You know you´re in Paraguay when...

January 6, 2014

¡Feliz año neuvo!

I´m really glad it´s the new year actually! My companion and I were talking about new year´s resolutions and how they are going to be different for us since we are on a mission.  But I´m really excited about this year, because I get to dedicate all of 2014 to the Lord and I couldn´t think of a better way to spend my year. 

They do celebrate New Year´s here.  Honestly from Christmas ‘til about now it´s like one big party.  There were fireworks but not as many as there were for Christmas, or least I had an easier time sleeping through them, I´m not sure.  But we should start having more success now that people are all done traveling for the holidays.  It seemed like everyone was gone or leaving whenever we would meet with people. 

So Hermana Casey decided we needed to write a book of, "You know you´re in Paraguay when..." or it´s sister "You know you´re a missionary when..." The one I liked for this week was, "You know you´re in Paraguay when you are riding the collectivo (city bus) and a see a little girl throw up on the floor and her mother just leaves it and gets off." Yup that really happened.  Note to self, never eat off the collectivo floors. Or, "You know you´re a missionary when you eat what´s put in front of you without questioning what it is or how it was cooked."  We haven´t eaten anything too weird, but there have been a couple of times where the members will pull meat out of the fridge and it´s cold and tastes funny, and they don´t really refrigerate chicken here...so that´s fun :)

None of our investigators came to church on Sunday so that was pretty disappointing.  We had high hopes.  However we did get the Gomez family to come to church, they have been inactive, that that was really happy to see them there.  One thing that´s different about church here is the music, and by that I mean the hymns are the same, but they have a couple of members who can play the hymns simplified and basically everyone is tone deaf.  But it just makes me smile, because they are not too afraid to sing loud and proud and the hymns bring the spirit.  That´s actually one thing Hermana Casey and I have been doing in our lessons is starting with a hymn.  It really does make a difference, because hymns are like prayers.

So we found this really awesome lady this week.  She has a young family, two boys, a three year old and a five year old.  Her husband didn´t listen to our lesson this week, but we hope he will next week.  Anyways her name is Karen and she was telling us that she had this huge desire to learn more about and study the bible.  She´s catholic, but she said that she´s learned about different religions because she has this hunger for more and to that we gave her the Book of Mormon and promised her that this is what she´s been looking for.  We definitely are praying to see her and her family progress in the Gospel. 

One thing that I´ve learned this week is to put all my faith in the Lord.  I was having problems with my feet over the past couple of weeks.  I probably received about a total of 10 blisters. I received a blessing, but one of them just got worse and it was hard to walk. But the other day I had this change of attitude, I realized that I wasn´t completely trusting the Lord and I was thinking very selfishly about not just my feet but about everything, about learning the language and other things too.  So I decided to forget all that and really just concentrate on what the Lord wanted me to do and what He needed from me and you know what, my feet haven´t been bothering me since and the blisters are almost all healed!  It´s our spiritual well being that needs to be mended before the physically and that´s exactly how the Savior healed the sick during his life time, he always forgave them of their sins first. 

Anyways, love you all! All is well with me!

Make good metas (goals) for the New Year!

Hermana Lindsay