Christmas Week

Hello All!

Well, this week, as many will know, was Christmas week, and that was a great thing for the mission. We being office missionaries, have the privilege to work closely with the President, and that means that we spent Christmas Eve with him and his family, who came down from Utah to visit! that's such a blessing for him! It's the only time in his three years that he'll be seeing his two sons and one daughter-in-law, so it's really been special for him. I'd never seen him so happy and relaxed to be honest. We played the traditional white elephant party game, which was really fun. I actually ended up with a really cool gift that I've been wanting since I came here (I can't remember the word in English, so bear with me): one of those like liter and a half plastic containers for water that has a big unscrewable lid and then the little thing on the lid that pops in and out and lets you pour water out of it when it's popped out, but doesn't spill when it's popped in. I guess it's kinda like an individual water cooler with a spout???? I dunno.... In Paraguay, we call it a Termo.

I'm including pics of some of my favorite gifts that were exchanged.

Before the game, we had a really good dinner of some sweet, Mexican chicken in tortillas. I guess that's a kind of taco, but it wasn't a traditional taco and was delicious.

I played piano and we sang hymns, President read the Christmas story in Lucas, and then we said a prayer. It was a really nice Christmas. After the prayer, everyone kind of got to do what they wanted, and so a bunch of people went outside to play basketball or ping-pong, but I saw that President had stopped with the two of the only three Latinos who were there to look at the pictures he had mounted on the wall from his trip to the Holy Land. He started to tell us all about Israel and the city of Jerusalem. It was so amazing and I was so glad to be able to hear from him all the things he had learned there.

Christmas day was so wonderful, with our Zone Activity. We had a huge breakfast, and then we went to sing Christmas carols in the huge national hospital called IPS. It was so nice because so many of those people have no Christmas and were just waiting there waiting for difficult news or in other states of sadness. Or even the nurses working that we took the time to sing to. It was really wonderful.

I don't have any more time to write, but I'm doing well and just wanted to wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy new year. I hope that you are able to keep Christ in your hearts and remember Him in all that you do. I pray that we will be able to kneel down each night and pour out our hearts to Him in gratitude for the great gift that we have received of Him.

Love,

Elder Harris

Crazy Weeks And Christmas Parties

Hello All!

This week has been pretty crazy, but there've been some awesome things that have happened this week. Not a whole bunch of proselyting work was done, but we did get out as much as we could have, and we were striving really hard to do so because we had Elder Quayle, an Elder who was ending his mission but had a few days before he left, and we wanted to give him some awesome last days. He's amazing and I really respect him.

So! The thing that has taken away our time this week has been the Ward Christmas Party! It has been nuts. There was a play, a choir, dancing, food, talking, and it was just a huge event. We were working with member to get people there, and people came! Francisco never came to Church, but he came to the activity! It was so great. I had to do a whole bunch of stuff for it, but the sad part was that people didn't show up until like 8:30 and so it didn't start until like 9:00 at night, and we had to go before seeing hardly any of it. But everyone today has said it was an amazing success and that they enjoyed it.

Other than that, there wasn't a whole bunch to tell about the week to be honest. We kept on fighting and today we got to clean the house. It's been a nice week and we're waiting for lots of good fun this next week to come.

So, that's a short one, but I'm here wishing you merry Christmas!

I love you guys so much and hope your week is wonderful!

Love,

Elder Harris

Blessings Undeserved

Good Afternoon Everyone!

This week has kind of been all over the place, but there have been so many amazing blessings, some of which have really just come out of nowhere, but for all of which I am immensely grateful.

I've been really trying to emphasize member missionary work since I got here in the office and on Saturday and Monday of this last week we finally had our first lessons with active families to help them to share the Gospel. It was so amazing! They both had people that they were trying to prepare to receive the missionaries and we were able to help them to plan and feel the Spirit about getting started in Missionary Work. Familia Gamarra was especially prepared with lots of people that they wanted to invite and it was something that really strengthened me personally.

Then I received the biggest news just a day before it was told to everyone. I was in the office on Monday and President called me into his office and sat down to ask to see what it is exactly that we're reporting each and every week in every sense and then he just dropped a bomb:

We're getting rid of almost all of it.

No more lesson numbers.

No more investigators with baptismal dates.

We're not even going to report how many contacts we've had each week.

Instead, we'll report three different numbers:

1. Church Attendance

2. Percentage of Retention of Recent Converts in the last year

3. Number of Baptisms that week

And that's all.

It blew my mind! But it's such a good thing. It takes away any crutch we were using and lets people to look at the root. 

The next day, President started telling everyone in our Zone Conference and told us a lot about the Area's (our Area is South America South and includes all of Paraguay, Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay) vision for this big change. It starts in January and the focus is that we keep ourselves consecrated as ministers who minister to people's needs with the Book of Mormon. It's a really amazing change and I left that Zone Conference just ready to get out and help people.

