Mosquitoes Think I'm Dessert

January 20, 2014

¡Hola!

Primer, ¡Feliz cumpleaños a mi sobrina favorita! Can´t believe she is already three! She is so funny and she sounds so grow up from all the stories you tell. 

I can´t believe another week as come and gone.  I´ve already been in Paraguay for a month! ¡Loco es!  But I love it here, even though it´s really, really hot and the mosquitoes think I´m dessert, and even when it seems like we aren´t having much success.

This week was kind of hard on Hermana Casey and I.  We wanted to have a baptism by the 25^th, but our investigator didn´t come to church so her date fell.  We were really bummed, and it didn´t help that all the other elders in our district each had like 6 investigators at church, but we learned something.  One is patience, and you all know I´m not a patient person.  Well the Lord is still testing it.  The other thing we learned is about comparing ourselves to others, because a mission isn´t about the numbers. You are a successful missionary if you are working your hardest and doing all that the Lord wants you to, and we actually did have some success this week.  This week the Gomez family came to church for the second time! They are a menos activos family we´ve been visiting.  And they are awesome!

There are actually a lot of less actives here.  Retention is really hard, but the miembros here are great and always so willing to help.  And feed us too! Yesterday we were at a members´ and they fed us and it was good.  I was full, but not uncomfortable, but then they pulled out half of a huge watermelon and were like, "Ok eat it all." And my companion and I just looked at each other like "What?" So, needless to say, I´m not a huge fan of watermelon at the moment ;) I also never thought Lindsay was a hard name to pronounce until a got to Paraguay. Lind sigh is how they want to pronounce it and they are afraid of pronouncing it wrong so they are always asking me how to say it.  It´s fun. 

Most of the people who we wanted to visit are super busy.  Rosana is the one married to the José who lived with a Mormon family and she is in the middle of writing a thesis for school.  Karen is really busy too, but she told us this last time she canceled that she was really bummed because she´s been wanting to talk with us, and then Cecily, who is our English speaker.  She got back from traveling and we taught her again, but then her husband was coming home and he hates religion so she said we couldn´t meet with her for another 2 weeks!  So you can see why we might get discouraged, but I know the Lord has plans for each one of them and for us too and I know it´s all going to work out for the better.  

I love this work so much and I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior and Redeemer.  I know that this is his restored church and that through Christ´s authority we can be baptized and sealed to our families for eternity! I love this gospel and I love all of you! Have a wonderful week. 

Hermana Lindsay

Fruit Trees Everywhere

January 13, 2014

¡Hola! 

Another week has come and gone.  I´m on the 5th week of training.  We study a lot.  We don´t leave our apartment until like 12 because we have to study so much.  4 hours a day! My training ends in like 7 weeks and after that we only study for 2 and a half hours a day.  Which I will like better I think.  

So I feel like I don´t ever say much about Paraguay so here are some random things I thought of to tell you throughout the week.  There are a ton of fruit trees here.  Mangos and lemons, and bananas and limes.  Everywhere! Even in here in the city.  Actually there are just a ton of trees in general here.  There was a really pretty sunset here the other day and it made me think Dad.  He could get some pretty cool pictures here.  

When it rains here it really comes down and the roads turn into rivers! I´ve gotten a lot of use out of that little rain jacket I have.  I said at Christmas that everyone drinks out of the same cups.  And they all drink Mate and Terere.  Which are the same thing but Mate is hot and Terere is cold.  Other things they eat a lot of is meat and pasta and rice.  The venders all sell empanadas. Which are pretty good.  They also have Sopa here. Which is kind of like a corn bread but i think it has more flavor and it´s pretty good.  And then Chipa which I really like.  It´s a type of bread too made from corn flour.  It´s interesting they have some similar brands here but they are different things. Like Alfajores! Alfajores are actually more of an Argentina thing but they do have them in Paraguay too.  They are basically like a oreo covered in chocolate. But they have a ton of different kinds. Some are more wafer like and some are more brownie like.  

Yesterday was kind of sad because none of our investigadores came to church.  But we do have some awesome people that we found we just have to go work with them. Rebeca, might of come to church but she has a baby that is three weeks old.  Actually she had her baby like the day before we met here.  Her little sister lives with her during the week and helps out and they read the Book of Mormon together.  But she has a lot of doubts.  

