Last change of the week!

This week was the last week of the change, so we were about to go pedal to the metal but we ended up hitting a brick wall.

We have been having a problem with bugs in our house. We have been using some bug poison but as would happen, Elder Breton got bit by something. We are thinking it was a spider but there was no way to confirm. But it was causing him some pain so we had to go to the hospital on Tuesday, where they cut it open to drain all the pus. It was pretty nasty. Trevin would have enjoyed it. The doctor told us he wanted to see it again on Wednesday so we had to go back and it got infected and so we haven't done anything this week. Elder Breton was ordered to rest for the week and go back everyday to clean it. So this week everyday we wake up, take an hour and a half collectivo rode to the centro, wait for it to be cleaned, then go back and study for the rest of the day. so it was pretty uneventful this week. But in good news we went to the hospital yesterday and it was looking really good. He should be ready to work tomorrow!!

Also, I learned how to say "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints" in Guarani. I have it on my plaque but I forgot to take a picture of it. You might need Kimball to help pronounce it because it is quite a handful.   Its "Hesukrísto Tupao marangatukéra arapahapegua" :)

Have fun with that one!!
and to say ball its: vakapipopo.

I hope you enjoy those words!!

with all the love from Paraguay,

Elder Jared

Suit Jackets, the sun, and soaking feet

 What do you get when you combine a suit jacket, the blazing sun and wet feet? You get one happy Elder Jared. This week has been the best week on my mission as of yet. You guys get a day by day review this week so enjoy it!

Monday-pday, they are always great. We played some soccer, ate some Burger King and wrote our familys. Pdays are always great :)

Tuesday- It was blazing hot. Another Elder who has a thermometer on his Backpack said it was 42 degrees celsius, which Is only 107 but it was hot. But then we got a huge rain storm. That brought it down to 20 celsius (68). So it was awesome to chill out a bit. But suprisingly this is not where the wet feet come in :) that will be later in the week :) so basically the week has been a week without the blazing sun beating down on us.

Wednesday- We were on divisions again. I was with Elder Zarabia in his area called Bella Vista. It's super Chuchi (it means rich :)) and after the 68 degree weather it was nice to get a warm shower :) but this day had a pretty good story. President McMullin has been pressing us to ask for references from the members and commit them to give us references. so we taught a lesson to the ward mission leader and when we committed her using a direct question, she said "you are the first companionship that I have seen to commit people like Preach my Gospel says!"
It was just neat to know we are doing something right :) but another cool thing is that after the lesson, she turned to me and said in very broken English, "Elder, you have the light in you" it was super neat to know that I am sharing light.

Thursday- this is the Highlight of my week. Its the first time this WEEK that I wear it (usually its once a month, but this week I wore it twice, I need to slow down before my suit gets worn out ;)). but WE WENT TO THE TEMPLE!!!!!! It was a great opportunity because we only go to the temple once a year in April. But we reactivated a 17 year old and got him to take his father's name to the temple to be baptized!!! It was super awesome experience, it was a sacred temple trip. but basically I was witnessing and sometimes I could feel a certain energy, or better a certin joy that filled the room when people were baptized. It was absolutely amazing!! My favortie temple trip yet.

Friday- we had zone training and interviews with the president!! So thats day number two with the suit jacket!! It was great to talk with President McMullin for a bit. But the best part was the training. They talked about the importance of goal setting and how thats how you become your best self. So they gave us the opportunity to think and set goals personally and as a companionship for our missions. It was awesome :)

Saturday- It rained all day and our feet were wet allll day. But we were super happy. I really don't know why but we were. It's the spirit of goal setting I believe.

Sunday- We had a family reactivate!! It was the third time in 4 weeks so it was great to have that family officially active!! The fact that they reactivated was kind of a miracle. They were inactive because they lived super far from the chapel and he worked on Sundays (so that meant the family couldn't go?). But then he broke his leg, leaving him free to attend. The only problem was his leg. He didn't want to go for many weeks because it hurt him. Then one day we visited him and he said he didn't want us to come over and that he wanted God to heal him. But God didn't so he wasn't super happy. But we told him to go to church and the next week he did!  And now he is active and happy again!

So a great week it was!! I am just super happy!!

