Whitewash Week 2

This week has been a wierd week.. It was going great the first half of the week and they its like a light switch was flipped. I'll talk about it a bit more later. 

We had zone conference this weekend and things are changing in the mission. It's great changes! So right now every week we have to send in 14 things to the president. It's baptisms, confirmations, investigators with a date, investigators that went to church, lessons to a investigator with a member, other lessons, progressing investigators, references received, contacted, new investigators and lessons to a menos activo or a recent convert and the number of contacts, menos activos at church and total at church.

But now we only have three things, and that's baptisms and confirmation, % of the recent converts that went to church, and total at church. So that takes a lot of pressure off of us and we can focus on teaching investigators and not trying to reach a number. 

So that was on Wednesday. and something big happened on Wednesday also. I had divisions with the APs. It was tons of fun and I learned soo much. I went with Elder Caldouron. He is from Logan but was born in Colombia. He's been the AP for 6ish months. But at the end he told me that my spanish is great and gave me stuff to start perfecting my accent. So that made me feel awesome!

But Wednesday was when things started to change. Monday to Wednesday we didnt have any trouble getting into houses and finding new people to teach, but from then on it was seriously nothing. All of our contacts were rejections and we had tons of trouble finding and teaching. I'm sure this week will be better!

It's mango season right now and they are everywhere! There are tons of mangos on the ground and are starting to rot so it smells bad. But when you get a good mango it's awesome! I've started eating a mango for breakfast and when we are walking you can just pick a mango and eat it. So everyday I eat like 10 mangoes (most of the mangoes here are small and fit in the palm of your hand). I love them so much!

For this week in studies I spent a good part of the week studying 3 Nephi 11. I have to say that it might be my favorite chapter in the whole book. It is absolutely amazing. But I left my study book at home so I can't share in detail. Basically the doctrine of Christ is to have faith in him, be baptized and repent. The rest of the doctrine is based on those three things. They are crucial and I loved studying them.

I have a question for you all, I would love to hear your responses next week. It will take some studying and research, but I'm sure you will learn a lot. In 3 Nephi 11:21 Jesus gives Nephi and the 12 the power to baptize. But they had been baptizing before, so were those baptisms invalid? I would love to hear your thoughts. Next week I will post my thoughts. I hope you have fun studying this!!

With love from Paraguay,

Elder Jared

Transfer 2

Heyy Heyy!! It seems like forever since I have been able to write! This week has been absolutely nuts. First of all I'm sure that y'all are curious where Elder Torres is now. He is still in the same place. But first I need to explain some missionary Lingo. All of this has to do with family history because it is incredibly important.

Father: Trainer
Son:Trainee
Mother: The last companion of your father in an area
Brother: Someone trained by your trainer
Grandfather:trainer of your trainer, etc

So that means Elder Torres is my "Father". And in this transfer I learned that I have a brother. And I am a mother... You put it all together and I am the one that left while Elder Torres is still training in Kokueré. So my new area is called Juan de Salazar. It's In between two cities called Luqe and Limpio. Basically my area in GIGANTONOURMAS! Like it is incredibly big. And we live like a mile away from it so every morning and night is a mile walk. To add on top of a giant area and huge walks to get to our area every day, we got whitewashed. So we are both new to this area and know where nothing is. None of the investigators, less actives, or the members. And with a new area and new comp. It's been pretty rough.

My new companion is Elder Breton and he is from Orem and is awesome! So I have an american comp! He has like 15 months on the mission and he hasn't been whitewashed before. So this is new for the both of us.

We had quite the shock when we first saw our home, I have pictures but this computer is not accepting my USB for some reason. Elder Breton discribed it prefectly when he said "Its your classic Paraguayan home. This is something you contact." Basically it's four walls and a bathroom. It does have AC which is a HUGE blessing you'll understand later.. But it smells like mold and the Elders before didn't clean it at all... There was a half pot of rice on the stove and a bunch of dirty dishes on the sink. And don't even get me started on the floor. Lets just say we spent the better part of a day cleaning. Also the area book was basically worth nothing. It had stuff from 09 and there was basically no info. So we really were starting from nothing.

Just one more paragraph and then I'll get to the blessing that I have felt. Our area basically has nothing. There isn't any supermarkets and only one paved road. The rest is dirt and it absolutely kills your feet. and it is the weirdest thing, you'll see a community of like 5 houses, then there will be nothing. absolutely nothing for half a mile. Its odd.

