Week 103 - Transferred, Ivan is an Angel, Working with Members, Spicy Food

Well, we got transfers, and I´m now in San Isidro, a neighborhood in Lambaré, which is just barely south of Asunción, and this place is packed full of people. We've got big streets, small streets, and alley ways, and walkways just wide enough for one person to walk through.  I´m in the big city now, but in the residential area, it´s a blast, because everything is just fast, and great.

And everyone here is either super nice or not nice at all, there´s really no one that´s in between. 

My new companion is Elder Black, and he lived most of his life in Los Angeles, California, and he´s a great missionary, he´s been out for about 8 months, we´re having a blast already. My companion now is just the best, he´s humble, a great teacher, and yeah. I got here and we´re finding and teaching like crazy.  Elder Black and his last companion have been working hard, and we´re still finding tons of people, it´s great.  A lot of the people here call us angels, so that's a nice self esteem booster...

The members here are awesome too, they always find us in the street and tell us that they want us to meet their friends. And we do. the only hard thing is that people move a lot here, so members are always leaving and coming and investigators as well.

There´s a Mexican missionary who lives with us that always makes us spicy food, so that´s fun. 

The senior missionaries come and clean the ward list and take out all the inactive members that don´t live there any more, since the ward secretaries here have a hard time. They also visit some of the people they find. 

I guess she´s training 2 because that´s what God wanted, because there are plenty of sisters in the mission now. 

RN is probably so mature because his mom is single and he works and goes to school, he told us that his dad died 3 years ago. RN is sooooooooooo committed to baptism,  He is sooo excited to get baptized huh. 

Elder Bowles

Week 102 - People leave for Easter, 3 Nephi 11, Possible Stellar Companions, Getting Revelation

This week was great! RN is probably the most mature 16 year old who I've met, he went to church and had tons of questions.  This week we found a family that´s way nice, they give us food and everything. it´s only kinda different because the wife is 42, and the guy is 73, but they´re happy, so i guess that works. 

This week I ate chipa, sopa, chipa guazú, cow tongue, milanesa de pollo, pig, sausage, rice with paraguayan cheese, potato salad, a desert called crema.  

We found some more old people two days ago that said they wouldn't get baptized even if God told them to... fun stuff. Hey everyone needs the gospel just not all of them know or want to know that they need it. Recently the senior missionaries came to our area, and we showed them around, and AO came to church again, so that was awesome.

Being district leader is fine, it was more fun at first when everything is new, it´s just nice being a normal missionary sometimes. 

The weather is still cool, Easter made everyone leave our area to visit family, so it was a little harder. really the investigators just have to want to do it.  We can explain how, why  and everything but sometimes they just are afraid of getting an answer like SO. 

I really liked Uchtorfs talk about how not to sleep through the restauración.

This week was the semana santa, most the stores were closed from Thursday to Sunday, and everyone makes a lot of food, the Catholics don´t cook anything Friday, they just eat all the leftover chipa. 

Next Easter if I´m there we´re for sure going to hunt for eggs no matter what, even if we feel silly doing it. 

There´s a sister in the district that´s training 2 new missionaries at the same time, one's from Utah and the other is from some place in central america.

If I could experience any event in the scriptures it would be 3 nefi 11. Where Christ appears to the Nephites.

https://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/3-ne/11?lang=eng

What about you?

If I could have anyone as my mission companion, I would probably pick either Ammon or Saint Paul (that´s his name now for me) because they are just bosses. 

To learn about revelation, watch the doctrine and covenant movies about revelation, and read the section in Doctrine & Covenants about Oliver Cowdery. There´s also a talk from Elder Oaks that says that we should not try to force revelation or else we might start getting revelation from sources other than God. Really, there are lots of choices that God just leaves up to us, and if we need more assurance we can just ask him to see if he approves of it. and if he doesn't tell us no or yes, it usually doesn't matter that much at all. 

-Elder Bowles

Week 101 - Chillier, Never Lost, Still Remembers Math

This week was a longer one, but it was worth it, Our friend SO went to church again, a member had offered to take him and was a little bit late, and so he had started walking and had almost made it to the church before the member found him. SO says that he only ever finished elementary school, but to me he seems way smarter than the other people here who finished high school. Weird how that works. 

It´s starting to get a little chillier here, I had to break out the coat, so that´s always a nice change at first. AN, a member here in Tayuasape will be leaving next week to go on a mission to Londrina, Brasil, so that´s always exciting.

We find out about transfers a week from tomorrow. I think it would be nice to get a new area because I´ve talked to almost everyone here, but I also would like to be here for SO´s baptism.

