Pato! (duck)

So many things have been happening this week I just felt like I have been really applying what I have learned from my whole mission. Our branch is growing so much. When I got here the attendance was around 75 and yesterday we had 115!!!!!! Not only that, we had a lot of less actives and new converts and two investigators. Some days I feel like maybe I wasn’t able to give my all, mostly because we have to study 4 hours every day. That really is hard sometimes on the work, but then we get to Sunday and I see these people come to church and really want to be there and change their lives. I feel so humbled to be a part of the work. My hija (daughter) is helping me to apply things that maybe I have gotten lazy about - like looking for people to serve. The other day we were walking down the street and we saw an old woman, she told us later she is 95 years old. She was picking up these huge boards and moving them into her yard. My comp instantly goes over and we start helping her. It took like 45 min to get all the boards into the ladies yard. Here we are, two girls in dresses and a 95 year old and all her neighbors just sitting and watching. It was a cool experience and then she offered us some bread because that’s all she had to eat in her house. I left feeling very humbled. I wish I could say I didn’t grumble a little inside and think about the time we were wasting. But then when I saw the look on this woman’s face at the end it was all worth it. I love my comp!

 Wednesday we had splits with my best friend, Hermana Richards, who is now my Hermana Leader. Sadly I didn’t get to go with her. It was a cool experience because we wanted to find new people to teach and we really met our goal. We found like 7 new investigators that day.. so thank you Hermana Leaders.

 We have really been trying hard to ask for references. And this week everyone we asked gave us a reference!!!!! We still haven’t been able to contact them all! But one of them died the day after we received the reference. That was sad.

The family Mercado are doing great. Lorenzo is having some struggles, but we have kind of decided to stop focusing so much on him. There are lots of people in this house to teach. This week hna Martas’ nephew called her crying that he had nothing to eat. For a few days they had been starving. So she sent him money to come here and now he is living with her and he went to church on Sunday we have him on a date now. He is really sweet and I can tell he likes what we share. His name is Ismail. Hna Marta has started to love to cook for us. She makes us all kinds of crazy stuff that scares my comp, haha but I love it. I’m getting to the end of the mission and there are lots of things I still haven’t tried. This week we ate DUCK! I have never eaten duck before, but it was actually way good! They made me try the foot and the neck…. Not as good as the breast but that’s ok jaja. I love this family and they have all been getting really excited about sharing with their neighbors and people who come to visit them. This week we taught about tithing and we told them that they needed to start paying and that they would receive blessings. Well I guess I gave a little too good of a speech because President Vera told me that Sunday they paid a lot more then he thinks they needed to. They are just so willing to share and give all they have, even if they have nothing! We helped Marta wash the clothes in the river this week and I got up to get something and I feel hard on this big rock so now I have this big burse on the whole left side of my body… classic hna Ball……. It’s fine. I just can’t sleep on that side of my body.

 One last story. We contacted a reference we got the other day and it was a family named frutos spatteti. They are so so nice and have shared with the elders before. Basically they believe everything we believe they just don’t know about prophets yet and where is God’s church. I’m excited to start teaching them more.

 This week was truly filled with miracles, every night we come home just so tired and satisfied from a hard day’s work. I love Caaguazu. It reminds me of my training so much and I’m so glad that hna Gonzalez gets to start her mission like this. I love you all. Hope you have a great week.

Xooxxo

Hna Ball