Now it's blessings time:
1. I love my comp and he is working amazingly hard.
2. Something switched in my brain and I can understand people and converse with them. I'm still not grammatically correct, but they catch my drift
3. Is the ward. They have helped us soooo much. We met with the bishop the first day we were here and EVERYONE, was like, hey-your new. I want to help you. Call me anytime and we will work with you" people young and old, male and female. I guess the other elders didn't work with the ward that well, and they were excited for new people that would work with them. So every day we have had a member with us to show us where people live. I dont know how we would have done it without the ward. They are amazing.

They also speak alot more guarani here so here are some phrases:

Che uhei (shea uh hey) means im thirsty-which we use often because we saw a sign and it said 51 degrees. thats like 124 degrees. So its baking here
Che vare´a (shea varey ah) Im hungry
Che kane´o (shea can eh oh) Im tired
and Che akese( shea ah case eh) I want to sleep

Basically we use all of those alot. haha

But for reals the biggest thing I have learned this week is that all things will fall into place if you do what the Lord wants you to do. No matter how hard the task may seem, It's all possible. We have been teaching so many lessons and people are accepting our message. Its all because we are willing to forget our will and desire and do the Lord's work.

I hope you can find an application in your life somewhere

With all the love in the world,
Elder Jared

Thanksgiving!

So I'm sure y'all are curious of how we celebrated Thanksgiving. Basically, we didn't do anything. But we did have a super fun Noche de Hogar (Family Home Evening) with a family that is menos activo. We played the flour game. It's where you build a tower out of flour and put a coin on top. Then you take turns cutting the flour untill the tower crumbles. Once the tower crumbles the coin is lost in the flour and you have to find it and take it off the plate with your nose! It was super fun! And to take it a step further, if you made the flour fall, you had to answer a question about someone else that was there. If you got it wrong, we would pop a water balloon on your head, If you got it right the person who the question was about got the water balloon. It was a pretty great night if I do say so myself. And naturally we shared a spiritual message and we decided to share the first lesson again. It was the most focused I have ever seen that family. They said that they wanted to go to church but they had other commitments on Sunday. Tough luck.

Last week I mentioned Black Friday here, You can already get stuff for super cheap here compared to the states, and with the deals it would have been a killer opportunity to grab some Paraguayan gear but we weren't allowed. No biggie for me because my mom will tell you I'm not much of a shopper!

There is another family (a mother and son) of menos activos who we have been working really hard to get to church. We have been trying forever to get them to church. They said they had troubles waking up in time, so we gave them an alarm clock. Promising eternal blessing also wasn't enough to get them to church so we had to stoop to chocolate. They didn't have any excuse to not come to church this week. and did they come? Nope. I seriously don't know what else to do with them.

We haven't been able to visit the family that is super close to baptism this week. Because the kids are in finals getting ready for summer vacation. Funny that while you all are in the snow and school, I am in summer and the kids are on vacation!

In other big news, I gave my first talk in sacrament meeting yesterday. I had to talk on prophets. It was super scary because I struggled giving a 10 minute talk in english and now I had to do It in spanish (which is a ton better than my first week). But I felt like I did a good job I was able to fill my time and the Branch was very nice to me and said I did great.

Also, we have changes on Wednesday and Elder Torres feels like he is going to leave. He has been in this area for 4 changes and has been in this zone for his whole mission. We figure out tomorrow for sure what happens.

One last thing. As you know, my area borders the south mission. And our stake is probably going to change boundries. That means that my branch may become a part of the stake that is in the south mission. I don't know if they will send us to another part and whitewash our area with missionaries from the south mission, or if the missionaries already in our branch would just switch to the south mission. So a bit of uncertainty in Rama Kokueré.

Con Cariño
Elder Jared

Ps: The offical name of the other mission is just Paraguay Asunción, but to me, they are the south mission

Miracles

My Dearest family and friends,

So Elder Torres has been recovering from his little operation, so that meant no talking for basically the whole week. So I had to do all the teaching and stuff like that. It was hard because I still can't understand everything people say. But I survived the week. and I learned so much. Last night Elder Torres and I were talking (because he is healed enough to do that now) and he said that he was proud of me and the way that I handled things. So that made me super happy. It was a fantastic end to a rough week for the both of us.

Like always we have had trouble getting people to church. Our family said they were going to come, but the didn't show!  They said they slept past their alarm clock and didn't wake up in time for all the classes. I think I forgot to explain that this branch does the classes things opposite. They have priesthood first then Sunday School (for us its called Principos del Evangelio or Priciples of the Gospel) for recent converts, menos activos and investigators and THEN we have sacrament. So any way, we called them right after our Principios del Evangelio and they said they had unexpected visitors. And once again, we were frustrated.

