one month in Paraguay

Hola! well don’t want to waste anytime writing so here I go! 

Lunes: We went to burger king after writing, which was delicious, and Elder Jordan was there! He was in my district at the CCM and is a great guy. It was awesome to get to see him and chat with him for a while. He seems to be doing well and its always good to see familiar faces. Afterwards we went to Seper seis,    the best supermarket we have here, and we ran into  Elder Bonzo! He is in my zone but is also from my CCM district. ¡Què Suerte! After that we went to get a hair cut for me, picture coming. I had no idea how to talk about hair in Spanish, so I told the guy that I only have 4 weeks in Paraguay and that I trusted him. He did a good job and did the final cuts with an old school shaver blade thingingy. I don’t even think Tanner has seen one before.  It looks good to me. Oh, and it was shampoo in the beginning, hair cut, and rinse all for the equivalent of 5 bucks or 20 mil! How awesome is that!! After that we met up with elder merro and billings. Billings was another district leader in the CCM. merro was a companion of my companion. They came to our area for the night because they had to wait until like 12 to catch a bus back to their area. We had 2 noche de hogar (FHE) and it was awesome! I really enjoy elder billings. Great guy!! And elder merro is as well.  I should be getting pictures from their camera at some point and will forward those when I have them. That was basically the night …super good p-day seeing and being with all those people!

 Martes: Today we had reunión con distrito which went well.  I can tell that my Spanish has improved immensely, which is good, because I can understand a lot more now. At the end of our district meeting the zone leader came up to my comp and me and said that he wanted to go on splits with us. At that he wanted to do it tonight. Splits are 24 hours and me and elder eliason (zone leader)  were switching which meant that I had to pack my bags for the night and head on over to Mariano and spend the night and the day over there. We came back home, finished our studies, and then at 6 made the switch with them. My new comp was Elder Viezaga de Bolivia. He is awesome and  was able to learn a ton from him. We got into town and after I dropped of  my spare bag  headed out. We contacted a very catholic lady, who said she  wasnt gonna change her beliefs, but that she wanted to hear our message. It went well. After we went and taught a less active man and that went really well as well.  I came to the conclusion that we teach really well together! Then we headed home and went to bed.

Mièrcoles: Slow start to the morning with getting ready and all just because it was a new place.  Also I woke up with a little bit of a sore throat this morning so that’s never good. We did our studies and then headed out for lunch. The houses here are way nicer than ours--- Chu chi (rich or fancy in guarni) chu chi houses for sure. Lunch was good and we were able to teach two lessons and then headed out contacting. He does things a lot different but I was able to adjust pretty well. We did run into a guy that only speaks English!! It was crazy and actually difficult for me to talk to him because I just didn’t know what to say. Also he didn’t want anything to do with us so that was tough too. But he was from South Africa, and moved to Paraguay because its a nice place. That’s about all we could talk to him about because he really didn’t want to talk to us. It felt kind of good but really weird not to be able to talk to him in English.  Its because I try to do a ton of my thinking in Spanish and I just couldn’t switch it back. After we visited a family that are members but their neighbor that was talking with them was less active. They absolutely loved me.. it was a little strange; they fed us, and want me and my comp from Remansito to go eat lunch with them sometime. Elder Veizaga said he thinks its because the mom wants me to get to know their daughter... cray cray. Also lots of people in this area know or knew elder Thorton so that’s always cool to be able to say were from the same city.  I’ve only run into one from Remansito that knew him… a less active girl that he baptized about 2 years ago. Then it was time to switch back but here is what I learned from elder veizaga: I  need to be a little more direct and show that our message really is something special. I think he may have been a little over the top direct, but I also think that with some people that is the way it has to be. It was good to have the opportunity to learn from another missionary. After the switch back elder Rodriguez and me headed out to Juan Carlos and Lourdes. Lourdes is the 16 year old yw secretary and Juan Carlos is the boyfriend she is living with. We had a very good lesson and they even said they knew they weren’t living the law of chastity which is a relief for us not having to teach it again, but also a little worrisome because they do know they are sinning. They are trying to get married but still have some steps to take before that happens. Crazy crazy. But after our lesson Juan Carlos said that his birthday was tomorrow. He was turning 20 and that he wanted to drink some gaseoso (pop) with us. So we did and while doing so we told jokes in Spanish. I even told one it was great... until I found out that they don’t have knock knock jokes in Spanish! Sad day really, but still it was a grand and jolly time, that’s for sure.

Jueves: ¡hable sobre un hermoso dìa! It was gorgeous!  a little hot but the wind made it perfect. Not too much happened today, but we did buy sombreros!!!!! They are like magic gold for the head down here in Paraguay and really do help keep you cool on really sunny days. Afterwards we had a meeting with Presidente olviedo de la rama. (branch president) It went really well and we were able to talk about the needs of our branch a little bit.  Our meetings are lacking every other presidency of the rama (branch) as it is supposed to be like ward council, but we are working for improvement. Oh I finished the book Our Heritage today during personal study and am now reading True to the Faith. Its weird to think of how much I read now of days compared to how much I did in the past. After we went and taught Pedro who seems to be progressing pretty well. Its pareja, brought us hotdogs kinda and they were covered in mayo.... if there is one thing that the Paraguayans love it is their mayo!!! It was good and I’m adjusting to the mayo but really were talking mayo capital of the world here- haha.