The one contact we had this week was kind of fun.  We wanted to go back and meet with an older lady we had taught before and her husband came out and told us no and so since we were in the area we decided to try some doors.  There was one with bikes in the front and Hermana Casey was like, "I like bikes" and rang the bell.  The guy came out to us shook our hands and invited us in.  It turns out that he had lived in Texas for year for a culturally experience, with a Mormon family! He talked about how beautiful he thought our beliefs were. He had a triple too! He got us juice and then introduced us to his wife.  And then he turned to her and said, "You know we are only married until we die, when they get married they get married forever." And then he told us we had to come teach his wife about that.  They were about to leave so we said we would stop by later.  Afterwards Hermana Casey and I just looked at each other and like what just happened?

It is so interesting to see how the Lord works with you.  And how he leads you to the people he is preparing.  I love this work! My Spanish really is getting better every day.  I still don´t feel completely adequate yet in it but I´m determined and my faith is high! 

Hope you all have a good week!! 

Hermana Lindsay

P.S. Mom, yes my feet feel better. 

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

Happy New Year

December 30, 2013

¡Hola familia!

It was so great to talk to you guys on Christmas Eve. Looks like Fondue was fun.  Glad some other missionaries got to enjoy it; that will be something cool to write home to their families about.  Christmas here was interesting.  We didn´t really do much for it.  We had Almuerzo with a member, but it wasn´t anything super special because we eat lunch with her every Wednesday.  Aw, but the one thing that was different was at exactly midnight Christmas morning, I started to wake up.  It was a slow process and I was confused as to why I was waking up.  And then I remember they light fireworks here for Christmas.  It was really loud, and you could hear people celebrating for several hours after that.  My companion woke up sick so that wasn´t fun.  It´s kind of a funny story though.  I´ve been having blister problems, anyways I did not want to go running that morning so I said a pray the night before for help and instead of my feet magically becoming better my companion woke up sick was like, "Hermana, we are not going running today." She´s been telling everyone I prayed to get her sick now, but she´s feeling much better and we opened our stockings that morning instead. The stockings were perfect mom! Thank you so much!  They were like a little slice of America. 

Thursday we had our Christmas Activity.  We gave white elephant gifts which was fun.  I got one of those Asian cat things where the arm moves, although it doesn’t actually work. We played volleyball, water volleyball, and soccer, which was a different way to celebrate Christmas.  We also walked up to a monument to the Virgin Mary.  It was kind of cool.  On the other side of the hill was Argentina.  I didn´t bring my camera so I didn´t get any pictures of it so that was kind of sad, but maybe we will go again next Christmas.  

Tuesday and Wednesday were kind of hard days for proslyeting because no one really wanted to talk to us.  But Friday we had a really good day and taught four lessons.  We have a couple of investigators.  A couple of them have been meeting with missionaries for a long time so we are trying to get them to work towards Baptism.  Latisia is a young mom.  Her son is about 2 years old and she isn´t married, so it’s just her, which is actually really, really common around here. She says she is ready, which is really exciting, but she needs to come to church one more time before she can be baptized.  She didn´t come yesterday because her mom was visiting and left yesterday so she was sending her off, so now she can´t be baptized for 2 weeks.  Dulce is our other investigator.  Her sister  and brothers are members and she´s been meeting with the missionaries for awhile too.  She´s about 23 or so and she´s really smart gospel wise.  Her only problem is that she works every day including Sundays and so she can never go to church.  She is trying to look for another job, so we are praying really hard that she can.  

Other than that it was a pretty weird week because of the holidays and such.  I was reading in 1st Nephi the other day when he is on the boat and his brothers tie him up.  And he´s tied up for like 5 or 6 days, so his hands and feet must be swollen and sore and it´s during a storm so he probably feels sick too, but he says that not once did he complain, and so I just remember that every time I feel like it´s too hot or that my feet hurt or when I get bitten by bugs.  I know that this mission is going to make me a stronger person because that´s what trials do, they make you stronger.  

Hope you guys have a fun time celebrating the New Year! Te quiero! 

Hermana Lindsay