January 2, 2012

Hey family it was a great week here on the mission. Pretty crazy that I’m going to finish my training up here this week, 12 weeks here in Paraguay pretty crazy. I was stoked to see how you all had an awesome week relaxing and enjoying family and friends. That really is what this time of the year is all about.

So I had kind of a funny experience yesterday in a lession that we had. We went and taught this lady yesterday with a member and this lady is awesome she really thinks this is true and she accepted a date to get baptized in a few weeks. But yeah so the lession was going awesome and we got up to the point when we were going to share the first vision when her drunk husband started talking, he was there the whole time but hadn’t been saying much but right when we got there he just started sharing how bad his life is and why the person down the street has a car and he only has a bike and how God can’t exist for all the bad things in the world. Well we know there isn’t much you can say to a drunk guy that will make sense to him so we just let him go for a minute. His wife was just rolling her eyes and telling us sorry, so after a minute I finally just kindly asked him... Hermano usted quiere entrar en su casa ahora dormir un poco. In English it was just “ hey do you want to go sleep in your house for a bit”. Well yeah come to find out that wasn’t the best thing to say to him. He was just like hey this is my house and if you wanna go you can go (ha ha) But anyway the Lord blessed us to finish the lession and bear testimony of Joseph Smith and she loved it. It’s amazing to feel the power of lessions with members, that’s where the baptisms will come always through the members.

We are seeing a lot of progression with the work here and I’m really excited to see what the next few months bring here in Fernando. We have changes in a week but I’ll probably be staying here for a few more months.

I love the mission so much family. The Lord watches over his missionaries so much. One thing that I loved that Elder Holland shared to us in the Missionary Training Center is that there is not another body in the church that is more prayed for in the world then the Lords Missionaries. It’s amazing to think about all the little kids around the whole world kneeling down with families and asking Heavenly Father to bless the missionaries, or all the older people too. Pretty incredible experience to be a missionary right now in my life, it’s the best thing ever. It is definitely filled with many trials and hard times but so many awesome and amazing times that just make it all worth it.

Family I love you so much and Happy New Year to you all. You all better get writing some goals to accomplish this year because it’s going to be an incredible year. Love you so much and thanks for all you do.