Anyway, to the subject line. Miracles. We visited this family on Monday night and while we were talking their dogs went out into the street to play with some other dogs, when a Jeep runs directly over one of the family's dogs (naturally the Jeep didn't stop. People just don't care about that stuff here). The dog was squealing so loud and it was bleeding from the mouth and from the leg. you could see tire tracks through the dog's body. I think it was a miracle that it didn't die instantly. 

So we visited again on Saturday and whose the first to greet us? That dog, It was running and jumping and barking and playing just like any normal dog. It was an absolute miracle. As we were talking with the family, they said that she was pregnant and lost her baby, which was sad, but it was still a miracle nonetheless.

I don't have much more for this week! Until the next,

Elder Jared

Hey so this is our Christmas decorations. I don't know if it will get much better than this!

Nativity

Also we did a kiosk and just contacted a ton. The question translates to "How can I find peace and happiness?"

The Ups and the Downs

So this week has been quite the week!! You might notice that I am writing on a Tuesday instead of Monday. But this is with permission from the President. Basicall,y I couldn't write much yesterday because we were going from doctor to doctor. Elder Torres has had a cyst on his tongue that has been growing and he decided to get it removed. So the President's wife had scheduled an appointment in Asunción for a consultation (Asunción is about and hour and a half collectivo ride away). That doctor said it wasnt anything to worry about and he would have removed it if it had been on his lip. But it was his tongue so we had to go to a different doctor. He looked at it and said he thought it should be removed but he didn't have time to do it right then. So we didn't get back home till 7 that night and the pday was over. And so this morning, we had to go back to Asunción for the little operation. He is in a little bit of pain right now and he is having trouble speaking. So the pressure is on me for a day or two. By the way, The church has a program called 12 weeks, Its just a guide to help missionaries adjust to the field, but this week I get to be the senior companion for the week. So I get the cell phone and take the lead in planing and teaching. So I guess that Elder Torres having trouble speaking came at an opportune moment!

We challenged our investigators that came to church last week with a date on Nov. 26. They were super excited for it. But the day after, they had a family emergency in another city so they couldn't make it to church. They were super sad but there wasn't much we could do about that.

I had my first "Andi Kamby" (The first word is pronouced like it looks, just like hyundai without the h sound and the second is a little bit odd, Its pronounced Kem-buh) but basically its pumpkins soaked im milk. If you truely know me pumpkin is like one if the foods that I just can't eat. It definitely wasn't very good. But the Hermana that made it lives pretty humbly so I ate it all. And Elder Torres's because he couldn't eat it at all. 

Those are the downs for this week It could have been alot worse. But now its time for the ups!

There's always that classic missionary story where someone was praying to have someone visit, and then the Elders show up at the door. Those expierences are real. And they are extremely powerful. It happened on Monday after I last wrote. We were walking down the street and we both felt that we needed to visit this family that we haven't visited in forever. So we clap and talk to one of the sisters (who is like 25). She said she was praying for someone to come and talk with her. As it turns out, a while ago, her brother, who was working on a roof, fell off and broke his spine. He was paralyzed from the waist down. And on top of that, all the blood was pooling in his sitting area and he developed cancer and passed away. And on top of it all, Her father was in the hospital sick (he is likely to make a full recovery from what I hear). So we just testified of the Plan of Salvation and the Atonement. The spirit was extemely powerful and we were all crying. It is definitely something that I will never forget for the rest of my life.

other than that, we contacted a bunch of drunk people. Which is always funny because they have no clue whats going on. We were talking to this one guy and we started a lesson, he ended up saying like 6 prayers in the lesson. I just wish he would pray when he was sober. But at least he knows the importance of prayer.

I hear its snowing in Utah, so I think I will teach Elder Torres how to make paper snow flakes. It will help with our Christmas decoration-which is nothing so far

Con Cariño

Elder Jared

The Power of the Father

Today has been a great week!! We still havent found someone new to teach, everyone that we talk to just say someother time, we ask when would be more appropriate and they just walk away. But on the good side we had some investigators go to church!! It was the first time I have had an investigator at church. And the story behind them going is pretty neet.

