Email: Week#45 in Paraguay

It was a really good Christmas. We had dinner with the family Vera. Pretty much everyone here celebrates Christmas by eating a toooon of meat. We ate a ton, pretty much everyone says the same thing. They eat super late too, like at midnight or 11.

I also called about my package, and it arrived there, I bet it got there awhile ago, they just werent able to go to the post office for a bit. So I am excited!!

On Christmas day, we went over to the stake center and gathered together as a zone, like I told you already. We sung hymns to everyone in the hospital and then had a super nice dinner and SKYPED!!! That was super awesome, it just went by waaaaay too fast...

So this Monday we had a SUPER awesome baptism. It was a couple that were just so awesome that got baptized. My companion and I each baptized one, so that was really awesome!

So we found this really cool guy on Tuesday named Ovidio. He has a Book of Mormon from 2003, but he is really interested and is a really cool guy.Then, we also got to visit Inocencia. She is a super old woman who lost her eye (so one is blue and other is brown) and we foudn that she got baptized a while ago, but doesnt remember a single thing!

On Wednesday, we visited Everisto Rios, he is like the nicest guy I have ever met. We always feel super happy. Everytime we visit him he starts crying and says he is so happy that we took the time with him to share the word of God. He got in an accident and so he cant walk very much... so opa su asistencia to church. Then, we went to share with Mari Fernandez. She is a less active that we have been working with a lot, but just cant get her to come to church! BUt we met her daughter and she has interest in getting baptized! Today we are going to visit her again and have a Family Home Evening and make pancakes!!!!!

Thursday is Christmas... which I told already :)

Friday, we did weekly planning and it was a hard day, we had to scrape around to get some lessons that day. Later, we did some mission coordination with our leader.

Saturday was super awesome, six lessons! We first started to contact and we found a less active (that like no one knew about...)! She is 17 and doesnt go only because she doesnt have any friends. Then, we got another few contacts and found Ruben and Marcos. They were super tranquil guys who were super receptive to the lesson and willing to be baptized if they knw this church was true. But the best lesson we had was the last one. We taught Pedro, out golden investigator (who went to church again!!!!) and taught him the importance of getting married. Now he is going to pray about whether and when to get married to get baptized! He is super awesome and wants to get baptized.

Well... hope you enjoyed my week! Talk to all later! Rohayyyyhu!

Elder Crandall

Email: Week#44 in Paraguay

Hi!

Things are going pretty good. We had a pretty fun week this week. It is super crazy that Christmas is here, it really just doesn't seem like that at all here.

For Christmas, we are going to have a Zone Activity and I think that we are going to a children's hospital to sing to them and then play some games a zone or something like that.

So this week was really cool. We had a dinner for Christmas with our ward, and it was really cool. We had a ton of people come to that and it was like a huge dinner. It was full of food too because everyone brought something, so it was really fun to hang with everyone in the ward!

We also have a baptism later today for the hermanas, so it will be super awesome. Also, this week we went to the Christmas Devotional last night. It was really good, but it ended super late, after 9 o clock, and by then there were like no buses running! So our district got home like suuuper late around 10.30 because the Stake President took so long talking in the meeting before the devotional.

So as far as our top investigator, Pedro, he wasn't able to come to church last Sunday because he was working. But anyway, there is a huge problem with him. He needs to get married, but his girlfriends mom is highly against it. The thing is that they live with the mom, and she wont let them, so we need to find some way to let that happen, because Pedro really loves learning and wants to get baptized.

Anyway, a pretty good week, we found some pretty cool people!

Love, Elder Crandall

Elder Crandall has been working on his tan!..for his arms at least haha

Email: Week#43 in Paraguay

Hi,

Everything is going good. Today we had a game with all the missionaries that we played together at the church. Then, we went out to KFC that was just recently opened!

It is super crazy to think that Christmas is coming up, it doesnt seem like it. Some people put up Christmas lights on their houses, but not that many. Here in Paraguay, they just have a huge dinner super late. They gift presents on January 6, which is the day of the 3 kings..

So this week we lost some time looking for a ciber during the holiday. I didnt know it would be that bad, but everything was closed! For that holiday a lot of people walk to another city for like 12 hours straight! It is crazy.

this week was a super good week. We had the Zone Conference this week and it was pretty cool. I learned some stuff from the President. After, I had splits with the Zone Leaders, and that was fun. One of my Zone Leaders is Elder Day from Gilbert, so closeby. We have been working a lot lately with Christian, Pedro, Victor, and Gregorio. We have been trying to get them all to come to church, we went and passed by Pedro and VIctors house Sunday morning, but they both made excuses to not come. Then, when sacrament meeting was almost over, Pedro came in with his family! It was super awesome because he really seemed like he didnt want to come when we had asked him. 

