Dallin's Blog (Paraguay Asuncion North Mission): Another week in Paradise

Dear Friends and Family,

It's been another wonderful week in Paraguay. Elder Villacreses had the whole week to work in our area, do divisions with the zone leaders, and this morning (Monday), we came into the office to teach a training to all the district leaders in the mission. It's been an eventful week and we've seen lots of progress in our area. All our hard work is FINALLY paying off and it's fantastic!

On Tuesday, I got to visit my first area, Villa Hayes. We had our district meeting there this week and it was great to see the tiny chapel where I started my mission. After the meeting, I went back to the area to start divisions with Elder Sion, an elder from Detroit. We had a great day contacting and finding new people.

Elders Villacreses & Fairbanks in Villa Hayes

Villa Hayes chapel

Villa Hayes (district meeting)

Wednesday morning Elder Villacreses and I woke up and got straight to the exercises. I'm teaching Elder Villacreses how to do "leg day" and it's been lots of fun. I don't know if you can tell well from the pictures I send home, but Elder Villacreses in pretty short and small. He wasn't the type of kid that frequented the gym back home before the mission, so even though I'm not very experienced myself, I've taken it upon myself to be his "personal trainer" -- at least on leg days, because leg days are the most terrible and afterwards, you can barely walk -- which just makes it more fun!

Elder V: Leg Day!

More "Leg Day"

We worked hard and well all day (though we were pretty tired after the morning exercise we did), and everything was perfect and normal until about 8:00 when we were doing a quick visit to the Elders quorum President and his family. As we were wrapping up, Pte B's brother-in-law showed up and asked if we could help his sisters move three blocks to a new house. Obviously we gladly agreed, but oh boy. We had no idea what we were getting into! For an hour-and-a-half we helped the family carry, by hand, all the heaviest pieces of furniture. By the time we finished we were all super dirty (in our proselyting clothes -- pictures on that later) and exhausted, but we got it done!

It's a dirty job...

Thursday brought more divisions. I headed out with Elder Vega, a zone leader from Uruguay and we had a fantastic lesson to start the day off, and then... nothing. We barely got into any good visits, but we sure did get into an interesting one... we sort of accidentally found our way to a super-Catholic. Paraguay is full of regular Catholics, but this woman has leveled up. She talked to us about how the Bible probably doesn't have all of the holy writings God inspired his servants, the prophets, to write; how it's possible that even the Native Americans had holy writings, how the Catholic has a long history -- some bad -- but a lot of good; and lots of other awesome comments. The problem is that she didn't let us talk! We were with her for an hour-and-a-half and we spoke for maybe 10 minutes. Whenever we tried to share the message of the Restoration or about the apostasy she would cut us off and talk about her church again. Basically she was a female, Catholic, Goyo. After the hour-and-a-half of listening to her, we had to cut her off and say goodbye because in that moment there was literally nothing we could say or do to get her to listen to us. It sure was interesting to talk to someone with so much knowledge about her own church!

Divisions with Elders Vega & Vargas

"Divisions with Elder Vega & Elder Vargas (I cooked)"

On Saturday we had another round of divisions. This time, I went to Remansito (an area right on the other side of the bridge of Mariano) with Elder Perez (from Argentina -- because there are 3 Elder Perez-es in our mission). We had a good day, but what I most enjoyed was teaching Elder Perez a little bit of family history on the computer of the chapel of Remansito. In the process, I got to look a little bit into my own family tree and saw that a lot of familiar names (like Lee Ann Fairbanks and Alice Beesely) had reserved ordinances for a good number of my ancestors. So felicitacions for your good family history work, family!

Monday.

Today was a great day. We started off with a fantastic capacitacion (training) for the district leaders of the mission. Elder Villacreses and I taught the first portion, and it went well, but when President Evans started speaking... wow. Even though the training wasn't technically directed to me, I learned so much. President talked about obedience, being an example, and a lot of awesome things in ways I've never thought of before. It was awesome.

Right after the training meeting, I got to have a quick personal interview with President Evans. My temple recommend expires this month, so I had a quick 15 minute chat with him to renew it and it was fantastic. It's always awesome to talk with President, and as always, I learned tons!

Our investigators are doing fantastically too. This email is getting pretty long, so I'll try to be brief, but I have to report some of the success we've seen because our area is really starting to take big steps in the right direction!

M1 & M2: They are members of the gigantic family we found in a poorer section in our area (the family members of M3, the awesome investigator we had about a month ago before she moved away). Anyways, they showed up to church on Sunday! We thought no one was going to show, but at the end of second hour (sacrament meeting is 3rd hour here in Paraguay) they walked into gospel principles class with both of thier sons! They are going to get baptized no matter what!

L: He's not an investigator, he's just a member (I've mentioned him before). He's a member of the local Maka tribe of Native Americans and he's awesome. He's been super busy working, but in my first division this week, we taught him about teaching his family and friends the gospel -- something he kind of gets nervous to do. When I passed by on Friday with Elder Villacreses, we had a good lesson about Melchezidek priesthood (something he hasn't received yet) and in the end, as we were getting up to leave, he excitedly reported to us about his efforts to teach his family the gospel. He said it was awkward, and that he forgot everything he should have said until after he finished, but he was so excited! I literally can't even explain how happy I was to hear that he is starting to take steps towards being a gospel teacher! L is going to work miracles in the Maca tribe!