Greetings and salutations!
How goes everything? Well, I hope it's good. It gosh darn better be! Or else I'll have to… uh… never mind. There's nothing I can do about it from here. Come on! Gimme a break! I'm halfway across the world, for cryin' out loud!
Um. Yeah. I'm going to talk about my week now. Don't hold your breath for anything spectacular, though.
Okay, Tuesday the 18th. I attended my first zone meeting. This was different than Zone Conference. Zone Conference is with all five zones in Asunción. Zone meeting is just my zone. We did a bit of talking about various things, none of which struck me as awesome, then the Zone Leader, Elder Kump, passed out mail. I got a letter! Wee! It was really nice. And, no, it wasn't from you. :D Other than that, Tuesday wasn't that great. We gave a charla [tr: discussion] about the plan of salvation to an inactive family. That's about it.
Wednesday wasn't much better. We gave nine charla cortas [tr: short discussions] (basically, just an invitation to listen to the first discussion) to various people who live near the branch president's house. A few people even agreed to listen, but later. We gave a charla to another inactive family, and got to ride in their clunker. This car is a piece of junk. There's no other way to describe it. The front seat is basically broken in half. Often, the car has trouble making it up hills. Plus, there's a hole in the floor. Not a little one, either. There was a piece dragging on the ground that caught on a rock as he was backing up and stopped the car from going any more. Pretty pathetic, eh?
Thursday was more of the same. It seemed that our lunch appointment (lunch being the primary meal here, rather than dinner) forgot we were coming. This wasn't nice of them. We walked literally forty-five minutes to get there, and no one was home. Arg. The whole day was like that. It was only 6:30p and we had exhausted our resources and had no idea what to do. So we went to a member's house to bum some food, which, by the way, we didn't get. We went to Branch Night (kinda like Mutual, but everybody shows up (well, that's the theory anyway)). That was okay. Elder Handy taught some English, and I sat in the back singing hymns to myself. He had planned a big ol' lesson, and I wasn't part of it. Okay…
Friday was… interesting. I'm assuming it was Good Friday, 'cause everybody was closed. We had a charla with a woman who's son was annoying beyond description. He's two and not yet potty-trained, and doesn't wear diapers or anything like that. Yum. Plus, she didn't seem to understand quite right. We asked her if it would be important to be baptized like Christ was and she agreed. We asked if she had been baptized this way and she said yes. "Like this?" "No, not like that, but I was baptized in the Catholic church." Gr… It was just a little trying. Also, we had our interviews with President Cheney on Friday. Remember when I said everybody was closed? Well, this includes the bus lines. We waited for an hour for the bus that would take us directly to the mission office. No good. We ended up taking two buses. Oh, and neither of us had small change. It costs a mil (1000 guaraníes [ed: the guaraní is the currency of Paraguay]) to ride the bus. Both of us had 50000 bills, and nothing else. We had to borrow a five mil from the other elders in the area. We didn't get back to Villa Elisa (my area) until 8:30p. We started waiting for the first bus at 1:30p. We only spent about three hours at the mission office. Yuck.
Saturday: We had four charlas set due to the charla cortas on Wednesday. Three of them were no-shows and the fourth said "My husband doesn't want to talk to you. Blah, blah, blah, Catholic, blah, blah." Too bad. We did manage to give a charla one to three children of this one lady. I'd be willing to bet a few mil that she didn't care about the message. Oh, no. The oldest daughter is nineteen. Ya get what I'm sayin'? She didn't try anything funny, though. The charla went well. It seemed that all three understood and they all agreed to read the Book of Mormon. This was the highlight of the week.
Sunday was back to the same blah as before. We went to church in the morning. It would have been great if I could only understand what was going on… We gave Jorgelina the third charla about the Restoration, which went really well. It seems that she's been looking for the truth, and we're the ones who brought it to her. We don't have a definite baptismal date yet, because she wants to learn more, but I'm pretty sure she'll get baptized.
And that's my week. Pretty slow. The reason is because this week was the Semana Santa (Holy Week) and a lot of our regular investigators had traveled elsewhere. So we had to do a lot of tracting, without much success. There were moments when I felt a little discouraged, but I told that meanie Satan to go away and leave me alone. I felt better immediately after. Gee. Is this work and this church really from God? I wonder.
Anywhen, love you lots and lots!
Joe
PS Don't know if I've already shared this one or not, but... 3 Ne 5:13.
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