Email: Week#49 in Paraguay

Hi,

Things are going super well here. So... I bring good news and bad news. The bad news is... the family Cañete told us they didn't want to get baptized anymore. We were super disappointed, but then the next day they told us they wanted to get baptized again! But it was still too late so we set their date to next Saturday.

However... there is more good news! We had 2 baptisms this last Saturday! One was for the ward of a less active we found and the other was a 9 year old girl who finally got permission from her mom to get baptized! They are both named Montze. It was a pretty awesome experience to see them get baptized together.

I am getting along with my new comp Elder Anton pretty well, he is a pretty funny guy. I am also getting to know the area pretty well. The ward is pretty awesome, it also has the best attendance so far I have had.

So this week we were basically just preparing a lot for the baptisms we had, so we weren't able to do thaat much in the obra del señor like we usually would. This week we are going to be suuuper busy working with the family cañete so that their 3 youngest kids can get baptized.

Also, now that I am district leader, I gave my first class, and it went pretty well! I have to give a class every tuesday to a group of missionaries basically. I also was able to do divisions with my zone leaders and so that was pretty cool. For the last 2 hours, we set up for a wedding... which kinda made me a bit trunky (Ryan's sister Lindsay here... trunky is a slang term missionaries use that means they are getting a little bit homesick/start thinking how many more days of the mission they have left) because that is basically what I did a ton at home haha. Also, on Saturday before the baptism we had zone conference with the president which is always awesome because we learn a ton from that. Ah... but the funnest was on friday, we had to fill the baptismal font, but it is broken so we have to fill it up manually with buckets!!!

Today was pretty fun, we went out and printed out some pictures and went to lunch with a ton of missionaries, so today was a pretty fun Pday.

Well... are you ready for a bombardment of pictures???!!!!

Love, Elder Crandall

Email: Week#48 in Paraguay

Hi!

So the big news iss... that I got changed! I now am in Huguito super close to the area I started in. It is pretty cool. The ward is super awesome. My companion now is Elder Anton from Peru. I forgot my camera, but I will show you next week! Also, I got called as the District Leader out in Huguito too! So that is pretty awesome.

Today for Pday we had a zone activity. We went to some chuchi member club to play soccer and volleyball as a zone and it was really fun.

I have just really been going around getting to know all the members and it is pretty fun. They have some pretty funny people here. So the crazy thing too is that we are going to have a ton of baptisms coming up!!!! The missionary here before found a lot of less active families so we are going to have baptisms for 5 kids soon. I am not sure if it will be this week, but it will be coming up!

But honestly... I really am not sure what to say, but it is super awesome to be out here in Huguito! I am totally loving it!

Love, Elder Crandall

Email: Week#47 in Paraguay

Hi,

So things are going really well. We are going to find out what is going to happen for changes tomorrow! We are both kinda nervous because we have about the same time in the area so we have basically the same chance of leaving. But I am a bit nervous for changes!! I really really want to be able to stay for Pedro's baptism and marriage. He finally accepted to be married! We are super happy now! He is praying that we stay together for his marriage and baptism... haha. But he really has changed his life and he notices it too, and he is really happy to see us every time we come over. I am super excited to see the change in his life for the 24th of January! He also just accepted Tithing. We weren't sure how well it would go over, but we taught him and he said he had the faith to pay 10 percent even though it would be hard because God would bless him in another way! He really is someone prepared!

This week was a pretty good one. We were able to find some pretty awesome people. So I had a neat experience this week that I want to share. We were realizing in the day that we hadn't been contacting very often, so Elder Eaquinto said, ''Okay, we are going to start contacting right now with this house''. We went up and a lady came out and told us about herself. She said she almost didnt let us in, but decided to because she wanted help with her addiction to gambling. She feels bad about this addiction and was really happy that we decided to pass by and help her out and we left her with a scripture to read to help her and give her comfort.

We also had a marriage for one of the sister missionaries investigators! He was super cool. It was a really neat marriage. Also, our investigator, Pedro, came to see it, BUT arrived late! So he didnt even get to see it! But he at least got to eat a ton of food after... haha. But after the marriage, he grabbed a ton of the balloons and said he would save them for his wedding haha. It was pretty funny but it was a good time.

Love you guys and I will talk to you later! (The pictures are of the wedding and I am sitting next to Pedro and his girlfriend)

Elder Crandall

Email: Week#46 in Paraguay

Hi!

Things are going super well. I am excited to see what will happen for transfers next week. I already have 2 months in the area and it is gone by super fast! But Happy New Years to everyone! It is super awesome to finally hit the year mark in the mission! I am now counting down the days left in my mission! So they celebrate new years the same way they do Christmas. They really just have a big dinner with a ton of meat. We didn't celebrate it with any family this time, though, just in casa.

I am going to get my package on Thursday because my Zone Leader picked it up from the office and I am going to do a division with him then. And my skin is always way better when it gets really humid because of all the sweat so my arms and legs are always super soaked haha.

So something funny that happened this week was that one night we woke up in the morning with a dog outside our house. And it is impossible for a dog to get inside so we were super confused. IN the morning, my companion let the dog out and then later we found out it was from our owners that live in front of us. So he feels super bad because he lost the owners dog haha.

But last night was a super awesome night! We put a baptismal date on Pedro for the 24th of this month! Hereally is super awesome. I really hope that I stay this month to be able to be there for his baptism. We really have gotten to be such good friends with him, he really hopes that neither of us leave the area.

Also, we found this suuuper awesome guy named Nikador. He was sitting down so we contacted him and he told us some key things. He said his goal for this new year was to start going to a church, but he hates the catholic church and is looking for another one. He really was like a golden investigator for us! He was a really awesome person to find. He actually was reading the stuff we left for him to read!

So something crazy about the mission now, is that we don't use numbers anymore. It is a really big change. We basically don't tell anyone like how many lessons we had in the week or anything. Now we just say like how we visited and what we did that week.

Anyway, that is all!

Rohayhu! Elder Crandall