first baptism!

Hola Familia!! yes as you read in the letter heading, i baptized my first paraguayan this week, but we will get there lets start from the begining...

Lunes: After writing you guys last week there was still work to be done, but because of soccer in the morning my legs were so tired. Our last lesson of the night was with pedro, i had met his sister once before in the street, she told me she loved my eyes, tonight she decided to join us, and totally took the spirit out of the lesson, she kept calling me daddy, or in spanish papacita, and it was horribly awkward and dificult the rest of the lesson.

Martes: we brought the Keyboard to our house so that we can get more practice in in the mornings, but we still get up at 6 each morning, or atleast i do, and my comp sleeps through his tie when ever its his turn to get up at 6. We had a very long district meeting today as well. about an hour longer than normal, it was a good one, but it through off our whole day, ecspeailly when after we had to spend more time on the computer than normal to input progression of investigators. after that we went and bought stuff really quickly, and made it to lunch an hour or two late. Its frustrating that my comp isnt punctual at all but we are working on it. We didnt have much time to do much teaching today, and for me i think it was the least productive day in the mission. I did use a machete to try cutting a lawn, super hard! im so glad we have lawn mowers. We started divisions tonight as well i went to mariano to be with elder sanchez, who has only been there for two weeks and barely knows the area. should be fun right haha.

Miércoles: i woke myself up at 6:29 this morning, so that was cool, also the extra 30 minutes was magical. Lots of the morning, and the day for that matter was language study for elder Sanchez. He wants to learn english really bad and has plans to move to the US after his mission so that was a little different. We ate lunch at the orange house today.. so many orange things in the house... including the house its self its awesome. It was super hot today super duper hot.. its not summer yet. At the start of the day there was nobody outside there house or willing to leave it to talk to us. All the house have a gate around them, we dont knock doors we clap hands. By the end of the day everything was good and we finished the day pretty solid. I did run into another guy who is from oregon, studied in pulman and has lived in paraguay for 18 years! he said he just wanted to say hi to his fellow countryman and then was on his way. Crazy to think that people live down here for such long periods of time. Dont get me wrong I love paraguay, but for me its not the best place to just hang out... Anywho we ended our divisions and went back to our home. Our airconditioning has been broken for a while now and tonight it was super hot!! i slept with out covers and with a fan on me all night and still woke up sweating... This is paraguay hahah

Jueves: RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN RAIN man there was rain allllllll day today and when it rains it means tuju ( mud in guarani) we had our meeting with our branch mission leader, something we havent been able to do for a month, that went really well, then we had weekly planning, we normally have that friday morning but my comp wanted to change it because we might have to do some service tomorrow morning. I thought it was a bad idea because it meant less hours of work but he insisted. We ended the days with bad numbers again... it was frustrating, but im learning to just deal with the fact that i am the junior companion and there will come a time when i will need to make descions. Although our numbers were bad we did have our best lesson of the mission i think. We had lunch with the familia sosa who is on the verge of inactivity, we talked about the importance of church, and mainly the sacrament, and were very direct with them. It was super awesome they said that they would come to church so we are hoping for the best! the reason for not going to church was that they are upset with the branch president, a common theme here in remansito and im not sure if its just culturally hard to accept someone else as the president, or if he really is bad to the members. I cant imagine that he is super nice and always talks about ways to help themembers.

Viernes: HUMID. It rains, theres mud, it gets hot, and instead of evaporating completely the moisture just stays in the air. Today wasnt hot, but i was sweating a ton all day. We have changed our approach to be more direct with all the people we teach, we have found that the spirit can testify much strong when we dont try to sugar coat anything, or make things seem not as important or something like that. It seems to be going well. We also had planned to have the baptismal interveiw of victor tonight, but had to teach him tithing, and couldnt get a hold of him. Just when it looked like we were gonna have to call the interview and baptism off, we were able to get all the pieces to work, it was a miracle, we taught him about tithing, and then he had his interview. afterwords victor confirmed that he wanted me to baptize him. So That means ill be having my first baptism this sunday. Crazy to think that, i definately am nervous and plan on reviewing the pray for that so i dont mess up, i memorized it my first week in paraguay but havent looked at it sense.

