Dallin's Blog (Paraguay Asuncion North Mission): All was Made Right

Dear Friends and Family,

For the past two transfer cycles Elder Villacreses and I have been working hard in our area. We are continuously finding new investigators, teaching them as well as we can, and praying that they'll keep their promises, show up to church, read the Book of Mormon, etc... Honestly, I think a lot of you guys back home underestimate how much my comp and I actually work in our area. We've been in our area almost exclusively for the past 3 months (except for a small number of day-trips to the office for planning or conferences) and we've put in a lot of work. The semi-discouraging part of that time working for us is that it's been a phase of finding new people and planting little seeds of faith. We haven't yet been able to enter into a phase of "harvesting" all the work we've put in. This week, we finally started to see some fruit and it's been sooo exciting!

Before we get into the world of lessons and investigators and progress and church attendence, I'll fill you guys in on the small, more mundane parts of my life here in Paraguay:

WEATHER: This week started off hot. Winter here in Paraguay really was only cold for about three days... (which was a disappointment -- I was excited not to be sweating every day for the last few months of my mission). Once we hit Wednesday, the temperature dropped again though. We had a semi-cold, drizzly day. The perfect day not to have a lot of success working in your area. Luckily, after Wednesday the temperature settled for a pleasant, sunny cool until Sunday when it got hot again.

FUN FACTS:
-- On Monday last week after pday ended and we got on the road to visit some people we saw a "forest fire!" Here in Paraguay, people leave piles of trash everywhere and every once and a while, they'll burn the piles to get rid of the trash. Though the fire was a little larger then we're used to seeing and it was in a big field of dry grass, I figured it was under control... but 3 hours later when we passed by again after we finished our visits we realized that it hadn't actually been under control and that it burned an area about the size of a regular Paraguayan city block! It would have burned down some houses too, but the people living there called the fire department... Something we probably should have done from the beginning but... oh well. No one got hurt!

Aftermath of the fire:

-- Food trucks are popular in the U.S. right? These last few months in Paraguay, cute little hipster food trucks are popping up everywhere, and in the more wealthy parts of Asuncion, huge "food parks" with cool lighting and 20+ food trucks are popping up all over. Mariano isn't quite as big or wealthy as Asuncion, but this week Elder Villacreses and I found a cute little food truck in our area called, "The Big Kahuna Burger." They have delicious hand-made burgers, lomitos, and sandwiches. It was kind of sad for me to think that I'll only be able to enjoy them for 3 more weeks though! It's going to be had to leave Paraguay...

-- On Saturday our lunch fell through as well, so we went to eat in the "Pescaderia" (the place down on the river with 5 or 6 different fish-themed restaurants). We climbed up and sat down in the palm-tree contructed hut-restaurant thing, ate some delicious, fried "dorado" (a river fish here from Paraguay) and then almost died when they told us the price... They charged us 70,000 guaranies for two small portions of fish! Now in dollars that comes out to about 15.00, but for a regular, not-filling lunch, that's pretty expensive! It was delicious food and a great experience eating next to the river with a beautiful view of the bridge with harp players sereneding us. It was something I'm glad I got to do once.

"Pescaderia" restaurant

View from the restaurant

More of the restaurant's view

Costly, tasty fish lunch

DOWN TO BUSINESS:

Thursday afternoon (at about 4:00) after teaching a few lessons in the asentamiento (the sector of our area where we're currently having the most success) we traveled into Asuncion for a surprise-ish meeting with President to plan for zone conferences. Normally, we have that meeting the week after changes, but there wasn't time, so we had to cram it in a little late. I'm pretty excited for this round of conferences, but it's going to be kind of interesting because President had asked that Elder Villacreses and I attend them to train this time around. (The past 3 or 4 changes, we only go to conferences in Pedro Juan and Concepcion). Exciting times!

