The first thing that helped was on Wednesday
when we went to a choir practice. Now
for any of you that knew me remotely before the mission, that sentence is going
to shock the heck out of you. A choir
practice would have been one of my least
favorite things to do. And ok, I still
don’t love it. But we went anyway, and I
surprisingly had a very good time. It does help that I sing better than the
majority of Paraguayans. Nothing to be
ashamed of. The idea was to do a little
choir on Sunday for Mother’s Day here in Paraguay. The youth planned, organized and did it. So it was a little shaky. It ended up being the 4 missionaries, 2 young
women, 4 young men and a mom. We sang “Teach
Me to Walk in the Light” and some other primary song. The highlight by far was when Elder Laurante
was taking it all serious and "teaching" us how we have to sing, and I
was making faces. The youth loved it and laughed. Definitely lightened the mood. Although maybe not the most respectful thing
I could have done. We left with a plan
to meet together on Saturday with hopefully more youth.
Also on Wednesday it was Elder Alvizures’
birthday so we sang to him at the choir practice. But besides that, we did absolutely
nothing. He didn’t want to make a big
deal about it. All too normal if you ask
me, but hey, it’s his b-day. It was also
Paraguay’s Mother’s Day this week. It’s
the 15th of May always. It’s quite
different from the States. Nobody really
does anything or buys anything for mom. It’s just a day off work, and everybody
gets drunk. Nothing says “I love you,
mom” like being absolutely hammered and making poor decisions.
We went out to Nueva Asuncion that
day, and it started to rain, and the swamp does get swampy. But it was still a good day, and we talked
with Celeste, a 9-year-old girl who doesn’t talk. Her family are all members just inactive, but
they want her to be baptized. The last
time I saw her I literally talked to her through a Barbie. This time she opened up at the end and talked
a little and had us draw pictures in her notebook. Baby steps.
We also went and filled up the font,
which luckily was still half full from the week before, so it went fast. Even more luckily it was still clean. So we lucked out.
Then on Saturday, we woke up and
went out to service in Nueva Asuncion. Basically
we “extreme makeover home editioned” her
house. She needed a new roof and to
patch up her walls so the water doesn’t get in.
While we were there, half the roof got re-tiled and the walls got
patched up. Apparently it didn’t quite
get finished as we had to leave early so we are going to go back in 2 weeks and
finish up. Paraguayans’ construction
work is still weird to me.
The next day, Sunday, was our
baptism - bright and early. We got there
and somehow the font has half drained, so we start filling it. Luckily, the
wait allowed all of his family to come.
It felt great to have a baptism again, especially his as he is going to be
great, and we fought to get him there.
Then in 2nd hour, they decided to
have an impromptu choir practice. Plus
-- all the youth were involved. Negative -- all the youth were involved. It was a mess trying to get the young men who
didn’t want to do it to try and behave.
But the 4 missionaries separated and settled the problems. So we sang and it sounded good, all things
considering.
Then a scramble as our lunch cita
dropped, but an Hermana was nice enough to cook for us and the other elders. Then
a good day of visits and the week was over.
This week we have interviews so that’s always an experience.
Hope you guys have a great week and
take care of yourselves. See ya soon!
Elder Frost
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