New Area, New Companion

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from down here in Paraguay!

First of all, the last 24 hours have been harder than that of almost all my mission including the airport.  I had to say goodbye to the members and the people in barrio (ward) Oberro, which just sucked, because that neighborhood really grew on me and I found myself at home and amongst my family there.  I had to say bye for possibly the rest of my life.  Before I left we were working with a family called Flietas, the wife is a member, but her husband is not.  I am not sure how they are going to motivate him to come to church because a lot of missionaries have worked with him in hopes of getting him to come to church.

On Christmas Eve, our Mission President told us to be in our house by 7:30, so we decided to take this time to make cinnamon rolls for several member families that have helped us out a lot in our time there. On Christmas morning, we took them around to lots of people.

Anyways changes were today and I am now in an area called Leopardi, which honestly, I do not know where it is at, but all is good.  The church here is a ward and has an attendance of about 110 or so.  It sounds like a great place and the work is moving along well here.  I am here with Elder Davis from Phoenix, AZ.  He is almost done with his mission and still has a great attitude and spirit about the work.

I love this Work.  There is no other opportunity like this.  It really is a blessing.  God is our Father. He loves us and has prepared a way that we can return to Him once again.  This way is through His beloved Son, Jesus Christ, our Salvador (Savior) and greatest brother.  I hope that you do not take this gift in vain, but rather, be smart and do what He asks of you.

I love you all
Love,
Elder Call
disfruten  (enjoy)

Mom, this is the information from the medical doctor.  Have dad translate it for you. Thanks!  Love you lots.   I have not heard any more about it still.

Estos informes son normales a excepción de una pequeña hernia inguinal visto en la ecografia. La hernia necesita una cirugía, pero no es urgente. No recomiendo que esperar hasta que termine su misión (julio de 2016) para tener la cirugía, pero sería bueno que esperar hasta 3-4 meses. No se necesita ir a casa para la cirugía. Se puede hacer aquí en Paraguay a través de un telescopio en uno de los hospitales más grandes, como Bautista. Es necesario que tome una semana o 10 días para recuperarse de la cirugía, pero debería ser capaz de trabajar a tiempo parcial después de sólo 3-4 días.

For those that do not read and understand Spanish here is a general translation:
We are informing you that everything is normal except a small inguinal hernia. The hernia will require surgery and it is not recommended to wait until after his mission completes in July of 2016, but can wait for 3-4 months.  It is not necessary for Dallin to come home for the surgery, as it can be performed in Paraguay using a telescopio in a large hospital like the Baptist Hospital.  It will be necessary for him to take a week to ten days to recuperate from surgery. He should be able to work part-time in just 3-4 days following the surgery.

It's Christmas!

IT'S CHRISTMAS!!!!! (Just to let y'all know.)

So this past month we have had the great opportunity to work with the movie, “He is the Gift.”  The whole message is so powerful and it is amazing how much more powerful it is when you read the words, rather than just hear the words.  I would have never thought that.
 
Anyways, this time of year we get to celebrate the genuine birth of our Savior!!  Two thousand or so years ago a babe was born, one person to affect the entire world for every generation to come.  His name is Jesus Christ, born in Bethlehem. He came to the earth, not to do his own will, but to do the will of his Father.  He suffered in Gethsemane for every trial, temptation, and pain that we will ever and could ever experience. The anguish He felt caused Him to bleed from EVERY pore.  Christ was given to us so that all that believe on Him and come unto Him with a broken heart and a contrite spirit may obtain eternal life.

I hope that all of you this day can spend time with your families, in remembrance of your beloved Brother, Jesus.  In Him, we can find the Love, Peace, and Hope, that everyone wants.  I invite all of you to open your scriptures this day and find who He is to you personally and what He means to you.

I love all of you and hope that you have a very merry Christmas!!!

WE already have the best present ever!!!  USE IT

Love,
Elder Call

Important Things

Hello to all

Alrighty, I will start off with the important things:

First of all, we found Liz and Jose on Monday night in their house and talked a little bit with Liz. She was super nice and was willing to let us come back on Tuesday because it was already 8:40 P.M.  and we still had a 35 or so minute walk to get to our house.  We could not stay and talk to her at that time, but Thursday we went there and we were able to convince her to let us into her house, because for this month we have the permission of carrying our dvd player around with us to watch “He is the Gift” with everyone.   For safety reasons we can only watch it, if they allow us to enter the house. Anyways, the video worked miracles in her heart and she realized her need to follow Christ.  Jose, well I am afraid, that he just does not have a desire to do anything of the sort. We were able to pass by again Saturday and we taught just Liz, because Jose, typical Paraguayan man, on Saturday and Sunday was Drunk!! We taught Liz how she can come to know for herself if what we are saying is in fact true. and how she can come to the knowledge of which church is the Church of Jesus Christ or if God even has a Church. We gave her a Book of Mormon.  She was going to come to Church but didn’t =(

We have tried to make cinnamon rolls. . . they Failed!!  They did not rise at all and were just plain ugly. haha So talking with some members we asked around as to why they would not have risen.  We found out that there are like 4 different grades of flour and that it was because we did not use the right type of flour, so we are going to try them again today to see if they work out!

