite her to read the Book of Mormon, ponder it, and then pray, so (surprising myself) I opened my mouth and asked her "What do you need to do to know if this is true?" and then went on from there. I know that's not a big deal. It's just a tiny part of a tiny lesson, but it's significant to me because it was the first time I really felt like I stepped up and contributed as a missionary. It's been really cool to see the Lord work with me and guide me to improve my missionary efforts. Hopefully this pattern of improvement continues in the coming weeks and months!

I love you guys! Thanks for being here for me.

Elder Fairbanks

Elder Fairbanks - study time

Elder Fairbanks' study zone

His kitchen

Dallin's fitness center - aka "the jump rope room"

Dooku ("the good cat")

Darth Maul -  ("Sorry, he blinked in every picture.")