Hello family and friends!
I am sitting in Paraguay right now and I have made it one week in the mission field! Paraguay has got to be the craziest place in the world. So, the area I am in is called Kokuere, it is just half an hour out of Asuncion. The name of the city means farmland that no one wants anymore. My companion is Hermana Astle, a BYU student who is also a Public Health major. She wanted to be a nurse to start with, just like me. We are a lot alike and I am learning a lot from her. She has been in the mission field 8 months and is totally fluent in Spanish, so that is a good thing. I understand a lot of what people say, especially if it's about church things. I can always understand my trainer. Some people are harder to understand than others. Everyone speaks Spanish here but some people are more comfortable with Guarani.
We are teaching a girl, Rosana, with two kids, and she understands Guarani better than Spanish so it went like this: Me, my comp, Gloria (who interpreted what we said into Guarani), and then Rosana, responding in Guarani. It sounds like Samoan. I can teach lessons and my comp says I´m pretty guapo (hard working or awesome) but I am trying to speak more.The way that it is written is crazy. They replace a lot of Spanish words with Guarani words so I am learning those ones.
So there is the chuchi part (rich or fancy) part of my area and the POOR part. And when I say poor, I mean, picture the kids on TV with the commercials that say give $1 a day to feed this child and picture poorer. They live in the dirt or mud with a stick or brick house which is the size of my kitchen. They don't even have chairs to give us to sit on or if they do, they are broken. I taught a lady, Romana, who gave me a broken chair to sit on while she sat on a log. Her cute baby was covered in dirt, head to toe, so while we taught her she put her baby in a bucket to give her a bath. Like a bucket you use to wash the car, she was washing her baby in. No soap, nothing. And while we are teaching her, little kittens, chicks and chickens are walking around. People don't really care about or notice germs because they live in huts so it´s like germs don't exist. There is trash all over here in the poor neighborhoods and the chuchi part. I have seen horses, cows, goats, chickens, lots of stray dogs, everything. They have frogs that sound like crying babies. There were some kids fishing in the stream and they caught this eel thing and held it up and took it home to cook it for dinner. They were so excited to have something to eat. At every house we clap. We wait outside the gate for someone to answer. The poor houses don't have doors, maybe a curtain or something. And if you have a doorbell it is considered chuchi. It is really loud here because of motos or cars or collectivos (buses) or loud music so it makes it hard to hear what people are saying sometimes.
There are dispensas or corner stores on every corner where we will sometimes stop and get yogurt (which comes in a bag and you sip it through a straw) or juice (the juice rocks here). We always walk or take the collectivo (bus). People drive but only if you are chuchi. We take the taxi sometimes if we have groceries or something. The ground is cobblestone or mud so it´s quite adventurous. Haha. My shoes work great here. It´s really pretty exciting everyday. We get snaked everyday which means we get hollered at or hit on, "mi hermosa, que linda," yes it's annoying but don't worry Mom I am twice as big as all the men here. And what do you expect? Two rubias (blondes) walking around Paraguay. Everyone here is "Catholic" or so they say. Most don't go to church but everyone believes in God and Jesus and many in the Virgin Mary. There are Evangelists too. People here are very tranquillo or kick back and they will just sit around drinking a tea with ice called ¨terrere.¨ Everyone drinks it here. It was Palm Sunday and EVERYONE went to church. It was packed and everyone was carrying palms around. My apt is better than I thought. I have everything I need and I usually get more food than I can eat (but I eat it anyway haha because you have to because people give you the best they have). Mostly rice and sauce and some meat and a veggie called "mandioca" which is like a potato, oh and bread too. I will be writing you more about Paraguay but now it's story time.
So the first day, my trainer put me in charge of keys. There are three locks to get into our house, one for the hall and two for the door. We get back from a long day, my first day in the field, and I am unlocking the door and I am trying...and I literally break the key in the lock...how this is possible I have no idea. So the elders come over and try to break in but they can't and so we go to the other hermanas house in the next area and they only have one mattress so my comp and I are pretty close for the first night. Haha. Then we walk around looking for a locksmith and we finally find one and then 2 hours later, he breaks in and makes a new key. But that is not all. Saturday night we come home from a a long day and I pull the key out of my bag and two of the keys fly off the ring and one goes behind me and one in front of me. The one in front of me is NOWHERE to be found. We think it fell down the drain. So another night with the hermanas. The next day is Sunday so we go to church in the same clothes from the day before, no shower, nothing. Haha. The locksmith was closed so President Flores, the Branch President, came over and after two hours, broke the lock. We were SO grateful!! I love la familia Flores, they have us over twice a week for lunch and they are so bueno. The members love us here. Hopefully we can use that to involve them more in the work. We had 5 investigators come to church on Sunday which is a record in the past 4 months. My trainer has been in this area for 4 months so she knows everyone and she knows where everything is. We taught Osvaldo, a guy who we talked to on the street and he showed up to church twice. We taught him the first vision and then he committed to baptism! Hopefully it goes through. It´s not always that easy though. We are teaching two women who have to get married before they get baptized. No one gets married here and their boyfriends are not cooperating. So we will see.
I love the people here! They are so humble and so poor. My companion is very hardworking like me so I think we will have some good success here. The branch loves the hermanas and so I am glad to be here. I know that I will never be the same after this experience. I think if you just spent one day seeing what I see everyday it would totally change your perspective of what needs and wants are and how blessed and spoiled we really are in America. And how blessed and spoiled I´ve been my whole life. I know miracles can happen through the Lord. He has already helped me so much, especially with my Spanish. I am grateful.
Te amo,
Hna. Brittner
P.S. Hermana Peel went 7 hrs north to Concepion in a Guarani area with a companion who only speaks Spanish! For this reason I am grateful for Hermana Astle.
No comments:
Post a Comment