Mas paciencia dar mi..... haha (Give me more patience) May 18, 2015

Hermana Ramos y yo con cocos

This week went by soooo fast!!!! So just a little thing about training, I don’t know if you guys know this but for the first 3 months of your mission you’re in training and you have extra studies. Normal missionaries study one hour personal, one hour with their companion and 30 min language. Now that I’m in training again with my companion we are starting the church’s 12 week program for new missionaries. We have all these extra practices and studies. We have one hour personal study, two hours companionship and an hour of language. It’s great on normal days, we get to do a lot of practices and there really is so much to teach her. It’s not like we don’t have anything to do, but this week we just had so many days that had other things going on so it seemed like we hardly had time to do any proselyting. 

Monday we had our noche de hogar (family home evening) with Maria and basically every convert in this area. It was great. We read scriptures and played Pictionary telephone. 

Tuesday we had to go to Asuncion for immigration. Hermana Paredes had to sign some paperwork to be allowed to stay in this country. I got to go proselyting with a girl from her same group that is brand new. Her name is Hermana Cowley. She is from Utah and so dang cute. haha But guys this was the first time I have ever been alone in Paraguay with someone who knows less Spanish than me and honestly it was a big moment for me. We asked for directions more than once and I was the one who understood and translated for her. I really hope I get to be her comp. She is so cute, it really made me want a North American. Not because I want to speak a whole lot of English, it’s just nice to be with someone who thinks the way you do. There are just a lot of cultural things that when you’re with Latinas forever.... 

Anyway then we had zone conference. It was soooo good. We talked about the vision of baptism and why people need this conveno. It’s like if we can help them understand why, why in reality they need to be baptized, then keeping all the other commandments is going to be easy because it’s like “Yea, I am going to do that because I want to be baptized. It was great and it really helped me with some things I have been struggling with. But that, along with studying, we didn’t have a lot of time to teach people. 

We also had the Sister Leaders this week. I stayed in our area with Hermana Ramos de Brazil. She is so great. We taught a lot of lessons and I learned a lot about being confident. She is so confident and I learned that people just respond so much better when we are confident in our message. 

When my companion returned Saturday she looked horrible. She was crying on her bed. I went and hugged her and she told me she had been throwing up all night. She said that the Hermana Leader didn’t take care of her like I do and that she needed her mommy. hahah She just hugged me forever but she was seriously so sick. She slept for a long time and I working on a lot of other things in our area book and studied. We didn’t get to work a lot this day either....

Sunday we had a milagro (miracle). The daughter-in-law of Maria came to church again. She is so great. She just needs to stop drinking and get married, but hey, I have faith in her. We are working on helping her have the vison to be baptized so that those things won’t seem like such a hard thing. Saturday was also the birthday of Maria so Sunday we celebrated with her and I made her a cake. Then I remembered it was my mom’s birthday too and I told Maria and she just got teary-eyed and told me to tell my mom and all my family how happy they are to have me and that she is really grateful that you sacrificed a little of your time with me so that I could be here with her. She is going to be sustained as the relief society president this week!!!!! I can’t believe it, but she is ready. She is so amazing and Cristobal received the priesthood yesterday, the same as my little brother, Ethan, so these two things just seemed to go along so well with what was going on at home. It’s hard to not be there for these moments but I am so grateful to be a part of the process of Maria and Cristobal getting to know the church. 

I learned a lot this week. Overall I learned to be patient with myself, with my companion and with Heavenly Father. I think the grand lesson of training is patience and maybe the whole mission. Sometimes we just want things now and we don’t really want to wait on the Lord’s time but that’s not really how it works. Just remember that there is a plan and purpose in all this. Keep moving forward.

Love you all so much,

xooxoxo

Hermana Ball