Viernes: I have started using dulce de leche more and more. Por ejemplo, instead of PB & J  sandwiches I have DDLM  Dulce de leche y Mermelada.  Super good.  Also when I drink hot chocolate in the morning when its super cold, just put a spoonful in there stir it up and wow that’s stuff is so good! I don’t know why we don’t have it in the states. Today was a really sad day and I don’t want to relive it so I will only share the basics of why it was sad.  My journal has more graphic explanation. I saw 2 dead dogs on the side of the road today... yeah… horrific. Other than that we did have a good day of teaching. The bugs are starting to come out. I’ve been seeing more and more of these huge black fly’s literally like the size of one of the big gumballs. Their huge and loud, and they’re out every now and then. Also tonight we had to go to the bathroom really bad and were super far from our house. We resorted to what all little kids do here, just pee in the bushes.  We found a place away from anyone’s property and took care of business but it was strange to realize that this really is like camping. I hit my head on a cord today in between two posts of a fence that was their entryway for their home. Super primitive, and very humbling. It was the first time that happened but I’m sure there are many more to come. Also today I hit one month in Paraguay!! Crazy!!     

Sabado: Today we hit 30 contacts awesome! Its our new goal.  I decided that we should only get alfahors if we contact 30 people each day and my companion agreed. It has actually helped a ton in all areas of our goals. We talked about what we could do better as a companionship and individually for the first time and it was good for us to confront our issues with each other.  I’ve been waiting for him to tell me what irritates him cause I could tell there was something. But in the end, it turns out that our little side tracks that we both have were irritating the both of us… so that was easy to solve. Then we had a leadership meeting with the mission president and all the leaders of the district (stake) that was really good, we talked future and I thin think president has some really good goals here for the mission. Cant wait to see the change! Big focus on rescuing less active members. Got to see Elder bonzo again because his branch is in our distric…that was good. He had a birthday yesterday. That was the jest of today really, not too much that was super exciting. It is stake or district conference this weekend. And we asked president if we could miss the first adult only session to bring investigators to the everyone second session at 10. He said of course and that was the night.

Domingo: We woke up early, at 6, so we could call people to remind them.. Paraguayos are always up super early like at 4 or 5 so it wasn’t a bad thing but a lot of people’s phones were turned off. We didn’t get a hold of people until about 8 then we went around to about 4 or 5 maybe 6 different houses and the people had all come up with an excuse of why they couldn’t go!! Frustrating! We were able to talk Diego Sosa, a 20 year old active member waiting for his mission call, to come.. Strange to think that we had to convince him to come, but really church isn’t that important to a lot of people down here. Pretty sad. With our new contact goal everything is going super good! I’m talking more, we are teaching more and we ended today with our best week so far! Hoping to teach even more next week. I’ll send you a picture next week of all he numbers from my first change. They call them changes down here (Instead of transfers) and I have only 15 left after this week. I covered my agenda for next change. Picture to come... I absolutely love it. I think I will do it with all my future ones. And the schedule for conference down here  is weird. Not sure if its live-- Sat. 12-2 ,   4-6 ,  8-10 and sun. 1-3  ,  5-7 but I am super excited for this weekend and am praying so hard that investigators come!! I just can’t wait for conference!!

Lunes (hoy): This morning I fought a bee that came out of my closet space where my clothes were. It took about 2 minutes for me to hit him pretty good but I lost the body… I found it 10 minutes later when I picked up my shoe, only to find out that he had revived!   After three more minutes of a war I ended his life. Sad day for him but I gave him plenty opportunities to leave peacefully. We started our free time today by teaching Pedro.. We are really hoping he can be baptized this month and have put a lot of energy into him. After we taught him we had to run to catch a collective. That was fun…then went to limpio to eat lunch with the same lady as last time. We ate it with elder Shumway (my grandpa because he trained my trainer) and elder Daye who was at the ccm at the same time as me. Lunch was super delish and it is a little cold today. Oh and I think I forget to mention but after I woke up with a sore throat, my nose just started running. I’m very impressed at how in shape my nose is cause it has been running ever since(ha) but I think I’m just getting over the cold and am on the healing side. So yup that was my week!

Things of Paraguay: People here speak really fast and slurred and I was told that after my mission I should be able to understand almost any Spanish because of how fast it is spoken here. The people here want to teach me Guaraní, which is awesome, but soooo tough right now... I need to learn how to read it and with Pedro I just might. Mosquitos are coming out and are very active at night. So are the sapos (frogs). They make some of the craziest funniest noises that I would never picture a frog making… truely chistoso. Also I learned that pigs can be pretty quick after watching a dog chase two of them-- I was quite impressed. That was my week. Gracias!!

Love you all and hope all is well

Love
Elder Jace GummersallP.S. here are those pics from our fhe noche de hogar last week, didnt get them from my comp until this last week!