Well it has been a jam packed week and we had changes. I will be leaving Yby Yau which is hard but I know the Lord will put me where I need to be. There isn't an abundance of time so I'll get right to it. This last pday we cooked marinera (kind of like fried chicken) with Airton, then did nothing until 6. It was freezing cold, and in the night went below freezing for the first time in years here.
Tuesday we spent all day helping the Fm Fernandez move. They lived in a pretty rough area so they moved to the other side of the neighborhood, about a half km away. They have the heaviest bed frames I've ever lifted! hahaha. That night we had a cookout with our investigator Luis. His wife doesn't like the church or something so she didn't want him to get baptized. He almost got baptized 5 years ago or so, but never got permission. We saw his record in the area book and decided to visit him. He's awesome, honestly the nicest person I know. He really wants to get baptized, but his wife who lives in Spain right now said no and he didn't know what to do because she was pretty set against him getting baptized. We felt prompted to teach about fasting in the first lesson, and explained that it's normally the first Sunday of the month but whichever Sunday works. Well turns out, he wanted to fast Tuesday until Wednesday so he cooked up some pork and some chicken sausage (which is actually really good) and we went over to eat then start our fast together with him (and Airton). Wednesday we went back to finish the fast with more sausage (they really like their meat here). We taught Luis that fasting is one of the most powerful forces that we can have because it's calling down help from God. Friday we went by to have a lesson, and Luis was super excited. He told us that he got a call from his wife at 4 in the morning asking directly if he wanted to be baptized. He said yes because he really does and she said he had her permission! He hadn't even told her yet that we stopped by to visit him or anything. This experience strengthened my testimony of fasting. I rarely fasted before my mission, but now I've got a lot of faith in the fact that it works. Friday we cleaned the baptismal font, and got it all filled up. We had a few complications with the water, but it all worked out in the end. Fernando got baptized and it was awesome; To Mom's joy, I did end up singing a musical number with the Hermana missionaries (When I am Baptized form the Children's Songbook) and Elder Cartagena got to baptize Fernando. It was a great moment. S
Sunday we had attendance of 46 PEOPLE at church!!! That's a little bit higher than the 11 or 12 we used to have! That night we did receive the news that I will be leaving Yby Yau. I didn't even start packing my bags because I didn't want to leave, Elder Cartagena didn't want me to leave, and honestly nobody did! In Yby yau they're used to having missionaries for a long time, and after 6 months it's hard to say goodbye! Especially with Pt Cristino and Airton. It has been an awesome and humbling experience to be in Yby yau with the people here, and they're honestly like a family to me here. Thank you all for the emails and have a great week! I'll be writing from a new area next week, so watch out for that!
Pictures:
1 We didn't do anything for Pday last week; just relaxed. This is Nielson, the younger brother of Airton.
2 Airton's mom has started cooking for us every couple of days! It's nice to not have to cook everything once in a while. Imagine hush puppies that are sweet: pretty good stuff.
3 Back at it in the cold.
4 We helped our investogator/lessactive family build and move their house.
5 Moving Fm Fernandez. By the way, there is no such thing as a moving truck here. We moved everything manually about a half km up a hill to the new house.
6 It was so cold we had our cookout with our investigator Luis inside.
7 Luis is on the left, his friend Leo on the right. Paraguayan cookouts include meat, other type of meat, other type of meat, and a little bit of bread and mandioca on the side.
8 Cleaning the pila bautismal(baptismal font/pool)
9 Daniel gave a talk for the baptism, and did a great job!
10 Fernando's baptism!
11 With his mom, Lucia, and his sister Miriam.
12 Happy as can be!
13 With everyone that came early for the baptism.
14 With my amigo Derlis.
15 Empanadas are a big thing here so we tried making them.
16 Not gonna lie, Elder Cartagena and I make some pretty good empanadas.
17 y 18 the empanadas in process.
19 Airton got a flat tire and we didn't have time so we had to leave the bikes at home.
20 With Airton and his mom. They're an awesome family. Airton is our translator, Nielson is one of the Hermanas translators, and their mom, Elva cleans our clothes (and now feeds us a ton)
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