Week 94 - Big Ice Creams, No shirt, Chapel Tours, Favorite Topics to Teach, Making Fudge

This week was pretty good, we talked to a lot of people, and a lot of people let us in that had super fancy houses, so that was a nice surprise, and they are really interested as well.

It has been really hot lately, my companion eats 1or two big ice creams every day, I honestly don´t know how he does it. 

Someone that we´ve been working with for a while came to church, his name is Juan, and the primary bore their testimonies after their temple trip, and it looked like it really touched him, and then afterwards he told us that his favorite part was the testimonies.

 

This week we took a taxi and the driver just didn´t have a shirt on, that was a first for me.

We invite people to tour the chapel sometimes, the ward has a ward night on thursdays, and that´s great becasue the sisters are usually cooking something and everyone has their activity.  We show them the chapel and the members and everything.

 

Here they say "Hindy Cabeyu nde sa" in Guaraní, which means it´s hard when the horse´s eye lights up (or when it´s mad), and they say it when they´re in really bad situations.

 

Most of my companions have really liked doing service.

 

My house is small but nice.

 

I think it would be nice being just a home teacher or primary teacher or something when I come home.  When I´m older being the cleaning coordinator or something.

 

It would be awesome to just have a job to be able to get ready for college, I really don't care what kind.

 

I really like teaching about the day of rest and about prayer, I´ve taught it so much, they´re easy to teach, and it´s really important, and the word of wisdom is just easy and obvious.

 

I made some chocolate fudge, and it turned out surprisingly good, they only had pink marshmellows at the store, but it turned super good, the chocolate chips melted (in the package he received), but that was fine becasue I was going to melt them anyways for the fudge, besidest that nothing really melted.

 

Have a good week.

 

-Elder Bowles 

Week 93 - Emergency Drill, Another Baptism, Shifty Tortillas, Different Accents

Today we had an emergency drill, they sent us all a phone call, and we had to get to the chapel as fast as we could with our emergency bags, so that was fun.

This week was pretty dang good, GA was baptized, and is super happy, she brought her nephews and everything she was so excited.  This week was harder until the weekend, because a lot of people rejected us.  GA fell and sprained her ankle, and a member that didn´t sleep a wink and had a migraine went to take her to church in her car so that she wouldn´t have to walk with her 2 year-old kid and her 2 other nephews.

DO came to church, and said that his landlord didn´t want us talking to him, so we´ll be meeting with him in the chapel.  He´s a super awesome guy.

Someone gave us some shifty tortillas this week, and my companion went to the bathroom soooo much on Saturday, so that was a drag, but it´s one of those things that you´ve just got to do. Yes, the companion has to wait outside the bathroom, so that´s why we avoid going to the bathroom too often.

I haven´t seen any spiders, but we did find a scorpion in the house.

 

Our district meetings are in Spanish. For me all the South Americans sound almost the same, the Central Americans have more of the culture of the United States.  The Peruvians don´t ever finish their sentences, and the Argentinians just speak like they have marbles in their mouth and with really weird accentuations, and everyone here in Paraguay makes fun of the Argentinian accent. Bolivians speak like the Peruvians, but they actually finish their sentences.

 

We have transfers in about 3 weeks, as of now I am still with Elder P in Tayuasapé.  I am pretty sure I will get another area and companion this next change (3 weeks from now) but there´s work for us to do here in Tayuasapé first.

 

One of our neighbors likes us, and the other one doesn´t really talk to us.

 

I eat from the stores on the street, but the people that sell stuff on buses I rarely ever buy from them. When someone gives us food, I always eat it, there´s a scripture in the New Testament and the end of marcos lucas mateo o juan that says that the disciples will be able to eat harmful things and not be hurt, but I try not to try that scripture too much.

 

I met some guy that works as a nurse here and he works from 6 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon, which would be an awesome schedule.

 

-Elder Bowles

Week 92 - Dang Funny, Dead Grass, Ugly Ties, Local Gardens, English Scriptures

This week went pretty great, GA went to church, and her two year old kid ran around the whole time, it was pretty dang funny, and he went and danced and sang next to the person directing the music. 