Christian is an investigator, whose spouse is a less active, Gloria. She is diagnosed with cancer and so she doesnt go to church much now because she feels bad a lot. This Wednesday she is going to find out how serious it is. If it goes bad, she said she is going to give up on life, so if you can please pray for her because she really needs help and is an awesome person. We have been teaching her two kids who are super excited to hear us now.

Pedro is the one who went to church, and he is the boyfriend of a less active too. We get along super well. He wants to learn and loves hearing from us. He needs to get married to get baptized, is all, but his mominlaw (who he lives with) is totally against him and his daughter getting married, so it is kinda complicated, we arent sure what to do.

Victor is some crazy guy we found the first day. We had an awesome lesson with him, but then could never find him again, so we left him. We just found him yesterday and it was awesome. He couldnt come yesterday to church because he had a lot of tooth pain and didnt sleep at all the night before. He is super smart and even knows a lot of English, so during the lessons he always says a bunch of phrases and words in English haha.

Gregorio was a guy we just barely found, but he is cool. He realizes that he needs to go to church and be rebaptized the correct way. I dont know much about him, but he seems like a perfect investigator. He couldnt come because he was in the hospital with his sobrino.

THat is basically it, but life is all good, crazy to almost hit a year! And I will send some pictures depending on if the other missionaries that ook them will send them :P

Elder Crandall :)

Email: Week#42 in Paraguay

Hi,

I wasnt able to write yesterday because they had a holiday yesterday in Paraguay to celebrate a virgin, so everything... literally everything was closed all day! So we tried again in the morning and there was no internet, so we finally found a place to write.

It has not been raining that often lately, we hav been pretty dry, but Paraguay has the craziest storms I have ever seen. It is really weird because sometimes it goes from totally uncloudy to a huge rain storm in 1 hour. But my clothes do get super soaked, but I have enough coats and stuff, the only problem is that I lost my umbrella, but I at least have my coat to help.

I have eaten just about every single Paraguayan food. My comp and I have been eating more creative stuff like making pizzas, soups, and other stuff. My companion is from Ukiah, California and he is 6'4.

This week was super awesome because we found some super awesome people to teach. Some of those people were just so willing to accept the invitation to get baptized, we just need to work with them that they come to church. We were able to find some golden investigators this week!

But sorry I dont have much time to write today because we couldnt write yesterday!

Love you and talk to you later!

Elder Crandall

Email: Week#41 in Paraguay

Hi!

We didn't really celebrate Thanksgiving at all haha, but it is all good.  I have a year and 2 weeks left and opa la mision.  They also haven't said anything about skyping yet, but they usually do like 1 or 2 weeks before we can do it. I need to decide what day would be better, I think it would be cool to do it on Christmas day.

The area I am in now is called Anahi (Ann - i - e). It is in a really big town called Capiata. It is starting to get super hot here now! The summer is beginning. The weather here is super crazy now. The storms in Paraguay are not normal. Like it will be the biggest rain storm you have ever seen in your life and then 1 hour later there are no clouds in the sky. That is how it is all the time, it is really weird. My area is really small too! I can walk from one end to the other in 15 minutes! Most areas take at least an hour.

We had a really successful week. We found some really awesome people in the area to start teaching. We started contacting a lot because we didn't have anyone, but got some luck... or really the spirit really helped us to find people. We have some neat contacts and were able to get a lot of lessons this week. The best thing that happened was that we put a fecha on Derlis for January 10th.! He is a super smart and awesome kid. He knows a ton already and we like barely even have to teach him. He is busy with commitments some Sundays but this Sunday we will try to lock him down early!

Paraguayans are really funny sometimes because once they see you they usher you to come in and sit down but they have never shared with missionaries or ever heard of our church before. So one time we were walking down the street and this woman said hello really friendly and said come in, come in! So it is kinda cool but funny that a lot of people do that. We have had that happen a few times.

Yesterday was really neat because the sisters had a baptism and it turned out super well. I really enjoyed it. And we also have changes coming up and I am preeetty sure that we will be staying together, but who knows...

I guess that is it. I totally cannot remember what happened this week and neither my companion haha. But today was a pretty fun Pday. We went to this random museum that we found and then went to McDonalds and later found this crazy huge Catholic church.

But yeah and here are some pics..

 

Love,

Elder Crandall :)