Love you!

Elder Call

Hey, so about the hernia, I was finally able to get a hold of Hermana Agazzani this week and she said that she had not received the estudios (results) that I had sent close to a month ago, but that she was going to go to the officina (office) and find them and call me back within a week and if she does not, for me to call her back.  So I still have two days for the week to be up and then I will call her again. I am trying to be pretty safe, but I don’t like the idea of not working or helping out or exercising.

I just realized that my mission is 1/4 of the way over and I do not like that it is going by so fast, everything just kind of meshes in together.

Love,
Elder Call

Mission Life

Hola everyone,

Medical update really quickly. I am still waiting to hear back from Hermana Agazzani, so honestly,   I´m not so sure what is going to happen but vamos a ver anyways now to the important part.

Dad, Evan, Justin, Mom, Hannah, (and everyone else), how do you get people to allow you to visit them more than once?!!!! They just happen to be not there when we go back to visit them. I am open to any suggestions or advice!

Anyways, Elizabeth, our almost convert, once again did not come to church to be confirmed. We passed by almost every day this week and talked with her and she said that she was going to come yesterday for sure.  Then she went to visit her sister that is pregnant.  I am not sure what more we can do to help her come if she just does not want to come to church.

So Martin, the boyfriend of Gesenia, came to church!!!! He is hoping that by him going to church, it will excite her to also come so cross our fingers that one day she will want to marry him!!! It is kind of funny down here they just expect that the marriage is not going to work and so they do not get married.

Kevin, Jacky, and Brisa. None of them came  to church this Sunday, either. Kevin and Jacky went to a party Saturday night and did not arrive home until 4:30 in the morning; and Brisa, I cannot remember her excuse, but that means that her date of baptism is postponed another week.

I love the Gospel.  It really is the way to a better life. Christ lives and loves every one of us and has a plan for us to help His other brothers and sisters receive the good news that comes from the Plan of Salvation.

I love you all!  Study the scriptures and visit your neighbors.

Love, Elder Call

P.S.
HANNAH is home!  That is crazy, but it has been long enough, I think. Haha. That is good that you put her back to work. Has she picked up the job of cooking yet?  I always loved her cookies.  Every day, other than Monday’s we eat lunch with members. I have not been like bad with the food, so all is good and there is nothing to complain about.
Love you!

A Normal Week

Hi all you

This week has been pretty normal, nothing special happened.

We have done a lot of Family Home Evenings with active members and investigators, part-member families and inactivos, so that we can hopefully strengthen our ward and bring those to the saving ordinance of baptism.  The family of Kevin is changing.  The Dad, Peter, is a member already, but he works only on Saturday and Sunday.  He works in the hospital, but he wants to come back and attend once again because he has seen the change in the life of Kevin, as well as, Kevin’s sister, Brisa, now wants to be baptized and the Mom is a whole lot more open to us and the message, so hopefully, she too, will come.

Gesnia.  Well I do not know about her.  She does not want to get married anymore, so we are still working on that.

I love the video that the Church has made called ``He is the Gift.`` Worth watching.  You can find it by going to http://www.mormon.org/christmas

Elizabeth did not come to church once again =( so we are going to try to work with her every day this week and help her gain a testimony.

Paraguay is awesome, but just as Justin had said when he was down here it has so much potencial (potential), but the people do not take care of it and ruin it.  I really like Spanish. It is fun and although I have a weird accent and the Paraguayans in general do not like us Americanos, for some reason, it is all good.  It makes me sad that 95% of the people here do not know a thing about the Bible or even care to learn about the true and Living God.  One day they will wish that they had.

Love,
Elder Call

LOVE

Hola! America

Transfers!!! I have officially completed the training of the mission!!!!! So the two areas in the Obrerro Branch have been combined into one area.  I am now with Elder Powell, who is from South Carolina.  We started out our transfer with two service projects.  A less active family needed help taking down their wood house to move back to their house that had been flooded out. And, we helped an amazing great-grandma clean up her yard, because she isn't able to do it.

