Dallin's Blog (Paraguay Asuncion North Mission): Travel Week

Dear Friends and Family,

Elder Crofts and I had another pretty great week this week. We traveled pretty much all over Paraguay, saw someone fall out of a colectivo (bus), did divisions, and taught a few conferences while we were at it.

I left you all off last week Friday morning about half an hour before we (President Evans, Travis--his son, the hermana training leaders, President's two counselors, Elder Crofts and I) headed out for the Chaco Paraguayo. We were a big group and we were hauling a bunch of stuff, so we ended up taking two vehicles. President, his counselors, and the hermanas went up together in President's car, and Elder Crofts drove Travis, himself, and I up in a truck we borrowed from PBO. It was quite the experience! The ride up to Chaco was about 4 to 5 hours long on super pot-holed roads, so the three of us had some quality time to chat, share stories, and play games.

Up in Chaco we did a few cool things, but I'll share two of my favorites:

On Saturday afternoon we joined up with all the missionaries in the Chaco; went to a city where the church doesn't exist yet, called Loma Plata; and spent the whole afternoon going around trying to get lessons. Lately, President has really had his eye on the Chaco. He's sent some of the mission's best missionaries out there; he travels up at least once a month to help the newer church units out there; and he speaks about the area frequently. As part of this new focus on the Chaco in the office, President has started considering expanding missionary work out there, so that Saturday was kind of our test run to see how receptive the city of Loma Plata would be if he placed a companionship there... As we went through the process, I stayed with President Evans and another chaco elder named Elder Singer and we went together to teach a family of members living up there. The family was converted to the gospel years ago in Villa Hayes (my first area), but for years now has to travel more than an hour every Sunday in order to attend in the nearest settlement with a chapel. With them, we shared the importance of the Sabbath day -- something pretty normal -- but the cool part was that President talked about them as "the pioneers" of Loma Plata. If the area gets opened for proselyting -- and I'm thinking it will -- then soon, a branch will form and that family will be the pioneers and leaders of the church in that city for years. It was just a really cool thing to see and participate in, as I've only ever been in areas of the world and mission where the church is already established!

The second cool experience was sacrament meeting with an indigenous tribe. There's a settlement out in the Chaco called "Abundancia" that's pretty famous in the church down here in Paraguay. Years ago when the first missionaries were here, some went up way north to the Chaco with a translator and started preaching to the tribes there. They found a group of Nivacle indians there that recognized stories from the Book of Mormon as tribal legends (or something like that) and the whole community was baptized. To this day, all the people that live there are members and they all live on one long dirt street with a large, nice chapel at the entrance (comparable to that of Rama 3 in Concepcion). As they're pretty isolated, President Evans likes to visit them with frequency, so after doing what we needed to on Friday and Saturday, we went down to Abundancia to have our regular Sunday worship services there. They weren't too regular. In Abundancia, most of the people understand Spanish, but they generally speak their native language, Nivacle (which sounds really cool and uses a whole lot of t's ch's and a lot of other weird clicky sounds). So we sat through a sacrament meeting listening to that, and then, when second hour rolled around, President Evans took a little bit of time to speak... As I talked about earlier, President really wants to start pushing for church expanision in the Chaco; one big stumbling block to that goal is that the elders that work in the area of Abundancia are finding investigators to teach, but the only church nearby is in Abundancia where there are two branches that speak exclusively Nivacle. To solve that problem President counseled with church leaders and made the decision to change the language of one of the Abundancia branches to Spanish to accommodate the Spanish-speaking investigators. The Nivacle tribe was not too happy about that. The chapel accidentally got changed into a court room, where the older generation of members stood up to voice their complaints. As they were translated to me, some of the big questions were: "Why is the church attacking our language and culture?" "Who do you think you are to change our church here? The Prophet?" and things of that sort. In the end (after about an hour-and-a-half of bickering), President stood up, shared that scripture that says, "The spirit of contention is of the devil," and told the people that no language is better than any other, but that it's not fair for the investigators that don't speak Nivacle to miss out on blessings of the gospel just because the members of Abundancia want to speak. After that, they got pretty quiet and let the meetings finish regularly. It was an interesting three days in the chaco without a doubt!

After going to Chaco, Elder Crofts and I have taught in a few meetings (I'm slowly getting more and more comfortable standing up and sharing in front of large groups of people) and had some really short divisions. We road collectivos (busses) for the first time in a long time (because we're usually just getting rides or driving ourselves around), and saw a lady fall off of one of those busses and hit her head pretty hard. That's pretty much it, though, until we had our second big trip of the week: Pedro Juan.

The church area South America South has made a new emphasis on zone conferences and interviews for the missions in this area. Now we need to be having them with all the missionaries each change (about 2 times as much as they were happening before)--which means that no matter what, each change, Elder Crofts, President, and I have to travel at least to Concepcion and Pedro Juan to get those done... We're going to be traveling a lot! But anyways, this week we travelled up to Pedro Juan Caballero, a city right on the border of Paraguay and Brazil. And when I say "right on the border," I mean literally right on the border. The border between the two countries (at least on that stretch) is completely open, so you can travel back and forth without any documents or anything. When we registrered in our hotel, Elder Crofts told me that if we crossed the street, we'd be in Brazil. We didn't have much time there in Pedro Juan (we traveled up Wednesday morning and came back Thursday night) but we had a good zone conference, ate some pizza, ate some really great ice cream, and heard a whole lot of Portuguese.

That's pretty much been my week. Sorry. I'm pretty sure that my emails for at least the next couple months are just kind of going to be the same things over and over: Zone conferences; trips to Chaco, Pedro Juan, and Concepcion; trips to the hospital; divisions, etc... I'll really do my best to look for the interesting things, though! And I'll definitely get into the habit of taking bunches and bunches of pictures again.. I'm sort of falling out of that habit now.

But anyways, I love you all and I hope life is fantastic in whatever corner of the world you find yourself. I've said it a lot, but I'll say it again (and probably keep saying it): Now, more than ever, I feel the support and help of the Lord keeping me afloat with new responsibilities, challenges and stressors. I know that "the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to make them mighty even unto the power of deliverance" (1 Nephi 1:20). I've felt and seen His tender mercies so many ways in the past two weeks. And I'm definitely being delivered from my weaknesses, my fears, and doubts. The church is true. The Savior really did come to the earth to sacrifice Himself for us, and if we trust in Him, and do the things He commands us, we will be blessed with the power of deliverance from our weaknesses, problems, sicknesses, and whatever else it is we need help with.

Love you all!

Elder Fairbanks

Note: A few photos did come through after I thought Dallin's cyber time had concluded:

"Car selfie in the Chaco"

"A super last-minute picture of the church in Abundancia through the trees right as we were pulling out to go back to Asuncion."

"The translations to English here aren't always 100% accurate. (Just so you know, that sign is supposed to say that you're not allowed to throw the toilet paper in the toilet bowl--if you couldn't understand it.)"