So my area has been trying to get this family to go to church since June. But they havent gone at all (which is funny because they tell us that when people ask what religion they are they say Mormon, Which is super purete.). We havent been able to teach the dad because he actually works all day and he doesnt get home till late. So during weekly planning we were pondering what we could do for the family to get to church and we both felt inspired to write a letter to the dad. So we wrote him telling him how much influence he has on his family and we invited him to church. And as we were teaching his family on Thursday, he came home early. So a little miracle there, and we talked to him. And of course the letter came up and he said that he didnt know he was invited to church, so naturally we invited him and he saud he would come. A lot of paraguyans say they will come but then they dont, so we were a little bit worried, and we couldnt go pick them up because they live 30 minutes away by bus. But he came and brought his family!! So I have a strong feeling that we will have some baptisms soon.. So thats the power of a father, A family not going to church for 5 months, then one letter and they come. So to my dad and all the future fathers that get this letter, always remember your influence. Its powerful and has eternal consequenses.

in other news we had a lady tell us that there were Zombies in the Dominican Republic. Supposedly they stuff some herbs down a corpse and it revives them. And you can tell if they are a zombie because their eyes are just white with a black dot. Haha. Also that same day some guy tried to convince us that Jesus Christ died in Japan. I dont know where some people get these ideas. I think its really funny.

My mom has been wondering about how much service we do. And sadly, we dont do much labor. There are abunch of people outside doing stuff that we can help, and we always ask but they say no. But sometimes they will offer us water and so while they are inside getting water we just finish the job for them. I think they like that but they dont say. One service that i do get to do quite often is teach english. Right now I am teaching two people. One of them is the stake president and the other is an investigator. So thats always fun. When I came on my mission I expected to do alot of street contacting and not so much tracting. As it turns out, we dont do much street contacting and a lot of tracting. Elder Torres says its more effective in this area because you cant tell where people on the streets are going. Dont get me wrong, we still do street contacing, just not a ton. maybe 35% of our contacts are from street contacting.

In great news, our AC Got fixed! naturally it was this morning so we havent been able to enjoy it as much, But we studied in the room that has the vent. It was Blissful. Also, our water got fixed so we have hot water! so in the morning, I switch the water from hot to cold. just because I can. And Tonight, we are going to get the room super cold and take a warm shower tomorrow. Im super excited. 

So If you have any specific questions Email me and Ill do my best to answer them!!

With love from Paraguay, 

Elder Jared

When it rains it pours

So first of all, shout out to my rediculously awesome (old but not too old) half marathon running machine Dad!! He turned a young 52 on sunday and to celebrate the day before he runs a half marathon! Congrats on the birthday and breaking your goal pops :) also, Shout out to Kenna for running too!! Those times are great!!

So according to the subject line, we had a storm. I was praying for some rain and boy rain is what I got. It started on thursday. Just a little bit here and there but not much. Then Friday was about the same, just a tad bit more. Then Saturday morning At 4:30 the heavens opened. It started pouring buckets and the streets started turning into mini rivers. It was easily the best storm I have ever witnessed. The best way I could think to have described it was like a dance party. The lightning was like a strob light and the thunder was a constant rumble. Elder Torres and I counted lightning strike and there was 12 in 15 seconds.... It was awesome! and it lasted till like 6 in the morning... so I lost some sleep but it was a super awesome storm, totally worth it.

With all that water came some problems for some people with flooding, we were excpecting to spend all day with helping people with the water, but most people had it undercontrol when we asked them. I was a little bit sad because I was looking forword to helping out. But I guess its a good thing that people didnt need our help.

We havent had any luck contacting people from our area book. They just dont answer or arent home when we go. So tough luck there. But on ther bright side, we found a man whos is super less active.  Like he hadnt been to church in over 10 years. But he came to church with us and he even bore his testimony which was super sweet. In elders quorum, we were talking about families and he piped up and said "I dont have any kids, But my lady has 8!" the next class was a lesson on the law of chastity so that was quite the coincidence. All the priesthood got a kick out of him.

Still no luck on getting investigators to church so once again, dissapointing.

I went on divisions with Elder Mendoza for an afternoon. Elder Mendoza is from Utah but he speaks spanish. Our companions had to go to a meeting and so we had to do splits. Oh by the way, he is even newer than me (he has two weeks on the mission compared to my 8) so I had to be the senior comp for the afternoon. Which was a bit overwhelming especially because I still cant understand everyone. But It was actually a super good split. We taught some of my investigators who were struggling with reading the Book Of Mormon. They said they didnt read because they couldnt learn anything. So we read the first chapter of 1 Nefi and stopped every three verses and asked what they learned, They first verses they said they didnt learn anything, so we told them to focus on little things, like who was writing and their situatuion and stuff. And by the end of the chapter they were learning lots both about little stuff and they were starting to think about deeper stuff. So that was super Purete.

And then there was Halloween... Which means nothing down here but everyone knows about it. So no candy or anything for me. Just another day in the life of a missionary. But its ok, I can celebrate it in 2 years. Jaja

Thats all for this week. I love you all and love hearing from you!
Elder Jared