It´s been pretty hot this week, now we need some rain down here, all the grass is dying on the sides of the roads, I don´t think I´ve seen dead grass since I got to Paraguay.  Here there hasn´t been as much rain as normal, but here there´s so much water everywhere that it doesn´t really matter, one family that we visit quite often has a well with a bucket, and it´s only about 15 feet deep and there´s the water there at the bottom, Everyone is outside when it´s hot, so that makes it nice for us. This week someone told us that he didn´t beleive in Jesus ¨right now.¨  I think it was just becasue he didn´t want to talk to us, but whatever, we were looking for a reference from hermana Ida, and we clapped a house and the one next to it opened up and said that they were tired but they wanted to talk to us, and the whole family was there, and asked if it would be ok if they went to church, and wanted to know when it started, so that was awesome. 

I actually really liked one of the ties (the Elder's  Quorum sent ugly ties to the missionaries), because it has brown, grey and blue stripes so I can wear it with any of my pants. One of them had a nice tear in it though, I wore that one yesterday and tied it so that it was hidden by the collar.

 

People here have gardens sometimes, and grow lemons, oranges, mandioca, and then the people with really big ones grow other stuff.

 

Of course I´ll remember how to drive when I get back.

 

We have a gospel pricniples teacher here in tTayuasape, so that´s nice.

 

We had GA and AA at church this week.

 

In all my time in paraguay i´ve seen a couple burger kings and mcdonanlds and one pizza hut.

 

I´ve opened my english scriptures twice this year, I like the spanish scripture study guide a lot more than the english one.

 

A lot of the members here have cars and motorcycles, so they just come when and where we need them, it´s super nice.

 

I´ll be heading back to the states the 4th or 5th of June.  I think I´m gonna have 2 more roomies before I leave.It´s weird though becasue I have gotten so used to living in Paraguay. It´s super great down here, everyone is nice, the land is beautiful, and i´m in a good cause, it can´t get much better than that.

 

-Elder Bowles

 

 

Week 91 - Carpentry, Sitting Down, Received Package from Ward

This week was pretty good, we´ve been helping a lady out that really loves the church, she has an obnoxious kid, when we were talking to her he put a bag of garbage on a stick and started spinning around, it was pretty funny.  He´s 2 years old but I swear he´s wider than I am (like Ivan is so wide).

It´s been pretty hot down here, I know it reached 40 degrees Celsius, what that is in Farenheit?  I don´t know. (it is 104 degrees and they have at least 90% humidity).

This week we spiced things up and we helped an investigator in his carpentry shop.  It was pretty fun, he gave us a huge presentation about how to sand the wood.  Then he was super impressed with how fast we ´learned´ to sand.

We also were talking to one of our investigators, and we were about to teach him the word of wisdom (no smoking or drinking alcohol), and we asked how he was doing with smoking and he said that he stopped a week ago, and we asked him why, and he said he just felt like it needed to be done, so that was awesome.

Someone is planning on giving us cow heart and kidneys, so we´ll see how that goes.

 

It´s way easier to stay focused when I´m the one teaching than when I´m the one listening.  Now in the mission I have a really hard time with zone conferences because I´m not used to sitting down for so long.

 

Advice to college students....First of all you should try to get sufficient sleep, I always go to bed at 10 thirty. Good luck with that.

 

People here get arrested the most when they bug the cops. There´s a neighborhood in my area where the cops wouldn´t even go into before because it was so dangerous, but sounds like things have changed.

 

The best thing that happened was we were really bummed that an investigator didn´t come to church and then we talked to him in the afternoon, and he said that he did, but that he went in San Lorenzo instead of Tayuasape becasue he happened to be over there (and it was true).

Right now we have the lady with the kid who has a date for February 15th, and another one, W*ld*m*r for the 22nd.here. The wards aren´t really super coordinated, so the converts don´t get callings (a job in the congregation) super fast, It´s kinda frustrating , and it´s something we´re working on. A lot of times they give them ward missionary or make them primary teachers.

 

Recently I have been studying about Ammon and Aaron and all them, and it´s really true, anyone who listens with their heart believes and receives all the blessings.

 

I´m still with my same companion, he´s got a little bit of a temper, so that´s kinda fun sometimes.

 

I got a package from the ward, I think it was from the high priests if I read it right, because all of the high preists had their testimonies all fancier than the rest. (the package was from the WHOLE congregation).

 

-Elder Bowles