Elder Villacrses and I also had a pretty interesting experience finding one of our new investigators this week. We were working in the asentamiento (again) and all of our lessons fell through, so we had time to find some new people. We have heard that there's a whole-nother section of the asentamiento, but up to this point, we've failed to find a way over to the other side. Well, we went exploring and found that the small part of the asentamiento that we know well might not even be half of it! We found cool small wooden bridges crossing streams, small rocky cliffs -- it really felt like we were in some cool little wooden forest-village. As we explored we came across a house and we decided to contact it. A super kind woman named E came out and explained that she just moved in to that house 2 days before and that she has developed a desire to establish a stronger relationship with God recently. We conversed with her, she said she'd love to get to know the church we represent, and then she let us help move some of her heavier furnature to accomadate her house. We found her in the perfect place at the perfect moment. Walking away from her house, I had a really strong feeling that we had been guided there by the Spirit.

INVESTIGATORS:

LILIANA: N's daughter L is still awesome and we're pretty sure she'll progress to be baptized some day. We had a lesson this week where she told us that "if she didn't like what we taught, she would have stopped listening to us a long time ago, because that's the type of person she is." She couldn't come to church this sunday but she sincerely promised me that she'd attend before I go home!

"A": Members have magical powers. It's official. Every single time we stop by A's house on our own, she's busy, her children are sick, or she's not home. Every single time we stop by with her neighbor, the relief society president, Hermana Aura Machuka, we enter her house and have a fantastic lesson. After not finding A for about two weeks, we decided to give it a shot again with Hermana Aura and guess what! We got in and had a fantastic lesson. A is going through some trials right now that make it hard for her to attend church but she wants to get baptized and she wants her kids to attend church with her over the next few weeks.

"A2": One of the miracles we saw this week was a referral from a member. Hermana Cabrera, one of the members that feeds us lunch, told us that her neighbor, a fourteen-year-old named A, has attended church with her twice and that he wants to be baptized. We taught him on Thursday night and he told us that someday he wants to be a missionary like us! And then on Saturday, he attended a baptism in Mariano of the other elders. This guy will be baptized for sure.

FAMILIA G: M1, M2, and M3 are fantastic. We had a lesson with M1 and M3 this week and both have read the Book of Mormon to about chapter four! And even better: They remembered the stories, explaining to us that "Nephi and his brothers had to go back to their city to get the bronze scriptures and they almost died." Even better: M3 introduced us to her boyfriend, M4, who said that after hearing M3 talk about the church, he is really interested to learn more. Even better? They all promised to attend church on Sunday.

R & Y M: We found these two older women Saturday night at about 7:00. They are neighbors and friends of one of the members Marta Bogado. We shared a quick message with them and they both promised that they'd come to church on Sunday!

SUNDAY CHURCH SERVICES:

So, as I've already written, we've had a WONDERFUL week of work in our area. We've seen so many fantastic things with so many people. It really was amazing. I felt like finally, all of our hard work over the past three months is starting to pay off and that we might actually start seeing some serious progress in our investigators. Well... Sunday morning sacrament meeting becomes the "moment of truth" for all missionaries to see whether or not their investigators will keep their promises to attend and... this week we had seven investigators in church! M1, M3, and M4 came (M2 was out on a fishing trip but should attend like normal next week), Even R and M came! In the reunion, they asked me, "How long does it take for investigators to get baptized in this church?" They had to leave a few minutes early, but right before walking out, they said that they enjoyed the meetings and promised that they'd attend again next week!

We saw a lot of success this week and felt wonderful, but at the same time, it was hard not to feel sad for all the other investigators wel love that didn't make it. For example, L, A, T, A, his wife, R, and their daughter. "A" is an inactive member we met this week that I've grown especially fond of. He is a taxi driver that is coming pretty close to losing his family because of a gambling addiction he has. He really wants to turn his life around though, and his wife is a wonderful, intelligent woman (whose patience is really being tried recently), and his daughter, M, is a super intelligent, Frozen-obsessed five-year.old that's always full of energy. I love these people, and I really hope they can all progress to enjoy the light of the restored gospel in their lives.