How's every little thing? It's going pretty good here on the other side of the world. My new companion's name is Elder Handy. I'm in an area called Villa Elisa. It's a city duct-taped to Asunción, just like Mesa, Tempe, and all those other cities are duct-taped to Phoenix.
Anyway, as I said before, stuffs are doing fine. I learned that I can speak Spanish okay, but not near enough to carry a conversation, especially since I can't understand what they're saying half the time. Elder Handy does all the talking. Well, not all of it, but a heck of a lot more than I say. During a first discussion, I talk about Joseph Smith and the First Vision and that's it. Oh, well.
The people here are just awesome. Since most of them don't have air conditioning, they sit outside in the shade (not that it's much better, but we can pick up a breeze outside). This makes it really easy to go tracting, since we can just talk to them over the fence. I don't think we do it enough, personally. Sometimes I get the feeling that Elder Handy is a bit flojo [tr: lazy] (ask Dad, he'll definitely know what it means). Oh, well. What can ya do?
Let's see… um… we taught five charla ones (that would be a first discussion) since Thursday. We did a little bit of reactivation. One of the semi-actives went to church yesterday because we committed her to go.
Sacrament meeting was… interesting. I directed the music, which was quite the experience because we don't have a pianist, and it seems the Paraguayans don't know how to read music or sing on the beat. This was compounded by the fact that, of four hymns, I knew one of them (Dios da valor/God Speed the Right). And we didn't even sing it.
Also, we had psycho kids running around, screaming their heads off, even during the sacrament and the four confirmations. ¡Ay! It was a bit difficult at times.
And then to top it all off, I was asked to bear my testimony in front of everybody. Welcome to Paraguay, Elder Simper. Good thing I can do that…
Ooo, guess what! I get to walk everywhere! It only took us about half an hour to go from our apartment to the chapel (which is actually a house) yesterday. It took us about forty minutes to walk home from the house we were at last night. We were walking pretty fast, too. It's pretty tough, especially with the sun beating down…
Okay, enough whining. The truth is I love it here. It's hard work, but it it wasn't, then I'd be failing the Lord. I'm very happy to be here. Plus, I haven't gotten any weird parasites! Yet…
Um. Love ya!
Joe
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