We are still teaching RN and his neighbor, and RN´s mom invited his aunt to come too, so that´s awesome, but RN still hasn´t gone to church! He says he really wants to get baptized, but we´ll see what happens. 

I will never get lost in San Lorenzo, I´ve been everywhere there is to go here, Kennedy, San Lorenzo, Tayuasapé, and Reducto, for interviews. If you ask me that question a little bit more than a week from now, the answer will most likely be yes. 

The buses are normal, I got in a normal car the other day and that was really weird for me.

In this ward there hasn´t been any sacrament bread occurances, except for when a recent convert that helped with the sacrament wasn´t instructed well, and started to break the bread before sacrament meeting. 

We had one lesson yesterday when a guy told us that he thought that all the churches were good, and then told us he would never change his religion, and another one that told us he prays asking god not to ask him to change his religion.

We put $100 in Ivan's account for his b'day and he spent it down to within $2.  I was impressed and asked him about it.....this was his response:  $100 times 4.3 is 430,000 guaranies, and there´s a 25,000 guarani transaction fee.  I still remember a little bit of math.

-Elder Bowles

Week 100 - General Conference, Hairless Dogs, Young People's Time

This week was exhausting, and I don´t even know why. It´s been super hot, and humid, supposedly winter is coming, I still haven´t decided if it even exists here.

General Conference was this week, and it was great, one of the people we taught once went for the Sunday afternoon session, his name is S*rg**, and he´s about 60ish, he´s super awesome. I honestly didn´t think anyone was going to go, becasue they had to take a bus into San Lorenzo to see the conference, but then we got of the bus and saw him on the corner walking towards the stake center, and he was early and everything. I saw all the sessions, the first four in English on the little TV in San Lorenzo, and then the last one in Spanish on the big screen with S*rg**.

All I heard was that there was an earthquake in Chile. I didn´t feel anything, there are basically no natural disasters here in Paraguay besides rain and hail.

 

For my birthday some people made me a cake, and I got gifts of jerkey and peanut butter from other missionaries.

 

Here there´s a disease passing through that makes all the dogs´ hair fall out, so that´s been interesting. 

 

Yeah Monday May12 sounds good (for our Mother's Day phone call), chances are I´ll be in a new area, but Í will keep you informed if anything changes.

 

I really liked the preisthood session, but I´d half to look at my notes to tell you which one was my favorite, they had one that seemed more directed to women than to us, you should go read it, by Elder Oaks. To see this talk to go:  https://www.lds.org/general-conference/watch/2014/04?lang=eng&vid=3436246697001&cid=3

 

We didn´t eat armadillo, the person that was going to get it is in Argentina right now. 

 

The grapefruits are yellow, and are sour, and really good. I almost know how to cook milanesa, which is basically just the paraguayan version of breaded chicken.

 

Yes, more contacting than through the members.

 

RN is doing fine, it´s just always hard with young people because a lot of time their schedule depends on their parents schedule. Now his neighbor comes over whenever he hears that we´re at RN's house.

 

-Elder Bowles

Week 99 - Rain, New Food, Thanks for b'day wishes, Grapefruit, Flooding

I almost just started writing in spanish..

This week was pretty good, the rain made it not so fun to be a missionary this week, but things ended up just fine, we talked to a huge family this week, the sister told us to go by at a certain time and wasn´t even there, but everyone there received us real well.   We learned a bunch and it was a great way to end a wet day.

the brother of a recent convert is going to try to get armadillo for us to eat tomorrow, so we´ll see how that goes.

 

Jesus suffered for us only becasue he wanted to forgive our sins, and sometimes humans are just hard hearted people.  I really like what it says in the prayer in Matthew 6 where Jesus asks God to forgive us according to hwo we forgive others).

 

One of my questions for general conference (a biannual meeting where all church members meet via satelite) is going to be why it´s so hard sometimes for people to just act in good ways on the truth and knowledge they have (gospel).

 

We´ve got 3 deacons, a couple teachers, and 3 priests.  This member is awesome for Paraguay for fellowshipping new members, just getting the new members is the trick.

New food of the week was Patté de Higado, which is a cream that they use for bread that is basically ground up liver, but it really just tastes like tuna. It´s really good.

Nothing really super exciting happened this week, we talked to lots of people and we taught quite a few.

I got a huge bag of paraguayan grapefruits (his favorite fruit) for my birthday (probabably about 40)
I want a turkey so bad right now...

The flooding is really fun when we don´t have any need to cross it, because it cleans stuff up and carries the trash away.  The stream came past my knees.

THANKS FOR ALL THE BIRTHDAY WISHES

Elder Bowles