MADE IT TO PARAGUAY

Hey, I made it here in Paraguay safely and that's all I know as of now.  The Mission President and his wife are awesome.  I love my family.

Chau

Elder Call

Truly a Miracle

Hey Familia y Amigos:

I am practically fluent at Spanish now, so that is exciting. Haha, not really, but I get better each and every day. It truly is a miracle how much the Lord helps in learning a language. There is no other way to put it than God has blessed me with the ability to speak and understand a little bit of Spanish. He will continue to help me learn until I have mastered the language. The people here are so kind and willing to help out with learning the language. It truly is such a blessing.

On Thursday we received a new batch of Latinos. They are super cool. The ones in my room are incredibly humble and are just awesome. One of the Latinos that lives in a room upstairs is Elder Ramirez, and he it is absolutely crazy hot good he is at beat-boxing; it is so cool!

We went to a new area last Saturday, and it was so good. There were a lot of people in at least half of our area. The other half just turned out to be massive storage buildings with just a few houses in between them. Elder Parmenter and I did a ton better this week and were able to understand a lot more of the conversations. We were able to answer the investigators questions, too. The first two Saturdays we did not really know what we were agreeing to, so hopefully we did not teach some false doctrine or anything like that. This Saturday we came across a man by the name of Daniel that we got to talking to about normal things. He has a wife and two kids. We did not meet his wife and one of his kids, but we met the other one which was cool. He had a friend over that was downing some alcohol and kept offering a glass to us which of course was always declined. After talking to him for a bit, we were about to leave, but he had just offered us some juice. At first we said, no thanks, but he was sad that we didn't take up his offer and was making sure that we understood that it was just juice. We decided to take the offer, and I am glad that we did! Not only was the juice really good, but while we continued to talk to him, we asked if he attended a church. He explained that he didn't because he didn't think that God had a church on the earth today!!!!! Perfect opportunity to tell him that Jesus has restored his church on the earth today through the prophet, Joseph Smith, and then we bore testimony of the truthfulness of our teachings. It was just amazing. That was definitely the highlight of the day.

Dad, the Churri Pans are so good. There was a thingy on the side of the road, so I made sure I bought one.

I spoke last Sunday. Our topic was on the Fall of Adam and Eve. It went well.

Anyways, I fly out on Tuesday morning early. I can call you if you would like, but I don’t want to try if you aren't going to be awake. I will most likely be at the airport from 4 to 6 in the morning my time. I will have like five minutes to email on Monday, so make sure you tell me what you would like.

I love it here in Argentina. I love this Gospel. I am so glad that I have the opportunity to bring others unto Christ. Hopefully, they will understand the importance of it all.

I love you all. Keep praying and reading the scriptures; it is the little things that matter the most.

Love Elder Call 

Love It

Dear Family & Friends:

My week was good.  We spend a ton of time studying on our own and the rest learning grammar or teaching lessons. I am really struggling with pronunciation, pretty much just like I struggled with English, but oh well; sometimes the people can understand me. I try to improve and get better each day, and I find that I am getting better.  It is such a help to be at this MTC surrounded by Spanish.  I love it!

I love it here. We are like a big family, always doing stuff to bug each other. It is really funny, and I have to be the peacemaker or else no one else would be.  Last night Elder Bentley hid Elder Wilson’s alarm clock in the ceiling of his room and set it for 3 in the morning--little pranks are done like that all the time.  It is funny; as usual I avoid the pranks, so I am happy. So the door to the rooms can’t be locked from the inside so it has to be done with a key from the outside. If the rooms are messy, you get locked out of your room, so Saturday night I decided to lock Elder Bentley out of his room. He and his companion had no clue as to what to do because all the cleaning ladies and teachers had already left, which was funny. While they were downstairs, I unlocked it for them and went about my night. I enjoyed paying them back for stuff they do to the others.

I proselyte with my companion, Elder Parmenter, and neither of us know much Spanish or how to do it. My companion is interesting.  We just do our best and have fun. This Saturday we didn’t find anyone who was receptive to the gospel, but the people are nice and allow us to practice our Spanish with them for a while. While we were proselyting we came across a little ice cream shop which was amazing!  I, of course, got the super Dulce de Leche ice cream because I am addicted to that stuff already.  I brush my teeth at least three times a day, usually five, because I eat so much of it.  I have bought three jars of it, and have gone through them all. I eat so many bananas with dulce because it is soooo good.  I love it.

I love it here!  I have learned so much, both temporal with the language and spiritual with the doctrine.  My testimony of the mercy of God has grown so much. God is all knowing and has been thinking about our generation for a long time.  I am so glad that He has the confidence in us to hold the power of His priesthood.  I love to know that He loves each and every one of us and has provided a way to become like Him and live in His presence again.

I love you all!  Thanks for the support, love and prayers.

Love, Elder Call

Proselyting Was Great!

Dear Family & Friends:

This week was so amazing the highlight being going out on Saturday for proselyting. Even though our Spanish is very poor we were able to contact and have little lessons with a ton of people. We only had 4 hours to proselyte on Saturday so we were trying to talk to everyone.

The fifth person we talked to was named Alvaro, and we met him as he was coming out of his house to leave his bottle of alcohol out on the recycle racks. Dad and Justin, you probably know what those look like. He ended up telling us a ton about his life and how he wanted to change and not drink alcohol. He did something to his back while working construction and alcohol is the cheapest thing to help cope with the pain because he doesn't have the money to have surgery or buy pain killers.

He was really interested in what made our church different and was extremely receptive to our message. He seemed to know a lot about the bible and other religions/churches but isn't currently going to one. When we gave him a Book of Mormon, he felt he had to give us a book in exchange because he wanted to pay for the book. I now have a book that is meant to improve my Spanish grammar and writing. If only I could understand what it said better! 

We ended up talking to him for close to 2 hours so that took up a majority of our time proselyting. It is so hard to understand the language. I had to have the people repeat what they said like 3 times before catching the drift of their story.

Last Thursday all the new missionaries arrived. The majority of them are really good and have a great desire to be perfectly obedient, but then there are a few that are not out here for the right reasons. It is so sad. One of my Latino companions is from Paraguay. He has been teaching us all a little bit of Guarini, but I can't seem to remember. It at all it is such a different language. His name is elder Paredes and he is so stinking good at soccer and incredibly nice. There is also a kid who grew up in Canada, but his parents are Guatemalan. He knows English perfectly and Spanish really well which helps.

The language overall is coming really well. I can't complain to much. I have only been here three weeks, but I am so surprised how much we have learned. Haha. So last Thursday some new missionaries from Provo came down after the MTC, and they hardly knew anything. I am so blessed to be here at the CCM learning Spanish surrounded by Spanish speaking people.

Yesterday we had a fast from English so we only spoke Spanish until dinner. It was so much fun. I love the language! It is incredibly hard, but it is great.

The weather, sadly, has been, in my opinion, on the hotter side, which is sad.

Love,

Elder Call