Hello Mom, Dad, sisters, family and friends!
As all of you are getting out your sunscreen and bathing suits, we are approaching winter here in Paraguay. The weather has been perfect- not too hot, not too cold, which apparently isn’t usually the case here. In the winter, it is supposed to rain a ton and get pretty chilly with the high humidity. At least I will get a break from the mosquitoes for a while! So transfers or “changes” as they are now called are this week. Keep your fingers crossed that Hermana Astle and I get to stay together in Kokuere. We are pretty sure we will which will be great.
We had some cool experiences this week. We have been working a lot with people who are inactive in the church- trying to figure out where they live and get to know them so we can teach them. Directions are usually like this, “Go down that road and turn left and keep going until you see the yellow house with the Palm tree in front.” There are no house numbers and no mail system that I know about here (which is why all mail goes to Asuncion) but usually there are street names. Anyhow, we were contacting and I just felt like we should talk to this mom with her baby and another girl and her baby. We did and turns out they are members but inactive! We set up an appointment later with Flia. Aguiar and went to their house and there were 10 people there. They wanted us to sing for them, they wanted us to read to them, they just wanted us to be there! I’m not talking about just little 5 and 6 year olds. The 40 year old mom, the old grandma with huge glasses that magnify the size of her eyes so it looks like her face is just eyeballs, the 20 year old daughter with 2 kids, and the 13 year old boy that really wants to come back to church, and in total there were ten people standing around us. So we sang and read scriptures and extended commitments to them to help them come back to church. It was so great!
Another amazing experience happened on Sunday at Church in Sacrament meeting. Last week, we had a lesson in Relief Society about sharing our talents so we decided to do a musical number in church. My companion played the piano and I sang a solo, “Yo sè que vivè mi Señor!” - Ì Know that my Redeemer Lives!- the Especially For Youth version in Spanish and it was amazing. The Spirit in that room was SO strong that after I finished singing, the next person who gave a talk, a 20 year old that is about to leave on his mission, couldn’t even speak!!!!! Literally, he couldn’t even speak. He just kept repeating ¨Yo sé que vive mi Señor¨and ¨él es mi amigo fiel¨which are lyrics to the song. It was amazing. Every single person in the branch, about 40, came up to us and thanked us and told us how beautiful it was. Hopefully the Spirit from the song will increase the love and missionary work in the ward so that we can get some new investigators! I love the power music has in bringing the Spirit into a room. I am so glad that I could share my testimony- that Jesus Christ truly does live, through music. The gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored through the prophet Joseph Smith. I know that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only true church that holds all of the Priesthood keys we need. We have a living prophet who leads and guides us. Yo sè que vivè mi Señor.
Oh, and by the way, we have it recorded on our cameras. haha... the stake president was there and we asked his permission and he was like, no hay problema!
I am not sure if I have mentioned this before, but everyday here in Paraguay is like a brand new adventure. There is really no other way to describe it. You never know what the day will hold as you step out the front door. One thing that is always true is that as American hermanas we get stared at wherever we go and frequently get snaked. What does it mean to get snaked you ask? Well, that is when a dirty old Paraguayan man, or teenager, or even a woman sometimes, literally hisses like a snake at you. Literally. Then it is usually followed by an attempt at English like, Hello, how are you? Or, my all time favorite, ¨Cómo se dice mi amor en tu idioma?¨, which translates to, How do you say my love in your language? Or any such whistling, hooting, waving, or whatever. Anyway, the Elders always ask us if we get snaked a lot and of course, being two blondes it is a daily occurrence. This week though, we decided to count how many times it happens a day just to have an idea so we can be prepared with statistical information the next time the elders ask us. Haha. So, it turns out the average is about 12 times a day. Sunday was a really special day because we got snaked 8 times before 8 am just on the way to church! Wow, it is so interesting being an American in a foreign country.
Con mucho amor,
Hermana Brittner
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