Dallin's Blog (Paraguay Asuncion North Mission): Christmas in Asuncion!

Dear Friends and Family,

This letter is going to be a little shorter and sweeter than usual because Elder Schmidt and I suffered some technical difficulties (for about 45 minutes) before we could finally log in to our accounts (kind of ironic knowing that even in the wealthiest part of my whole mission you can suffer computer problems), But anyways, it was a super great week, and I have tons to talk about, and time to share only about half of it!

Okay News:

Housing dealio -- Well... I think we can finally say "case closed-ish" on the new house... (I'm getting kind of tired talking about the house every single week). Elder Parada, our fichero, gave us the address of a house we could check out, so we went on Tuesday, liked it, and now I guess everything's ready and we're just awaiting orders to move. The house is really interesting, though: it's basically up in the attic of a 3 story house and has a super stooped roof that gets down to like 4 feet tall in the corners. And it has a beautiful view from the back balcony where you can see what looks like a valley of upper-class houses with skyscrapers framing it all in in the background. Excited to move in if we can!

Eduardo Ujeda -- On Tuesday, crossing one of the main roads in our area (Brasilia) we got honked at and waved down by a car. We stopped and quickly realized that he was a member, and more than that, he's the former missionary that served in Moses Lake when I received my call! We talked for a good while, learned some about him, took pictures together, learned that he was sealed in the temple to his new wife a week ago, and we also exchanged phone numbers. So one of these days, we'll probably go out to lunch with him! Fun stuff.

Haircuts -- This week, Elder Schmidt and I both felt the need to get the hair trimmed a little bit so... we asked Elder Glasgow to borrow his hair trimmer and made ourselves barbers. So what happened was that to test out the trimmer, I started shaving off the sides of my head... and it actually turned out alright! With the help of a little hand mirror, I actually cut the longer hair on the sides and back of my head short well enough that no one stopped me to ask me who cut my hair so poorly (which has happened here in Paraguay after a normal haircut). And on top of that, no one in my family noticed that my hair was weird during Skype so I'm going to take that to mean that I did a decent job... haha. After that, I gave it a shot with Elder Schmidt's hair and he wanted the top cut as well, which means I had to figure out how it is barbers actually hold scissors and a comb in the same hand (it's hard!). But in the end, Elder Schmidt's hair actually looked pretty good. So good that when he Skyped his family they said, "Hey, nice haircut" before he even mentioned that I experimented with it. So who knows... maybe I have a future as a barber?

Post-haircut--and looking gooood

Cool story of the week:

Elder Schmidt and I are still applying the principles of finding that we implemented last week: contacting, looking for old investigators, and searching for members. Again, we didn't have too much success; we found members, but learned they were outside of our area. We hunted for old investigators, but they rejected us before we had the chance to talk. On Thursday, however, we had some great experiences just out contacting. My favorite was with a guy named R. We got tired of walking around the hot city streets, so we visited this cute little park in downtown Asuncion. There we chatted with people and did our best to contact, and in that process, saw a guy sitting alone on a bench in the back corner of the park. We went up to him, presented ourselves and received the reply: "I really admire what you guys are doing, but I'm Catholic. It's tradition in my family, and I'm actually studying to be a Catholic minister, so I'll listen, but I'm not interested in your message." We didn't give up, though, and explained what it is we do as missionaries (help people better their relationships with Christ). That got his interest a little, so he started asking questions, which opened the window for us to testify of the Book of Mormon and how it answers questions of the soul. Out of curiosity, he asked, "How can I avoid sin?" So we shared Alma 13:28 and explained that if we strive to pray and make the Savior a part of our daily lives, he will help us not be "tempted above what we are able to bear," explaining as well that we have to do our best to avoid temptations because the Lord won't protect us from falling of a cliff if we're always playing next to the edge. Once we had finished sharing, his free time was up and had to continue in his course, but he said, "Maybe I need to change some of my friends... well... I guess if they're inviting me to do bad things they're not really my friends are they? Thank you both for reminding me... Have a great day." I don't think we changed his religion or convinced him to investigate the church, but I walked away from that brief visit really feeling so light and happy, knowing that we had helped lift that man -- because more than converting people, more than adding numbers to the church, that is our call as a missionary: to follow the example of Christ and to love and help everyone we meet.

So those are some of the fun things from the week. Among other things, we went as a zone to sing in an old-people's home here for Christmas, we ate in a super hipster waffle house called "Waffle Róga" (which means "waffle house" in Guarani" and we got to Skype with our families, which was just fantastic. So all in all, setting the challenges of the mission aside, it was a really great week!