Elder Jared

Fruits of our Labors

How is it in the states? I hope you guys aren't dying of heat in the beautiful spring weather there. Bottle up a bit and send it to me ok?? :)

This week has been a lonng week. Tuesday and Wednesday Elder Breton was out sick. I haven't gotten it though so that's lucky. I had my share of sickness these past few weeks. Now mom, I dont want you to worry when I say my share, I feel like the FLU and Strep was fair enough for me. So that was kinda dissapointing because last week our attendance was at an extremely low for the ward. We had 87 (Its low for our ward but pretty high compared to others). President McMullin wrote us asking if there was a problem because we have been constantly around 110 or so and last week it dropped. So this week the pressure was on. So we thought that we were done for this week because we lost 2 days. But we Decided to be suuper obedient and stuff. Every night the light was out at 10:30 on the dot and on at 6:30. We were able to get a solid 4 days of work in and on sunday we got to see our fruits. On Sunday our attendance was at an all time high for us we hit 130 (That's a difference of 43 people!! but the cool thing is we had around 15 less actives from our area there, and heres the best part, 10 investigators were at church!! 6 were from our area and 4 from the area of the hermanas. So we saw our fruits in the way of a miracle! It was great!!

So now its time for the spiritual thought. This week I studied the book of Ether (I've almost finished the Book Of Mormon in Spanish now, with help from English when I didn't understand very well). So basically Its just the history of the Jaredites and there was a constant cycle. There was a king, sometimes righteousness sometimes not, and his son rebelled and took over the kingdom, and then a different son would take back the kingdom for his father. But the thing that I noticed is that every time a king was righteous, Mormon said " y él vivó hasta un edad muy avanzada" Which basically means he lived until her was very old. I don't know what it says in English. From what i studied, Mormon said that for every righteous king and for the wicked king he says nothing. So moral of the story be righteous and you will be blessed :)

Love you all, Elder Jared

Satan don't kick no dead dogs....

I hope you all enjoyed the subject line, Ill talk about it more later in the letter, so don't peek!! haha I hope you are curious though :)

So this week has flown bye. for some reason this week was unreasonable quick. Maybe it was because I hit 6 months last Saturday! Wow! these 6 months have been the most fulfilling 6 months of my life. I don't think I have ever been busier! It is easily the best experience of my life.

This week has been pretty regular. Sweating lots and having some funny experiences, well just one funny experience that I can remember. Haha I know there are more, I have the written down in my journal, I just cant remember them right now. Thank goodness for journals though!!

So the funny experience for this week. It comes from Divisions. I was with Elder Stutz who is from Washington state. He is has one less change than me and is stuggling with Spanish a little bit. But he is a really hard worker and is always improving! He is one of my mission buddies :) But anyway, both our primary plan and the back up plan fell through, so we decided to do some contacting, The very first house we talked to was this old lady. She claimed to be super catholic (lots of people say they are but they do nothing about it) but she had some back problems and  was cooking from her chair so she couldn't to let us in. So through the chain link fence we share a quick spiritual thought so we could lift her spirits a bit. I think It really helped her because she told her little son to go get some cold water. We just thought that she was going to give us something to drink but nope, her son brings out a pail, dips her necklace that has a cross on it and flings water at us saying " Les Bendico, Les Bendico" Which translated to " I bless you, I bless you"
I do have to say I have felt the Lord Blessing my life a lot :) whether its because of her or because I'm doing what I'm doing, but igual no mas. jaja.

I hope you enjoyed that a bit. I thought it was pretty funny. Another awesome thing we were able to do was go to the Family History Center with a member that was less active that we reactivated. He Is 17 and so we prepared some names for him to take to the temple. He was super excited to start and to have the ability to do baptisms for his dad. He was super excited about that. He's also starting to think about a mission now :) he's pretty cool :)

So that was my week so now it's time for my spiritual thought. (this is where the subject line comes in)

One night we were listing to a talk by Jack Christensen. He started off by telling us that " Satan don't kick no dead dogs, I could say it grammatically correct but you would forget it easier" He goes on to say that those that are choosing the right are the main subjects of his attacks (for example, Joseph Smith, Moses, And Jesus Christ himself). But he also is the main focus on us the people who are choosing to be good. he goes on to tell us why he attacks us and not the people who believe in 2 Nephi 28 7-8 (eat drink and be merry :)), He shares something that I thought was really interesting. He said "Perhaps the purpose of the temptations of Satan are not to make us sin, But rather to keep us from applying the Atonement of Jesus Christ in our lives."

I really believe that is the reason Satan tempts us, If he did it for numbers he would be focusing on the others that don't apply the Atonement. When we truly apply the Atonement, we are clean. And if we are clean and worthy we receive glory. And that makes Satan super jealous. So Remember "Satan don't kick no dead dogs"

Love you All!!

Elder Jared

Frescito

This week has been a relief... a relief from the heat that is. Last Monday was hot and then Monday night we had a nice good rain storm to cool things off. But the good thing is the clouds stayed and so it was what we call "Frescito" which is like a little bit cool. We had cloud cover for most of the week so this week was a break from the scorching heat. The only day I remember it being super hot was Friday, which was absolutely terrible timing for us.

