What am exhausting week! haha. Literally every single day this week I've had to travel back and forth between my area, Mariano Roque Alonso, to the office in Mburucuja. I probably paid for like 15 taxis over the course of the week. Basically, I'm just ready for all this crazy moving around, preparing for changes, and running back and forth to end. But all the same, I had a great week working in my area.
SATURDAY.
I woke up sort of stressed out... Friday morning, I took a taxi into the office in the morning. Normal. What wasn't super normal was that I kind of accidentally left my duffel bag and my dirty clothes bag (with more than half of the clothing I currently own) in the trunk of the taxi... I went through my whole p-day worried I wouldn't be getting my clothes back. So Saturday morning, Elder Crofts and I were forced to do a little bit of detective work. We went back to the taxi stand, asked around, made some calls, and after about 20 minutes of research, we figured out which of the taxi drivers had driven me last night, what his phone number was, where he lived, and when we could meet him to get my clothing back. Turns out, he was super nice, so he had everything ready and waiting for me and hadn't even moved it from where I left it Friday morning. I sure was grateful to find all my clothes!
Another great thing that happened was my second mission coordination meeting of my whole mission. In the branch, a recently returned missionary was assigned to be the branch mission leader, and he's done a good job so far of trying to help us out. It was great to sit down with him and the other missionaries to see what we could do to help our investigators keep progressing.
SUNDAY.
We had a regular church service, and visited some people like normal, so nothing too exciting until the night came. Like I've mentioned previously, more than half of my clothes were dirty when I got them back from the taxi man. I needed clean clothes. Badly. So Elder Crofts and I had to make a trip into Asuncion to get my clothes washed (there's a washing machine in the office elders' house) so I could actually have clean clothes for the week ahead.
It's a good thing we did go into Asuncion too, because there was a little bit of drama with some missionaries, and Elder Crofts and I ended up having to take a late-night drive to go missionary hunting. Long story short: Two missionaries lost the keys to their house and "absolutely couldn't possibly ever" find a way in, so they wanted permission to sleep with another companionship in their area. Knowing that the sleepover would become an inappropriate party, their zone leaders said that if they couldn't get into their own house, they could sleep with the zone leaders that night. The two missionaries refused and said that they'd prefer to sleep outside their house. That was Saturday night. Sunday night, they claimed they were going to do the same thing (sleep outside their house). Word got to President, who said that sleeping outside was "unacceptable" so he told us to get the missionaries and to take them to their zone leaders' house. We went out on the hunt, visited their house and... there was no one outside. Or on the open roof-area. We knocked on their door. Loudly. We called them. No response. The two missionaries had completely fallen off the map. After that, we went to the chapel, and got inside, but there was no one there. We called the other missionaries in the area. They weren't there. By 2 in the morning, we had called everyone we could think of, but the missionaries were still impossible to find. At that point, assuming they had gone to sleep with a member, we just went home. It was kind of fun to go on the late night drive, but sad to know that the missionaries had such little regard for their leaders. In the end, it turns out that they were just in their house the whole night and they just wanted to cause problems. Fun adventure though!
MONDAY.
President gave Elder Crofts and I another special assingment. A Zone leader, Elder Hunter, had an operation on Sunday morning, and President wanted his companion (Elder Perez from Argentina) to get out to work instead of staying in a hospital for days straight during his comp's recovery. Monday, about mid-day, Elder Crofts and I went to the hospital to start divisions. Elder Crofts stayed with Elder Hunter in the hospital, and I went out to Mariano with Elder Perez. With all the travelling we had to do, we didn't have a whole lot of time in our area, but it was good to get out and work, for the both of us.
TUESDAY.
