The Coolest of Activities

(From November 18th)

I don't have a lot to write about this week, except for what we did today! Today was a day to be remembered for all eternity because of this:

 

And also this!

 

That's right! We went biking through the Botanical Gardens of Asunciòn Paraguay! It was really cool.

 

So, the first part, as you can see, was mostly this cool area that had really dense groupings of bamboo plants all together along the trail. After that, we found this:

That's right, someone had built up little dirt mounds and stuff for mountain bikers to go over. I caught some pretty good air too. Pictured there is Elder Sorenson, who is actually serving in the like 3rd or 4th chuchiest area in the mission, the only area that contains the temple of Paraguay.

Anyways, we went up the trail a little further, but we were surrounded by so many cool trees, and I am a huge dork who had loved climbing since before the womb, so.....

 

My trainer says I look like a koala in that shot.... But physical excercise is really paying off. ;)

Anyways, it was really cool for a while, and an Elder from Chile (Elder Jimenez) and I took the lead for a our first loop, which ended with a long downhill slope that had lots of trenches. I've never actually done mountainbiking before, but you adjust quickly to the realization that if you don't yank up on your front handlebars, you will go on a headfirst collision with the ground as soon as your front tires collide with the trench wall. Funny story, this can also happen if you push too hard on the front wheel brake when going to fast, as our good friend Elder Huancollo (Peruano) learned:

Here's the photo of Elder Huancollo's epic fail:

 

It was actually quite scary because he had just barely gotten his cast off the week before... He's fine, but it was really funny to see someone literally go 90 degrees for a second, until the bike just goes back to where it was and the person flips the other 90.

Well, to finish off, we actually biked into the jungle. I kid you not. Jungle. A path was carved through it, but it was absolutely awesome. I was way happy. 

 

Yeah, that Elder in the red is Elder Beus from Farmington Utah. He's actually a really cool person and he's come to be a friend. I came on a special change (changes are periods of six weeks into which the mission is divided), meaning that I just entered two weeks after the change had already started. What does this mean though? Well, everyone else in my group was American and didn't speak spanish already, except for one Elder, and so they all came here the change after I did, and they have a lot more unity and friendship than I ever could have just because they were in the MTC together so much longer. Elder Beus got here one change earlier than my group, which means he had already been in Paraguay two weeks by the time I arrived, and he and I have just grown up here together at pretty much the same stages. He's just an awesome guy.

This week was crazy though. I lied about not having anything to say about it. We did lots of service actually, for example, setting up the Branch President's brand new computer and printer, and this thing:

 

That's right. The member there is a recent convert named Marcelino Benitez. We literlly made that concrete from scratch and were building a floor for the new room he added onto his house. It was fun, odd work. Interesting though.

Along with that, we received a visit from D. Todd Christofferson! He was amazing. He actually had every single missionary come up so he could greet them individually, and it was amazing. The spirit was so strong. He really stressed the use of the book of Mormon in our teaching, and made us some pretty cool promises. I was floored. His Spirit is so powerful, and the biggest thing that I'll always remember is that he looked right out to all of us and with power and great authority told us all personally (literally, he switched from the ustedes pronoun to the tù pronoun) that we were worthy and our offering is accepted. I'd been having doubts of whether or not I'd been working hard enough, was obedient enough, or even good at all, but all of that stopped when the Spirit carried his words directly into my heart. It was something very special.

Well, that'll be all for this week. Do stay tuned and keep doing what's right! I'll start including some spiritual thought in these one of these days....

Happy Thanksgiving!

¡Buenas Tardes!

As many of you may have found out, this week is the very week of Thanksgiving. That's a pretty important holiday for those of us "Estadounidense" persuasion, and a pretty much unkown or not cared for holiday everywhere else. Something about it being a U.S. national holiday or some nonsense like that.

Well, my companion really likes to do fun and exciting P-day activities, so he really, really wanted to do Thanksgiving with some other companionships. However, he is also Zone Leader, meaning that he pretty much ends up having to invite the entire Zone (26 people in our zone) to his fun activities. What does this mean? This means we had a real Thanksgiving. More mashed potatoes than all of those missionaries could eat, lots of veggies, good gravy, and for the entree, we made two giant chicken pies. We couldn't do turkey (it costs about 10 dollars a kilo and our budget was set for less than one hundred dollars), and everything else just looked like it'd take too long, so I had the brilliant idea of doing chicken pies because it's cheaper, quicker, and you can involve EVERYONE in the cooking process. Unfortunately, I was the only one who knew anything about making pie crusts, and even then I had to look up some ratios, and still messed it up! In any case, my mistakes just meant it wasn't all flaky and delicious, but it was definitely still good and we all ate way too much (I came close to throwing up on the bus ride home).