Auydamos a una familia mudarse :)

Since we combined, I have been able to visit a great friend named Kevin and his cousin Jacky. We met in the church because they had been investigators of Elder Powell and then we were able to become great friends. Kevin and Jacky are living proof that children don’t care so much about material things, because the things of the world can bring temporary joy, but it will never last and they will feel lonely. What we as children want from our parents is LOVE AND TIME, because other things don’t ever complete a person. Parents, GIVE your children your time.  It is what every kid wants most. Also, we were able to visit Elizabeth this week several times Elizabeth is a lovely girl she is 17 years old and is incredibly timid.

Mi Primero Bautismo! Su nombre es Gihanina.

Selfie con Presidente Agazzani!

We had divisions with our zone leader and I went to the other area.  Elder Shuman was almost always on the phone and a lot of our appointments fell.  He was super disappointed because he wanted to have a sweet day with me and be able to teach a lot of people. Oh well, things like that happen.

This Saturday, we had the privilege of helping Kevin and Elizabeth walk through the door of baptism.  So we were about to change into our baptismal clothes and the suit we had for Kevin could probably fit like 3 or 4 of him in it and he was in contrary of wearing it, so I permitted him to wear my pants and shirt and I wore the suit. I had the honor of baptizing Elizabeth Caseren and Elder Powell was able to baptize Kevin.

Elder Powell, Kevin, Elizabeth, Elder Call

    Bautismo el sabado pasado! Elder Powell bautizo a Kevin (un kapo), y yo bautice a Eliza!

Elizabeth & Elder Call

Sunday, came and Kevin has continued to walk from the door.  Elizabeth, well she stopped mid way through the door because she was awestruck at the site of the mansion and we are still waiting and trying to help her take the next step.

I love Paraguay! I have found a real purpose and love for the missionary work.

Love your kids and make time for them there is nothing more valuable than the time of parents.

I Love you Mom and Dad.

Love,
Elder Call

THE MEDICAL UPDATE, SENT TO DALLIN’S DAD:

Hey, Padre

So I don’t know the plan with the hernia, but I sent my results to Hermana Agazzini.  She will give them to the mission doctor and he will decide when I need to be operated on or if I can wait. I don’t let it change the work of the Lord though because salvation is far more important. So anyways, there is absolutely no reason for you guys to worry about the facilities or anything like that because something that I learned before the mission is that there is nothing that you need to worry about in life, and then on my mission I have changed that to not needing to worry about anything other than the Salvation of souls, because, everything fiscal is going to pass away in a short time and we will all realize that none of the worldly things mattered.

Dad I love you and hope the best for you!

Love, Your Son,
Elder Call

Grrafiti en Obrero!

LIVE THE GOSPEL

Buenas tarde, mañana o noche  -- (Good afternoon, morning or evening)

Haha!! Sorry about the start of the letter last week my companion told me that I could not tell you all what my circumstances were. But, on Tuesday night, we finally had our phone call to Hermana Agazzani (mission president’s wife) and she had actually wanted me to tell.  So I have a Hernia.  I do not know how I could have gotten it, but I have one, and with the cough that I had it had grown a bit a was relatively uncomfortable.  The doctor confirmed that I have one and says that it has to be operated on. Hermana Agazzani has asked me to send her the test results of the ecografia (ultrasound), the blood and the urine tests,so we will be doing that tomorrow.  It does not bother me anymore, other than I do not want it to grow anymore and get bigger.  Anyways, at the moment it is not going to impede the work of the Lord until the surgery.

Anyways, this week was great we had  Zone Conference on Thursday, which was great.  There was one quote that stuck out to me more than all the others and that was “Una pierde la fe porque no hace lo que tiene que hacer¨ or in other words one loses the faith because he does not do what he has to do! entoces (then) LIVE THE GOSPEL or else you are losing your faith.

Gesenia, finally had her baby.   She is super excited now and does not have nearly the pain that she had.  She did not end up coming to church Sunday though, because, I guess when the baby finally sleeps, you need to take advantage of that time and sleep yourself.  I guess the baby has been keeping her up for most of the nights.

Love you all!!
Love Elder Call

The following is part of the letter Dallin wrote to Ben this past week.  The editor thought the advice given to Ben would benefit everyone that reads it.

…hope your putting effort in your grades but more important than your grades in school is your grade with God.   Keep yourself worthy and be that example to the world. Try every day to put your effort in reading the scriptures.  My favorite book, right now, would have to be Jesus The Christ.  I would suggest that you read that, as it is super cool, because, it explains all the stories of Christ so well. Hey the power of prayer is real.  Use it often and always remember it is not wise to ask for things and then not do the things needed to receive what you asked for.  Love you bud!  You have always been there for me. Thanks