It has been another busy week. If I remember quickly, I last wrote as we were sending off the members to the Chaco right after they left from the temple. The kid that got sick in the colectivo has pneumonia, but we were blessed to have a children's hospital on the road we were on. We wrote, then that night we spent in Trinidad (close to the mission office). Wednesday morning we had small division in Trinidad, then we went to the temple. It was lunchtime, so we stopped by Pizza Hut just down the street. They have a really cheap all-you-can-eat deal, so we ate them out of house and home (just think about 6 missionaries who never get fed by members walking in the door and ordering all you can eat). We then went to the temple. We had been told to be early for our temple session (you can't reserve seats here) and had nothing to do so we decided to be sure and get there 3 hours early at 2 PM. The temple workers were all there and they asked permission from the Temple President to get us doing initiatories, so we did that for 2.5 hours or so. We then went through to do a temple session. It was great; it's been a year since I've been to the temple. After the session, there were a TON of people waiting to do baptisms for the dead and confirmations, so we were asked to help out (the temple closed this Saturday so the last week was PACKED). Elder Whipple and I did confirmations, with Elder Castañeda as recorder. We ended up doing a couple hundred (1.5 or 2 hours). As usual, the temple was a great experience. We proceeded to stop by Burger King, then the office elders dropped us off at a bus stop and we traveled all night back to the Chaco. Elder Castañeda and I then went back to visit everyone that we hadn't been able to visit for the last week and a half. We had a lot of opportunities to serve over the last few days, including burning trash, carrying water to people's houses, and so on. Sunday we had a good day at church, we had Sacrament Meeting and I had the priviledge to give a talk about the temple and it's blessings for us. Elder Castañeda and I decided that we need to start working towards having all 3 hours of church, so we taught Sunday School, and it went really well.This week really was a very good one. It can be challenging to be trying to cover 2 areas (Neuland and Parasio) and at the same time have to run everything for the church (planning activities and such), but I really like it. We are working to help the members know how to do everything on their own, which is really important for them. That and steering their vision to the temple and the blessings associated with temples. Please every one that has a temple nearby, take advantage. Not everyone has that opportunity! Try to go every week, or for those in Utah, more that 1 time a week!
Y'all have a great week! Thanks for the prayers and emails!
Pictures:
1 Prep work for the temple is tiring.
2 We fit 17 or so people in that van to get to Abundancia. That's the driver, his name is Friesen.
3 We regularly make juice in buckets when we have to feed a lot of people.
4 This dog entered the Abundancia Elders' house 3 times during the night when we were there for the temple trip. We thought it was a person at first. The house in Abundancia doesn't have the capability of being locked from the inside so dogs (and or people) sometimes just walk in.
5 We prepped some rice and such for the members from Neuland to eat while they waited Sunday in Abundancia for the colectivo to come; basically the church chartered a colectivo for the transportation.
6 Halfway through cleaning the Abundancia house.
7 Eating "genuine" Arabian food.
8 The sign should say "we are interested in your opinion" but the s in nos fell off and it now reads "your opinion doesn't matter."
9 With Nicacio and Fiorella (2 recent converts) in the temple! They were so excited, and even brought names!
10 We were so busy getting the people to the temple (it's harder when they don't all speak Spanish) we forgot to take pictures of the temple trip, but when we remembered and had time we tried to get one.
11 A little time spent in Asuncion, featuring the scary bridge made out of 2 strips of metal and wood pallets.
12 With Elder Castañeda at the temple.
13 All 6 of us at the temple.
14 The temple of Asuncion, Paraguay. It will be closing for a year and a half for construction to make it bigger!
15 They are always burning stuff here. Paraguay is blessed with the fact that fires DO NOT SPREAD! If you light a fire and there is a lot of flammable material nearby, it doesn't spread anyway.
16 Service for Fm Martinez cutting down a couple of trees. This is Jose Armando, their son, who is one of our investigators. He supervised the yard work!
17 We had to break the piggy banks to survive this week, in that we are waiting to get reimbursed for a lot of transportation for the temple trip and a few other things.
18 We had to get creative with the food. This is ham, egg, tomato sauce, and a couple veggies. It wasn't too bad but I wouldn't recommend
19 UPDATE: there still isn't a roof on the chapel.
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