Dallin's Blog (Paraguay Asuncion North Mission): Week 7 in Villa Hayes

Hola Friends and Family!

Time continues to fly down here in South America! And some pretty interesting things continue to happen too. Hopefully I'll be able to remember a few for this email.... jaja

First off, I know I say this a lot, but we had some awesome weather this week! This last Friday we had the craziest rainstorm we've had yet! We had had like 5 or 6 days in a row without rain, which was nice because the roads were (almost) all dried up, but bad because when it doesn't rain down here, it's HOT. Anyways, this day started out like any other hot day. The sun was shining brightly, I was sweating a ton, etc... etc... But towards the end of the day, clouds started gathering... By the time night started falling, the sky was completely blanketed with clouds. Then it started getting cool. After the sky filled up with clouds, the clouds started flashing. I couldn't hear any thunder, and I didn't see any lightning, but every one or two seconds, the clouds were lit up with flashes (this went on from like 7 pm to past 10). Then, once night fell... the rain fell too and, boy oh boy, did it rain hard! Small confession: after getting ready for bed, Elder Rodríguez and I went outside in our "waterproof" clothes and just stood there enjoying the rain. We got soaked and we didn't speak at all, but it was super cool! (And, as I think is pretty normal here in Paraguay, when storms come, the electricity leaves -- in other words, the power went out.)

Unfortunately, the awesome weather had some not so great consequences the next day. When we woke up, the power was still out and it was still raining. We had two baptisms planned, so with all the water in the streets and everywhere, I was kind of concerned the two girls we were planning on baptizing (V and J) would back out of the baptism (that's what almost happened with S when we baptized her). Turns out, the rain was a problem for different reasons. Later that day, when Elder Rios and his comp tried to fill the Baptismal Font, the water didn't come out... Elder Rodríguez and I rushed over and well.. there wasn't much to do but wait and hope the water would turn back on... It didn't. After a while, Elder Rodríguez and ELder Rios left, looking for alternate sources to fill the font while I waited behind with Elder Rios' new companion, Elder Camizan, an elder nuevo de paquete de Peru (this is his first week in the mission). Luckily, the president of our Rama came to our rescue. The chapel has this place with reserves of water for emergency, I guess. So we hooked up a hose and got the font filled. The process was slow, and the water was... green... but we got everything sorted out, and the baptisms worked out without a hitch! (I baptized V and Elder Rodríguez baptized J, the sister of M.)

I also (almost) gave my first talk in church this week! From what I've picked up, Sunday services aren't organized super well, so when speakers are needed, the people filling out the agenda walk around and ask the missionaries or the children of the President of the Rama to give talks. I have no problem with helping out, but usually, we only have like 20 minutes to organize a talk. This Sunday was no different except that I was asked to talk. It was a bit scary for me. I literally spent hours preparing my farewell talk to speak 15 minutes in English. On Sunday, I had 20 minutes to prepare a 15 minute talk to share in Español. The cool thing? I actually did it! I had a talk prepared that I think would have been about 15 minutes. I didn't have to give it though. We ended up running out of time during sacrament meeting So I got off the hook!

My talk came in handy later though. We had a zone activity in Benjamin Aceval later Sunday afternoon where we had to go teach lessons to members that didn't show up to Benjamin´s sacrament service that day. (Each sundae for the past month, we do this same activity in a different area in our zone, where all the missionaries gather to get more work done more quickly -- or something like that.) Anyways, Elder Rodríguez and I went to teach a family with a less active father and he said to me, "You teach." (Occasionally, he'll speak one or two words to me in English so the people we teach don't understand.) Anyways, I freaked out. I don't know what to teach a father that doesn't want to go to church with his family! Especially after his wife had just told us that he wouldn't want to talk to us... I waited for Elder Rodríguez to step up and take charge, but he sat there, true to his word, waiting for me to teach. So I did -- using the talk I had prepared earlier that day. The talk was about how God loves us so much he sent his son (John 3:16) and how we need to love him too and how we show him our love by keeping his commandments (John 14:15). There were other scriptures and stories involved too (like the story of Peter and Christ when He asked three times: "Peter, lovest thou me?" and the story of the rich young man (in Mark 10) who wasn't willing to sacrifice his wealth to help the poor, etc...) But basically, I felt super blessed to know what to share when Elder Rodríguez put the pressure on me to grow and become a better teacher.

Sorry for not sharing many cool stories, those are the only big ones I have. Other than that, this week was pretty normal as far as teaching, contacting, and that sort of stuff goes!

Elder Fairbanks