“...Ye see that God will support, and keep, and preserve us, so long as we are faithful unto Him, and unto our faith, and our religion; and never will the Lord suffer that we shall be destroyed except we should fall into transgression and deny our faith.” Alma 44:4, The Book of Mormon
Feb. 20, 2012
So imagine that you are sitting down to have a nice bowl of ice cream after a long hot day spent proselyting and walking in the sun. You sit down at the table where your companion is and pick up the spoon. You look down and see a little black something on the top and assume it is a cookie from the cookies n´ cream ice cream that has snuck on there. But time has taught you to always examine your food a little closer while living in Paraguay so you look a bit closer and realize that it isn’t a cookie but a beetle. Does that stop you from eating the ice cream? No, you just paid two mil for that! So you scoop it off onto the table and dig in. Just another day in Paraguay.
Alright, so I have received a few questions from my little sisters about bugs. “Have you seen a spider yet?” “Are the bugs big there?”, so I thought I would satisfy their curiosity. Yes, I have seen a spider. In fact, many, many spiders. There are lots of spiders, mosquitoes and flies. Tons of flies. Sometimes you walk into someone’s house and their table has about 30 flies on it. They have ants here that are about three times the normal size. They also have the regular ants as well. We find spiders all the time at our house but I am getting really good at killing them. I am a spider killing machine! I usually just grab my flip flop off my foot and smack it dead. Or if I don’t have my flip flops I just smack it with my hand. No biggie. I realized a while ago that it has become perfectly normal to have numerous spiders, ants, flies and mosquitoes land or fly on you in the middle of a discussion, and you just constantly smack them casually while continuing to talk about Joseph Smith’s first vision.
Well, this week was a good one. No weird sicknesses, no unexpected changes. We had a 12-year-old investigator come to church. His name is Sergio and he is a ´guapo,´ in the Paraguayan sense of the word, meaning awesome. The previous hermanas used to teach him but dropped him because he couldn’t get permission from his dad to get baptized. Well, he walked to church alone, wearing a white shirt and black slacks but only woke up in time to get to Sacrament meeting. He is a really cute kid, I only wish that his parents would show some interest so that he would be able to have the support and help of his family.
As missionaries, we often go to investigator’s homes on Sunday morning to walk with them to church so they don’t have to go alone. It is always an act of faith to go pick up investigators because you never know if they will really end up going with you, even if they already said they would. This Sunday we walked 40 minutes out of our way to an investigator’s house, only to be told that they wouldn’t be going with us and then walked another 30 minutes to church. It’s just part of the work. It’s an act of hope that this family will make whatever sacrifice is necessary to go to church and change their lives and that they will realize the importance of church.
The district (like the stake but we are in branches, instead of wards) came to our branch this Sunday and we were 10 minutes late because we had gone to pick up our investigators. Only the 3 members of the district that had shown up to the Relief Society meeting and not a single soul from our branch was there, not even a member of the presidency or the person who was assigned to teach. It’s a little bit discouraging and sad to see the lack of interest that many members have here. As you can tell, it is a struggling little branch that can use all the help they can get.
We are struggling to find new investigators who are willing to make changes and sacrifices to follow Christ. We have had quite a few lessons. Getting in the door usually isn’t the hard part, it seems the people here are very open to our visits, but finding the chosen who are willing to change is the hard part. Many people here believe that which ever church you go to is fine and they are all the same. They all talk about God. I know without a shadow of a doubt that all churches are NOT the same. There is only one true church which has been restored to the earth in these latter-days. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has the authority- the Priesthood of God and a living prophet. I have never been more certain of this fact- that the Church is true. There is no replacement or any other way that a man can be saved except he is baptized by those who hold the proper authority. I know that the boy Joseph Smith saw Jesus Christ and God in a grove of trees and through his humility, God called him to be a prophet. These truths and the power that has been restored, makes it possible for us to return to live with God and our families together forever some day.
I am happy and working hard. These trials are just part of the work and part of life! What doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger. You may wonder how I like living in the “country.” Let’s just say that I have decided that I never want to live farther than 10 minutes away from a Super Wal-Mart. Today we went to my old area (the city) to go grocery shopping, which was cool. Kind of weird to be back but I enjoyed it. Loma is my homeland and Villa Hayes is something to which I am adjusting. My district and companion are awesome and we are becoming really good friends. It’s amazing how the “country-life” brings people together!
Love always,
Hermana Brittner
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