The next blessing was totally unexpected. On Wednesday, we couldn't really work much, but we went out and knocked once more on the door of a man that I've never seen before, but Elder Billings, when he was showing me the area, always indicated that house as a house of a less active member who was pretty cool. In all my time here, I've always clapped and rung the doorbell, but never once been able to find him.

He was sitting outside the office on Thursday morning and said he'd wanted to meet with the missionaries. I didn't even know it was him until Elder Valenzuela talked with him and came in to tell me who it was. My companion was gone getting the mail with the Cartero, so Elder Valenzuela sat down to a lesson with him in the waiting room and it was so beautiful and so inspired. We have a return appointment coming up here in about ten minutes and I'm so excited for him! He's had a really difficult history, and wasn't even looking to make a big change when he came to meet with us, but then we taught him and he just wanted to make a change in his life! It was amazing!

Other than that, the work moves on bit by bit. We're getting ready for a big Christmas activity, but I'll have to write you all how it goes next time! (Hopefully with pictures).

I love you all so much and hope you have a wonderful week!

Love,

Elder Harris

Change Week

Hello All!

This week was probably the most full week I have ever had in my life. Let me tell you how many things had to happen all at the same time. This list isn't to brag, because I haven't been accomplishing all of these things, but the Lord has provided so many miracles and made so many wonderful things happen. By the end of the week, I'm left with desires to just sing praises to God and then raise up a general chorus of an LDS edit of "With A Little Help From My Friends." That second one is because one way in which the Lord has blessed me has been through the other missionaries here.

First of all, the moment you've all been waiting for:

Araceli's baptism!!!!!

She was baptized just this last Tuesday, with all of the new missionaries present (see the second picture) and, more importantly, lots of family and friends who are all nonmembers. Also, President McMullin was present. Also, tons of the Ward. It was the biggest baptism I have ever seen. I was super nervous while conducting, but it went really, really well. There were some crazy emergencies before though. Like the fact that all the water was terribly filthy, and there were only two hours before the baptism. So, to empty it out in time, we ran the pump and started to bucket water out of it and it was crazy. Fortunately, Elder Day, then assistant and currently a good friend and amazing missionary, filled every single bucket. Then, we started to fill it again and had to bucket water in. It was a crazy ordeal. But, half an hour before the baptism, it was all ready, and all the new missionaries were eating pizza upstairs totally unaware of what had just occurred below their feet.

It was so wonderful. Also, I don't know if all of you have heard about it, but we took the baptism (and the already set up projector and big screen) as an opportunity to promote a gigantic missionary outreach program that the Church is employing found on this link. It's called He is the Gift, and it's something really beautiful that reminds us of the true meaning of Christmas. It also extends the invitation to learn more about this beautiful Gift that our Father has given us. I love it so much. We showed it to all present and handed out cards. We invited all to come unto Christ as Araceli has, and even President McMullin stood to teach the crowd. It was the most beautiful baptism I have ever attended and I hope that it gives real fruits.

Anyways, there are lots of pics from Elder Valenzuela.

That was awesome.

On Monday I had a small miracle. We had lots of new missionaries coming in this change and not enough houses, so we for sure needed certain houses in certain locations so that eveeryone would have somewhere to live. On Monday, I got a phone call saying that one of the landlords was randomly backing out, and we wouldn't have a house somewhere that we needed one. My heart sank.

So, I went into the waiting room and said a prayer and asked what I should do and asked for a miracle. After that, I stood up, grabbed the Cartero, Elder Ramos, and we went to the area to find a house. We could only look for like forty five minutes and the hermanas had been looking for days, so there was very little hope for us. After thrity minutes of searching, Elder Ramos said we should walk a certain way, and that's when we saw a house that was really, really fancy and would be normally overlooked, but it said it was renting, so I called to ask for how much, and it was cheaper than what we'd been looking at and was totally empty. The owner liked the idea of missionaries living there.

It was a miracle! We got back on time and the house was moved into the next day. I couldn't believe it, but I said a strong prayer of thanks.

Then Wednesday was change day and we found our changes!

Elder Valenzuela and I were split up! Why? He's training his new office replacement! His replacement is Elder Aldaraca, from California. He's a really good missionary and just got done training a new missionary to be called here into the office.

So I'm with Elder Monzón, and no longer in the part of the Ward that gets to visit Araceli or Victor Fariña. But, the work moves along! I'm not sad about the change, because I know that they'll keep on progressing and keep being strong. Victor is now counted as active as of this Sunday, and we're so happy for him. I love that man and I'm so excited to see them go through the temple in six months (or however long it may take).

I've been so busy here and there's just so much to still do.

I don't have any more time this week, but that's the update this time! I hope your weeks are going wonderfully and I really hope that you are all becoming stronger and fighting harder. I hope that God be with you and I pray for all of you. You are all wonderful children of God, and I love every single one of you.

Sincerely,

Elder Harris