Dallin's Blog (Paraguay Asuncion North Mission): Week 16 in Aregua "C"

Dear Friends and Family,

Elder Smith and I had another exciting week here in Aregua C. I feel like this week brought with it a few more interesting stories than usual... so brace yourselves for a long email!

This week, I had a few big firsts. In a lesson with a recent convert, I had my first over-the-phone prayer... Our recent convert, E, has a son in prison right now and she wanted him to talk to us missionaries. So during her lesson she gave him a call and... I talked to a guy in prison! Apparently, he's pretty excited to meet Elder Smith and I because we're the missionaries who baptized his mom. That kind of scared me, but I'll probably be out of Paraguay before he's out of prison, so I'm good! But anyways, E wanted us to say a prayer for him while he was on the phone, so I held it up to my face and we said a group prayer with a 4th member listening in over the phone. Kind of an interesting deal!

The second big "first" that I had this week was my first free haircut! (I think... maybe I got a free haircut a long time ago, but not that I can remember). Elder Smith and I sort of found an old, broken hair cutter that a missionary left behind. We were going to throw it away, but I played with it a bit and was able to fix it with Dad's Leatherman! After that, I figured it was a good idea to let Elder Smith who has "cut hair before" give me a trim. It wasn't. Turns out the hair trimmer was made for the United States electrical current (120 watts or something like that). Here in Paraguay the standard is about double (220 watts), so the hair cutter got so hot that the plastic body actually started melting and changing shape... because of that, we had to call off the haircut halfway through and I "rocked" a badly done bowl cut as we proselyted that day. The good news is that Elder Smith was able to fix it up well enough that night that I was presentable for our last zone conference with President McMullin the next morning.

My last zone conference with President McMullin was fantastic. He joked around with us, called us to repentance for not having emergency money for changes (that's a story for another day), introduced us to our new president, President Evans, and shared some spiritual thoughts. President Evans seems like a pretty cool guy. He's worked in the church educational system almost his whole life, he served in his stake presidency as a counselor under two presidents and then, later, as the president himself. And right now, he actually has a son on his mission in Ghana! After the conference ended, all of us missionaries went to the back room to take a big group picture and then to take a final moment and picture with President McMullin. My favorite part of the whole conference was that last bit when president McMullin took a second to talk to me personally. As best as I can remember, this is what he said: "Elder Fairbanks, keep up the good work. President Evans is going to need good young missionaries to help him keep the work going here in Paraguay, so be ready. We'll be in touch." I really love President McMullin, and I'm going to miss him tons.

After the zone conference, I feel like the Lord showered blessing after blessing on Elder Smith and me. As we worked, I really felt like we were guided to know where to go and what to say. As a first example, as we were contacting and teaching, we had an especially good lesson with a young mother named T. At the end, as we were preparing to go and chatting, we learned that she's the younger sister of an investigator that we've been working with for a few months now named M. Lately, M hasn't been progressing very well like she was at first. I can't help but feel like stumbling across her sister is a second chance for the two of them to work together to progress towards baptism.

On another occasion, Elder Smith and I were contacting as usual and we met a charismatic 19-year-old Paraguayan. He was busy in that moment, but he seemed sincerely interested in listening to us. As we chatted he told us that he has a sister named M who's talking with the missionaries... another one of the golden investigators we've been working with recently. After making that connection, he also referred us to his younger sister, his mother, and his older brother. I think that we literally found their whole family, and they are all just as great as their sister M! I don't feel like it was an accident that we ran into them all.

The last story I've got is probably the most important to me. There's a family here in Aregua that Elder Smith and I have really come to love. Normally, we pass by their house at night to have family nights, but lately, we havent felt like those lessons are really helping them, so on Saturday, as we were going through the day, we decided to make a change to our written plans to stop by this family early in the afternoon (something we've haven't ever considered before). When we stopped by, it was clear that things were a little off. When we sat down with the family, they began to explain that right now, they are going through a hard time in their marriage and that they were actually considering divorce! That hit Elder Smith and I really hard because this may be our favorite family in Aregua. We ended up sharing a lesson about the importance of family prayer, scripture study, and church attendance to keep families strong (this family hasn't been showing up on time for sacrament meeting for about a month now). We set goals with the family to show up to church 10 minutes early every Sunday, to have family scripture study every day, and to pray with their children every single night before going to bed. As we wrapped up the lesson, the wife of the family said, "I think you guys got here just in time to help us out." I was really touched by that. God knows his children, and he doesn't want this family to be split up, so he sent us, the missionaries, to their house just in time to give them a message. The best part? This Sunday, the whole family showed up in time for sacrament meeting!

As I studied the scriptures this week, I learned something that I really liked in Moroni 9:14. It says: "and then cometh the judgment of the Holy One upon them; and then cometh the time that he that is filthy shall be filthy still; and he that is righteous shall be righteous still; he that is happy shall be happy still; and he that is unhappy shall be unhappy still." When this life ends, we'll be the same people we were before. If we were bad, we'll be bad still. If we were obedient we'll still be obedient. But something I've never considered before is that if we're unhappy in this life, we'll still be unhappy. God doesn't want us to grudgingly bear the burdens of this life. He really wants us to choose to be happy. If we really want to be happy in the next life, we need to make sure we choose to be happy here and now!

I love you all. Thanks for all the love and support. I feel your prayers!

Love,
Elder Fairbanks