FIRST EMAIL OF 2010!

"Happy New Year! Another week has come and gone. It's been a good week. I´m excited because this Friday night Luis will be baptized. At 6pm on Wednesday Elder Park, DL, is coming to interview him (again)...but I think this time all is good to go! Luis is great. He's 40 years old, divorced, all his family lives in Argentina. We´ve been teaching him for almost 2 months now. I remember at first I couldn´t understand anything when talking to him, but now we are like friends! He´s been to church the past 4 Sundays, has lots of member friends now and has given up drinking..which was his downfall! I´m so happy for him! It's funny...I have yet to baptize a true Paraguayan...Daniel and Fabian are both Uruguayan and Luis from Argentina!"


1-01-10
Shauna, Hermana Romero and Fabian
"This is the staircase/ladder to Fabian's house-crazy!"

"Well, had 82 people at church yesterday....which is like really great for here! And can I just say I LOVE the members. For those that accompany us for the afternoon, feed us, etc. okay, and Angel Lopez, I sent a pic of him, was baptized 2 weeks before I got here....so since he and his wife are new members we visit them often. Over a month ago he told us that he was going to work hard and save money for church clothes (I didn´t know he said that until last night when H. Castaneda told me..guess I didn´t understand! ha). Well, for work he literally carries around a pirate-like knife to cut grass, weeds, etc. anyways...yesterday he showed up to church wearing a white shirt, tie, church pants and new shoes. It seriously like melted my heart. It may not seem like a big deal but for people here, especially Angel, thats giving up ALOT of money. The people here are the best! They are so humble...don´t have much at all. They truly are an example to me...we don´t need all the bells and whistles to be happy!"

"So, I am so impressed with all the elders. Whenever I´m around them I always think of Robs being out in the mission field fairly soon! Ya, they are 19 year old boys, young, but they surely do step up to the plate and represent the church! Their testimonies are firm and they are great examples to me about energitically doing the Lords work!"

"So, for every Spanish song I hear while walking the streets there are like 3 American songs! Funny that people listen to English music because they don´t understand it! Anyways...its so hard not to just like sing a long with the songs! Sometimes I´m just like ahh, where are my skinnies and flats?...I wanna dance! But then I´m like wait, I´m a sister missionary. I´m memorizing Spanish hymns while walking around now to sing when I hear an American song! And plus, it helps me out with my Spanish. It's been a fun way to help me learn more words and sentence structures and stuff."

"So, I am starting to dream in Spanish. It's weird. I´ll wake up and be like wait, that was in Spanish! It's funny though because a lot of my dreams are with people from here but we´re in the US or with you guys and we´re in Paraguay. I think my brain is officially confused!!"

"This church is true! I´m so grateful for the gospel in my life. For the comfort, happiness and knowledge it brings! Heavenly Father knows us, loves us and wants us to be happy....we just need to always do our part and endure to the end!"

Images from the last week of 2009...


12-31-09
"Typical night at the Caballeros house!"

12-29-09

"!Que Linda es Paraguay!" (How pretty is Paraguay!)


12-23-09

"Who wants a chipa?! People are always walking around with baskets or on their motorcycles selling these...chipa's...it's a bread type thing and usually A LOT smaller than these! One day we ran into a member on the street and he bought me two since I'm "flacita" as people call me! So funny! I may reutrn to the states as "gordita"!!" :)