Week 13 - Miracles in San Ignacio #MilagrosEnSanIgnacio

"Today was a rough day for numbers. It almost seems like we can have either good numbers or we can have miracles. Well, today we had miracles" -My Journal

 



Wedding Day

Let´s start off this email with the events that transpired monday night. Gregorio´s papers went through! He had to ask the help of a couple different people, but by the end of the day he got it all taken care of. Now he only has to wait 48 hours before setting a time with a judge.

 

Wednesday was the day from which that quote is taken. We have an investigator named Zuni who has been making a bit of progress these last few weeks.

Week 12 - Transfer Week

View of San Ignacio from our roof.

This week starts off our transfers! One down, 1.8 years to go. Luckily my trainer and I are staying here, but one of our hermanas is being transfered to Argentina. I´m really glad I get to remain here in San Ignacio, because I love these people. I haven't had a lot of luck with investigators lately, but there have been some great miracles here these last 7 days.

 

First off, our small and insignificant one. The other day we were walking through Soreños, which is not our normal store, and we happened upon Worchestershire sauce! Elder Thorpe says that in all his misison he's never seen it. Not even in the largest stores in Encarnacion...

Week 11 - Clean Sweep

Let's start with the awesome news:
Elder Bednar did a training with around 8,000 missionaries in the South America South area. He was in Buenos Aires, and it was being broadcast all over Argentina, Chile, and Paraguay I think. He talked a lot about being an Agent and not an Object, and how we can help our investigators act as agents in their conversion. He also talked a lot about what it means to have faith. He shared the story of Israel crossing the river Jordan. They were told that the water would heap up to either side, and instead of waiting on the shore for that to happen, they walked into the river and hoped God would follow through. They had to walk the entire river in 6 or so inches of water, but as they looked back, they could see the water doing exactly as promised. Nothing happens until we get our feet wet. Until we take those first few steps. Even then, we don't get all understanding at once, but we have just enough understanding to take the next leap of faith, and only looking backwards can we see our spiritual progress.

Week 10 - My Life is a Bus Ride

I´m not even joking. Like, this past week I spent half the week on busses. It was terrible.

Asunción, Paraguay Temple

So Monday P-day, and I got to spend almost all of it in my area. Just after my last email, we jumped on a bus for Encarnación. Encarnación is two and a half hours South East of San Ignacio. Then when we arrived, we waited in the terminal for an hour before boarding the next bus out to Asunción. That´s a 6 hour bus ride which goes right through San Ignacio. That bus had problems with the AC being stuck in the coldest setting, and due to poor design, the air leaked around the vents, and it couldn´t be turned off. We were all freezing. That was an overnight bus, which put us in Asunción around 6 in the morning. Those of us that went had to do a little paperwork to make us legal in Paraguay. It wasn´t a lot, but I guess it can only be done in Asunción which is why we had the trip.

But we did get to visit the Temple while we were there!

Week 9 - San Ignacio

Happy dia de los Solteros!

Or in other words, happy singles awareness day! In an attempt to leave time to respond to other emails, I´m going to shorten this letter up quite a lot, because it takes too much of my time. So here are some of the most important things that happened this week.

Monday night and almost all of tuesday was spent in busses and at our zone meeting in Encarnación 2 hours away. Wednesday almost none of our investigators were home, except for Rotibio, who is the man we hauled a gas can for. We had a very very interesting meeting with him both good and bad. 1st off, he read half of the book of mormon in a week. Yeah this guy has dedication. However, he had 2 large problems, He doesn´t agree with the idea of  Christ coming to the Americas, nor that anyone except christ can be ressurected. So he´s asked us not to have discussions. However he still recognizes us as men of God, and wants us to continue visiting and chatting. Honestly we aren´t too sad about it. Any man who reads half the BoM in a single week, is bound to have big things coming his way. We´ll see how the spirit works in his heart this next week.

Week 8 - San Ignacio #MilagrosEnSanIgnacio

"A decent rainstorm" according to Elder Thorpe

My first full week down! Woo! The more time I spend here the more I love it! It is a lot more humid here, and also far hotter. I don´t think I've ever sweated this much in a week. But the country is basically paradise. The people are great, the food is great, the rains are fantastic... Just the other day it started dumping rain out of nowhere. The street next to the restaurant we ate at had room for 2 lanes and parking on both sides. At the strongest point of this storm, the whole street was flowing with water. Granted they don´t have storm drains here, and water flows until It hits a stream, river, or something along those lines, But the amount of rain that fell that day was impressive to say the least.

Week 7 - Milagros En San Ignacio #MilagrosEnSanIgnacio

Hola Amigos!

This is the last shot of our MTC dorm room before we parted ways

I made it to my first p-day here in the mission field! The story of how long it took to get here has been posted on my Blog, I think, but i´m not sure it mentions that we flew to Posadas. After I arrived on Wednesday I was introduced a little to the Posadas Area. It`s very beautiful here. It´s much more humid, but because of that, everything is greener here than anything i´ve seen in any part of the US. Again, a few of the pictures will be up on my blog. I got my first taste of missionary work that night, as I went out with one of the APs to do some street contacting. I don´t understand a word of what´s being said, but I did manage to tell people who we are, and give them a pass along card. The AP took care of everything else.