Week 63 - Not tempted to Drink, Dang Cold!, Speaking Guarani?, Needs Reeses, Bacon!, Clean Stove

 

Ivan cleaning the stove

 

Ivan keeping warm by the heater (that broke 2 days later)

 

 

 

 

This week was a great one. Another family we started to work with returned to church, and brought some friends, so that´s awesome.  The sad news is that now that we have some people that are for sure getting baptized President told me that I´m going to a different area on Wednesday. I´ll find out where tomorrow. It´ll be really nice to have an area where I haven´t talked to anybody at all.

 

Yesterday Elder Aguilar and I arrived at a house were were going to visit, and they were all in front drunk and one of them tried to make him drink some beer.  It was super funny, because he held it up to my companion´s face and told him to drink it. I would have helped my companion, but there was no way the drunk guy was going to succeed, and he didn´t.

 

The weather is pretty dang cold here. I don´t know if it´s actually really cold, or if the hot paraguayan summer just makes it feel super cold, or if it´s just because we are outside almost all day. Here the weather is cold and our floor heater broke, and so we just have our air conditioning that kinda heats up the room, I´ve been wearing long underwear under my pants during the day, hopefully this Paraguayan weather hasn´t made me such a wimp that I die of cold when I go to utah to study. The first winter I swear wasn´t this cold. they say it was 1 degree celsius this morning (I think thats in the 30´s farenheit) and it´s super humid here too.

I started talking to all the old people here in Guaraní as much as I can, because they really enjoy it, and it makes their day when I just say hi in Guaraní. Then they start talking to me in Guaraní and I don´t understand a thing unless they say it´s cold or I´m sick because I understand that.

 

If the area that I was in was big, I would not mind at all staying there for 2 years.

 

My comp has the same size family as us.

 

When I got to this zone, there was only 2 or 3 missionaries that weren´t Americans, and now more than half are Latin missionaries. My district is 3 companionships, and I and Elder Secrist are the only Americans. The funny thing is that almost all the Latin missionaries are junior companions, so we bring that up sometimes to make them mad.

 

There are a lot more Latin misisonaries now. I´d say that chances are slim for Americans to go to south america on a mission, so that´s too bad. Recently I´ve been envying people who go to the states in their missions because the wards there actually funcion as they should, and all the members know what they need to do to keep the ward working.

 

The first thing out of almost everyone´s mouth when we talk to them is that they´re Catholic, but almost nobody goes unless they live within 2 blocks of the Catholic chapel, so most of the time it´s a lot easier to get them to church because they don´t go to theirs.

 

I thought that they would claim priesthood authority from Peter, but for the first time yesterday in all my mission somebody actually brought that up, and it actually surprised me.

 

I don´t think that I´ll be able to give blood when I get back, at least for a little while.

 

Right now we´re teaching the wife of a drug addict, M*b*l, the daugther in law of a recently activated member, *st*ll*, and a mix of other investigators and less active members.

 

My idea of stuff I ´need´ has changed while I´ve been here, I would like just some reeses peanut butter cups and butterfingers, maybe some skittles.They just don´t have good candy here in Paraguay. I will do some more thinking this week about what I want.

 

My idea of beauty is green grass and palm trees, and preferably trees that have fruit on them, so i can eat.

This last week I found some bacon in the store for the first time, it was kinda expensive, but I bought it anyway and made BLT´s all week for breakfast.

 

Our stove is a little, cheap gas one. I cleaned it (foto), and now the flames are about 4 inches high when we turn it on, so that´s probably not good.

 

I was physically prepared for the mission when I flew to Utah, but the MTC screwed me over, and then I wasn´t physically prepared when I flew to Paraguay.

 

 

-Elder Bowles