Why terrible timing? One of the ladies that feeds us had some service for us to do. She wanted us to cut her grass. We willingly accepted and set a date to return with a member that had a little tiny electrical lawn mower. We planned for Tuesday morning, but the member with the machine had to cancel at the last moment and so we rescheduled for Friday morning, but that morning we get a call that he couldn't do it unitl after lunch. On the hottest part of the day on the hottest day of the week. But we had to do it sí o sí. also, because there was only one machine, the others had MACHETES hacking at the grass in the places where the machine couldn't go. All in all, It took us three hours to cut the grass. Mainly because we had to take lots of water breaks because it was so hot. We weren't just sweating, we had a waterfall running down our face. It was nasty but it was worth it. I absolutely loved it.

On Tuesday we had divisions, I was with Elder Zarabia from Peru. It was fun to go full spanish for a day. Elder Zarabia is 23 and came in a change after me. So once again I was the senior comp for a day. It was fun and I enjoyed it. He Is an excellent teacher and helped me improve my teaching.

Now it's time for the Spiritual thought of the Week. This time it comes from something we learned in our Zone Conference this week. In our Area (south america south, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay) we are focusing on Ministering instead of teaching. One thing that I realized is that often times It says that Jesus (or the Apostles) Ministered unto the people. So what's the difefrence between ministering and teaching? President McMullin said that teaching is part of ministering but there is more to it. Ministering is finding a specific spiritual need and teaching according to that need. Often times we fall into a trap of just teaching a gospel principle. So Elder Berton and I have been focousing on Ministering and we have felt soo much better in our lessons. And we saw some immediate fruits. We MINISTERED to a family of less actives about the importance of uniting the family in the church. And they Came to church!! We had been trying for a month and a half to get them to go to church and the finally came!! It was amazingly fulfilling to see the fruits of ministering.

So for Dallin and all the other missionaries who are preparing to leave, focus on the person not the principle!!!

Here is the Guaraní word of the week it is

Kariay´cha (car-e-eye-uh-sha) which means like a man. So If you need help opening a bottle, Kariay´cha :)

Love you all!,
Elder Jared

Oh the humidity...

Hey so all is well with me and Elder Breton, we were able to get through it without him getting strep throat. I think I actually got the Flu from him. He had had a little fever and stuff before but It wasnt to bad. But when I got It it was horrible. Mom said that sometimes it feels like getting hit by a Mack truck. She Is compleatly right about that. As for the strep, I think it was just a random occurance. But I am all better and back to full health and was able to work the full week. and yes mom, I did get an anti biotic.

The Hospitals here definatly dont have the same level of cleanliness as in the states. But it wasnt too bad. I should have taken pictures but I just felt to bad to take them.

As for the weather here its been super humid. Since Wednesday It has been the same thing. Super hot in the morning with rain in the evening. People say its around 113 (not sure how true that is) and then it will rain. so the next morning is super humid but a little cooler but the humidity has made it feel even hotter. So in the morning we are soaked in sweat, and the evening soaked in rain. But this week has been a rewarding week.

We had a super cool lesson with an investigator who said that he believed the church was true and everything. But as always, he works on sundays and he says he trys to get it off but he cant sometimes. but we still keep trying and praying that his boss will let him have sundays free. But he loves reading the Book of Mormon and everything. Really the only thing he lacks is Church attendance.

We also had an investigator get super excited to go to church, she and her nephew were super excited to come. They both knew that it is super important to go but then at the end of the week they both got sick. They think Its because of the changes in the weather from hot to rainy and back to hot. But they have desires to go to church which is pretty hard to find people that want to spend time at church.  So still the work is progressing well in our area.

Ive learned that I can understand spanish in my subconcise (spell check please!!). I was healping a little kid that was drawing while Elder Breton was talking and the little kid ran off. Thats when I realized that I understood the conversation! so that makes me super happy!!!!

As for the pensamiento espiritual (spiritual thought), It comes from 3 nephi chapter 27:1-8. In these verses, the Apostles are preaching the gospel and bulding a church, but there is a disputation on what to call the church. So what do they do, they ask God, but they didnt just ask God for an answer, they asked him (after lots of powerful prayer and fasting) to send Jesus himself to answer. And It happened, so point 1 from this set of scriptures is that when powerful prayer and fasting are combined you recieve a poweful answer.

continuing, they asked Christ what they should name the church, and naturally, Jesus quoted scripture saying that it should be called the church of christ.

Just a side note, I really love verse 6.

But verse 8 sums it up pretty perfectly. Read it and love it.

My testimony has grown verymuch since I have left on my mission. I have learned more about this restored gospel in these almost 6 months then I have in any other time of my life. I know that this is the same organization that existed in the times of Christ and that he is at the head of this church. I know that Thomas S. Monson and the other Apostles are the only men on earth that can recieve revelation from Jesus Christ to guide us. I love this gospel with all my heart and hope that everyone can learn to love it too.

With all the love i have,
Elder Jared

No letter due to illness