Dallin's Blog (Paraguay Asuncion North Mission): My last week in Mariano?

Dear Friends and Family,

Sorry for not letting you all know ahead of time that Elder Villacreses and I switched our p-day to Tuesday last week to go to the temple! We had a great work day on Monday and really enjoyed going through the temple on Tuesday. After going through a session, Elder Villacreses and I actually got called in to be witnesses for sealing ceremonies. It was a pretty cool experience to be there and see the sealing ceremony for the first time, especially knowing that in about 5 or 6 years I'll be going through the temple to be sealed myself! Haha ;) But anyways, on with the week:

The office crew back in May (photo cred: PAN mom, Crystal Smith)

On Wednesday, we did divisions with the Zone Leaders from the Luque Sur Zone: Elder Barreto and Elder Cottam (from Utah, E.E.U.U.). I spent the day with Elder Cottam; work-wise, it was kind of slow because the same grey, rainy weather from last week carried over, but we had a great time talking and found a new investigator named J who left her boyfriend of 11 years last month because he was physically abusing her. At this point, we haven't been able to pass by to see if she's read the pamphlet we left behind or if she really wants to investigate the church, but I could easily see her progressing. One of my favorite parts of the division though was talking to Elder Cottam about BYU. He studied there for a year before coming here to the mission and loved it. In one semester he took 17-and-a-half credits, almost crossing the 18-credit limit, and said that even with the large class load he managed to work 10 hours a week as a research assistant and watched a whole lot of Netflix. I'm probably not going to spend too much time watching tv or playing games after my mission, but knowing that Elder Cottam handled a very heavy class load, had lots of time to enjoy entertainment, and still keep a straight A GPA calmed some of my stresses about college.

Thursday morning we had to go to the office to have a meeting with President Evans about changes. He went through all the transfers with us and let us know where everyone is going and who their new comps are going to be. It's always an awesome meeting because you see how much President really loves all the missionaries and how much he worries about putting them in the right place with the right comp. Moral of the story though: I've known my own changes since last Thursday, but technically, no one is allowed to know who is going where until Wednesday, so... It wouldn't be fair for me to tell you whether I'm leaving or not or where I'm going (if I'm leaving) until next week! :D

Friday we spent in our area like normal and it was awesome because the sun finally came out!! For the first time in 2 weeks, we saw the sun. The weird thing was that it got even colder though, so Elder Villacreses and I had to leave our house bundled up despite the strong sunlight. We received some some pretty sad news that day, though... We talked to our golden investigator M, that was without-a-doubt getting baptized and... she told us that she was going to move to the "campaña" in "el interior de Paraguay" ("super far away" in English) on Saturday (which means that she's already moved there) and won't be baptized. :( Elder Villacreses and I were both really bummed to see such a solid progressing investigator who has attended church more than 7 times leave our area before getting baptized. Even though M fell through, finding her opened doors for us to find a lot of the other new investigators we have; The thing is, M has TONS of extended family that live scattered all over our area in Mariano and because we met and taught M, little by little, we've stumbled across her cousins and aunts and their families and the majority of them aren't members and almost all of the ones we've talked to have sincere interest to know the church. For example: On Friday we met M2 (M's cousin or something like that) and her boyfriend/husband M3, J (M3's sister), T (their aunt), R (T's brother), and his wife E (in 3 separate lessons), and all of them accepted the invitation to be baptized. When Sunday came around, M2 and J both came to church as well! So even though M isn't an investigator anymore, she paved the path to finding many families who all seem very interested in investigating the church and being baptized! I'm really excited to see what news this change will bring with all of them!

And since Friday, we've basically exclusively been preparing for transfers next Wednesday. We had time in our area on Sunday to go to church and do a few visits, but aside from that, we've been typing things out on computers, writing down complicated lists of things, buying bus tickets, and driving around Paraguay to make sure we know how to get everywhere we need to get! Lots of fun stuff going on!

So that's pretty much been my week! Thanks for everything you guys do, for your emails, your support, your prayers; everything you guys do is appreciated!

Love,

Elder Fairbanks

P.S. I actually can tell you my changes. I'll be staying with Elder Villacreses in Mariano Roque Alonso for the next six weeks of my mission! (I hope I didn't scare you too much, Mom!)