Sabado: Today was a super long day! i think this early morning piano is catching up to me but im hoping to be able to adjust soon. we started the days with studying and then had lunch with president oveido. after that we headed to the church to clean out the font. I made sure it was super shiny sense i would be the one baptism him, then we let the water start to fill it and left for the day whhile the font filled. After words we went to go do our plans but nobody was home. Then we made invitations for victors baptisms.. i think they were pretty tacky but the majority of the people enjoyed them so that was good. After that we continued our plans and no one was home, it was a tough day the one good thing that happend was that a guy came and fixed our air conditioning. We did run to the church after all our lessons to turn off the water. At this moment i realized we fill the font with river water which meant the font was full of dirt and there was nothing i could do to clean it.. hahah but hey im baptizing someone tomorrow and i dont think the cleaniness of the water is the most important thing hahah.

Domingo: Today was a super good day. Went to church and the first hour, my comp taught the preisthood class, then i taught the gospel principles class, i taught about the importance of scripture study and i thihnk that the people could understand me. when i say people i mean 3 people and me and my companion, but it was good. After that i played piano again, but only had two hymns ready to play called to serve, and praise to the man. Called to serve was a little rough, but to my surprise, praise to the man went really well with only a couple minor mistakes. It was really good. We had 34 people in church with two investigators and after for the baptism had 20. It was an awesome amount of people but very few men were there.... something we are trying to change. the baptism was awesome, i never had time to revieew the prayer but said it prefectly its... "Victor Ramon Ruiz Diaz Acosta habiendo sido commisionado por jesucristo yo te bautizo en el nombre del padre, del hijo, y del espíritu santo amen." 4 names is the average down here some people hae six or seven crazy. Today was our best day of the week, we had big numbers, and were able to make up for some of the bad days earlier in the week. We also had the best night. We taught Celia, our next baptism, she already has been to church three times, but she wants to pick her own baptismal date, she keeps all of here commitments, an understands everything so well, she is the most prepared investigator ive ever met. Also we went to teach brain ( 9 year old not Baptized) and his two brothers and grandma ( all baptized) last time we talked to them we said that they had to make a descion between soccer and keeping the sabbath day holy. They werent at church so we had assumed soccer, but their grandma was sick today and couldnt bring them, but they told us that they arent playing soccer on sundays anymore so that was super awesome! they are a great little family and i hope that they can be active soon, and that brain can get baptized.

Lunes: today has been an adventure and a half so far. we went to the dentist for my companion early this morning ( left the house at 7) and didnt get to her place until 10, she lives in the south mission. We got there and found out that the tool she needs to use to fix my companions tooth is broken, so she so kindly took us to the mission office, which is where we needed to go, and then our day continued. At the office i sent some letters home.. so look for them soon, also sent one to lithuania, hopefully it gets there intime. we then waited for elder sanchez and veizaga at the office to go to pizza hut with them. It is elder veizagas last day. He is headed home early, not exactly sure why, but he is a great missionary and im sure he will figure things out and get back in the feild. I just hope its paraguay. at pizza hut they played some great music, Neon by john mayor and Suburbs by arcade fire... so good to here some good music. after that we took a bus to the internet portal and then i rote my family which is you guys, and right now.

Well that was my life this week, crazy to think that during my next change it will be christmas and ill get to skype you guys!! cant wait!! love you all sooo much and wish the best for you. Loved hearing the update about The Texas Garners, and seeing the pictures of the cleverlies in spokane!! it certainly doesnt feel like its getting close to christmas down here as it keeps getting hotter and hotter, just think of that each time you shovel a driveway this winter haha...

Love you guys!!

Elder Jace Gummersall

notice the fly