Hope you've all had a fantastic week since last p-day! Mine has been a pretty great one. Elder Villacreses and I got some good divisions done, worked in our area, and wrapped it all up with a long trip to the border of Paraguay and Brazil!
Tuesday.
We had divisions with the ZL's from the Luque B zone (Elder Silva, my ex-comp, and Elder Osterloh, the professional chef). I spent the day with Elder Osterloh, and we had a great time. We started off the division as perfectly as we possible could have because we didn't have lunch with members, which meant that Elder Osterloh had to cook for us. And it's always a treat when he hits the kitchen. He cooked pasta with a sauce of chicken, bacon, and cheese -- delicious. It really makes me wish I would have paid better attention when I was working through the cooking merit badge... (shout-out to Sister Phipps!)
 |
| Elder Osterloh |
 |
| Elders Fairbanks, Silva, Villacreses & Osterloh |
 |
| Elder Silva |
Wednesday.
Um... as far as I can remember, we just had a regular work day in our house. We met with investigators, contacted a bunch of people, ate good food, and had a great time. Nothing too special happened as far as I can recall!
Thursday.
Divisions in Remansito! The closest zone leaders to our area in Mariano live just across "la puente de Remanso" in a small town-ish place called Remansito. Normally when we do divisions,we just invite the zone leaders to our are to work with us. But these guys lived so close, we decided we'd split up for the day and that I'd go with Elder Marcum to spend the day in Remansito. It was super weird to work outside of my area because I haven't had to leave it to do divisions for a very long time, but we had a great day. Elder Marcum and Perez have some great investigators, and even though the branch of Remansito is really small, we actually attended the branch council meeting! It's super exciting seeing all the small church units here in Paraguay as they progress!
Unfortunately, we had to end the division a little bit early because there were some special changes in the mission, so Elder Villacreses and I had to take a taxi around Paraguay to various missionaries' houses to get them to their new areas. The process went smoothly and we even got to bed on time, so it was great.
Friday.
The trip to PJC began... We headed out with President and Sister Evans in their car early in the morning (about 8:00) and spent the day leap-frogging from small town to small town as President interviewed all the missionaries in Santani, Santa Rosa, and Yby Ya'u on our way up to Pedro Juan. It was a long day, but we had a great time chatting with President & Sister Evans and listening to stories from their lives. We originally planned to do divisions with the Zone Leaders there Friday night, but we got to PJC at about 7:00, so instead, we just headed over to the ZL's house cooked pancakes for dinner, and went to bed to be ready in the morning for the zone conference.
Saturday.
We walked to the chapel in Rama 1 of PJC all the way from Rama 5 (it was a pretty long walk), got everything set up, and got the zone conference rolling with President. It was a pretty great zone conference where some great topics were discussed: The covenant of Israel and the restoration of the 12 tribes, being a consecrated missionary, and how to help investigators keep their commitments. I wish we could have stayed to listen to all of it, but Elder Villacreses and I had to leave halfway through to grab pizza for the zone.
After the conference we finally got around to doing divisions with the zone leaders, Elder Albornoz and Elder Passos. I headed out with Elder Albornoz to visit an awesome little settlement called Romero Cue about an hour's walk from the city of Pedro Juan. It's a pretty small, kind of poor place, but there are so many faithful members there that they got approval to build a small chapel in the community so the faithful members wouldn't have to walk all the way into the city to go to church. It was awesome working in such a special area (even if it was for just a few hours) and I'd love to finish my mission in a place like that!
The Terrible Colectivo Ride... Normally we travel home from zone conferences with President in his car. Comfortable, well fed, happy. But this trip, we decided to travel back to Asuncion in one of the big buses that go back and forth between the two cities so that we could attend church Sunday morning in Mariano with our investigators. It was a 6 hour trip that started at 11:00 p.m. for us. It was not a fun trip. The seats weren't comfortable, the bus stopped and the lights turned on about every 15 minutes to pick people up or drop them off, we were right next to the stairs (on the second floor) so every time people came up they bumped into us and made a lot of noise, and on top of it all, I was stressed the whole night that we'd sleep past our stop and need to emergency-call the office elders to get us to our area at 5:00 a.m. Not a fun night. Now, after saying all that, you guys should know that the Sister Training Leaders were on that bus with us as well, and they handled it like champs. They didn't utter a single complaint and slept soundly throughout the whole night (as far as I could tell). We saw them today and followed up with them to see how they enjoyed the ride and they said it was perfectly fine and comfortable... The hermana leaders are troopers and there's no doubt about it!
 |
| I accidentally left my side bag in Pedro Juan when we left Saturday night... So the ZLs took advantage of my camera and had some fun... Lucky for me, President was able to drive my bag (with my scriptures, camera, and pretty much everything important to missionary work that I own) to Asuncion where I picked it up today! |
Sunday.
As uncomfortable and as long as our Saturday night trip was, it was worth it when we got to attend church in Mariano to see our investigators, M and S there. Elder Villacreses and I are super excited for these next few weeks -- if our investigators keep on progressing as they are we could have 3 or 4 baptisms this next month!
Investigator News:
M and D -- I think I've written about both of them... if not, M is a super shy girl that attends church on her own but never wants to talk to us. These past few weeks, we've started passing by the apartment complex where she lives and we've met her family (who are almost all members) and with their help and support, we've started gaining M's confidence! In our last lesson she felt comfortable offering the closing prayer! Maybe she's only taking baby steps, but she's definitely progressing! D is M's non-member cousin/aunt/something-like-that who also lives in the same apartment complex. She listened to the missionaries before and also wants to be baptized. The coolest part is that she also has a 16-year-old daughter who isn't baptized and who will be moving from Argentina in a few weeks. In that one house we have 3 great investigators!
Goyo -- we haven't been able to talk to him yet this week, so no updates on him :(
S -- she's practically a member already. She's come to church for the past few months and hardly ever misses a Sunday. Her one problem is that the father of her children isn't her husband (yet), but she she doesn't want to marry him, but she can't leave him because he's blind and part deaf and she has to take care of him. We're working with her and J, her "husband," right now to see if we can't get them married. Maybe she doesn't romantically love him, but she cares about him enough to take care of him for the rest of his life. Is that not good enough? More news on her later.
M -- he's a guy we met weeks ago when Elder Crofts was still here. Because of his work schedule he's been hard to track down, but we finally found him again and had a great lesson. I'm, really excited to see if he'll progress!
That's about it from my week though... it's great down here in Paraguay, I'm doing my best to take advantage of the time I have left! I hope everything's going great for all you and I look forward to hearing from you next week!
Love,
Elder Fairbanks
No comments:
Post a Comment