I had my first district meeting in months! Elder Perez is a zone leader, so he had to go kind of be in charge of the district meeting, so I had the opportunity to sit through it like a regular missionary! It was a super great experience. One of the district leaders shared about the Book of Mormon and played a game with us (kind of like a complicated version of scripture jeopardy) I've thought for a while now that I'm pretty knowledgeable about the Book of Mormon, so I was excited. But man, some of this district leader's questions really made me think! Sitting through that lesson really got it through my head that no matter how competent we feel with the scriptures, we can always learn more, study more deeply, and find inspiration in a scripture or story we've read hundreds of times before. The lesson came at a perfect time too: I've recently restarted the Book of Mormon again here in the mission. As I've started reading it, I couldn't help but feel like I knew everything that was going to happen, and I wasn't learning as much or enjoying my studies as much as I have in the past. Since the district meeting, I've really been able to appreciate more my study time, and the truth is, slowing down, breaking things up, and really analyzing what I'm reading, I've learned tons this week. Moral of the story: There's always something new and exciting in the Book of Mormon! After the district meeting, Elder Perez and I tried to get a little bit of proselyting done in his area, Remansito, but we only had time for one lesson because yet again, we had to go into the office so I could go to the staff meeting where all the office elders started making plans and organizing things for the changes coming up next week.
WEDNESDAY.
Elder Crofts and I woke up in our area, but again, had to travel into Asuncion to start divisions. We've had divisions planned with Elder Zaugg and his comp, Elder Perez (a different Elder Perez from Peru) since the beginning of the change, but Elder Zaugg started feeling some serious back pain. So we travelled in and Elder Crofts went with him to the hospital to get him checked out while I went back to our area to work it with Elder Perez. We had a really great day in the area though, finding investigators I've been trying to get in touch with for weeks now.
THURSDAY.
The first thing we did was get back on a taxi to go to the office to finish the division. Once we had that done, we actually stayed in the office for a bit to watch a baptism of the mission nurses, Hermana Christiansen and Hermana Adakai. In the baptismal service, I served as official pianist as well. Once the baptism was over, Elder Crofts and I returned to our area by taxi and spent the rest of the day (from two o'clock on) proselyting like usual, which wrapped up our proselyting week.
PEOPLE.
E and N -- The cute couple Elder Crofts and I taught down by the river. Well... truth is, they've kind of stopped progressing. They moved 3 times in two weeks, got separated, and now are really hard to find. From what we heard, E left N to get back with her ex, which is super sad because 1. She had two daughters with him 2. They were really trying to find a better life together and 3. she's only 16 years old. The first few times we taught her I thought she was 20, 21, or 22, but turns out, she's younger than [my little sister,] Emma and she's already had two kids and is running back and forth between her "exes"... Elder Crofts and I have recently found where N's living though, so we'll keep trying with him in these coming weeks.
V -- The lady that we have awesome lessons with but can never find after. We had a fixed lesson with her on Saturday, but though we called to verify that we could actually meet here that same morning, she ended up calling us back telling us she had a meeting she forgot about... so we rescheduled to meet up with her this week, and again, the lesson fell through. When her younger brother came out to tell us that she wasn't home, we asked, "Does she actually want to talk with us, or does she just hide and make excuses when we come by?" (It really is super hard to find her.) But he responded that she's always excited to hear from us and that she really is just super busy... So I guess we'll just have to be patient on this one.
N -- N is the neighbor of our Relief Society President. She received all the lessons 2 years ago but recently decided to be baptized. She's attended church 3 times already and we're progressing rapidly through the lessons, so as far as we can tell, she will almost defintely be baptized on the 13th of May.
L and M -- This is the couple that we did service for last week. In our last lesson with them (before the service) we left them the invitation to read the Book of Mormon and to pray about it. Yesterday we passed by to see how that went for them, and it turns out that though they both seemed skeptical a week ago, they both read and prayed about the Book of Mormon. Both of them said that they haven't received any strong answer yet, but they're both interested to learn more, and excitedly accepted the invitation to visit us in church this week. So I'm really excited to see what happens with them. I think that this family has a lot of potential to be baptized!
Two other people that you might be hearing about soon: M and H. Both are great, intelligent people that we've had a few lessons with in the past. Neither has come to church yet, or read the scriptures as far as we know, but whenever we have lessons with them (and we don't have tons because they've been sort of hard to find), they are super receptive and have great questions. So given time, both of them could progress to baptism as well!
Anyways, that's a small sneak peek at my week! I sure love you all and hope you guys are having a great time doing whatever it is your doing wherever it is that you're doing it!
Love,
Elder Fairbanks
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