This computer hasn't any good USB plug-ins where I might actually be able to upload pictures, so you guys will just have to wait.

That's really unfortunate because we did another service project on Friday in which my companion and I and one other member (El Hermano Èscobar) dismantled a house. I say dismantled, because that's what it was; there was no demolishing. We had to take out all nails and just take it apart to move all the pieces elsewhere. It was really fun and we got to meet the new Hermana in the other area. Did I forget to mention something......?

Changes! In Baxter's mission, they were called transfers, and it's the six week period in which we work as missionaries. If we are moved to a new area, it'll almost always happen on the first day of a new change. My companion and I have been kept together in the same area, but one of the Hermanas in the other area of our Branch was traded out with a brand new Hermana! Hermana Johnson from Texas. The Hermana who is training her is one from Peru who has been in the other area since I got here, Hermana Villcahuman, so no changes there. The work goes on here.

The only other relevant change made is this: the other Zone Leader, Elder Hulsey, was traded out for Elder Jensen. So, you guys will probably be seeing a lot more of him in pictures and stories and the like. He was just serving in Pedro Juan Caballero, a city half in Paraguay and half in Brazil, so he sometimes slips into Portuguese because he had to learn so much of it there. He's a cool guy.

The work:

I do have one exciting thing to report about actual missionary work this week: an investigator actually came to church! Her name is Sofìa Ortiz, a highly intelligent divorced Catholic who just really loves learning about the church and just seems fascinated with what we believe and such. BUT! This week, we had three different lessons with her, and over the course of those, we finally were able to help her understand that she needs to gain a testimony, and that finding out if this is true or not is something she actually wants to do, AND that the way to do that is by reading the Book of Mormon, asking God if it's true, and attending church. She just gets it. So, that makes me really confident that she will continue progressing and that she'll be able to feel the power of the restored gospel in her life, which she could really use. We have a baptismal date set for her on the 14th of December, so I will be sure to write you two days later and let you all know how it turns out!

Things are moving along here! I hope you all have wonderful Thanksgivings! Please send me lots of pictures of everything and everyone always!

Love, 

Elder Harris

Big News

That's right, we have big news being dropped! Actually, I've known it for a long time, and some of you had the opportunity to be informed of this event for a while. Are you all ready? We'll find out.

Christmas is coming.

Yes, it is. In fact, it's only a month and some more away, which means, primarily, that the land here will turn to riot as the summer begins (fireworks, late nights, alcohol, I'm excited), but more importantly, we are being asked to help the Branch in any way that we can to organize giant, "To The Rescue," activities (the rescue, of course, being reactivation efforts of less active and inactive members). We have high hopes and great expectations for what's coming up. I'm really excited, but it also means that we're probably going to have a lot of work to do, because no one here has any theater, choir, or really any kind of artistic/performance experience, which means that if they decide anything that should have an element of that in it, we are going to be relied on heavily. I consider that a blessing, but that's just me.

Oh yeah, the mission is getting a picture of all missionaries in it in front of the temple tomorrow. We all have to get there before 12:45 and go into a chapel and sit down. We'll be in the chapel for a few hours (I can't remember why), but then we'll be coming out at like 3:30 to get a giant picture right in front of the temple. Oh yeah, I remembered why we're going to have to sit in the chapel for a few hours. Elder D. Todd Christofferson is coming to talk to us.

So, that's what we have to look forward to this week. Hopefully, some of you guys were thrown off by the roundabout way of saying that. ;)

This last week was a lot of not working.... For various reasons. On Friday, we had Zone Training, after which Elder Yauney and I had the final interviews with President McMullin (our interviews ended up happening at like 8:15). We were in the office from 11:00 to 8:00 at night. No work, other than some random contacting that morning, was done. There were some other things that got in the way of work too, but it means this week I'm kind of restless to get into it. Zone Training was really good though! We talked a lot about how to improve our teaching of dispensations when we teach The Restoration. Do you guys realize how logical the Restoration is? You just look at the cycle! God's church has always had a prophet at the head, until eveyone rejects God's prophet, and church, at which time the prophets, and power of God, are taken from the earth. They are later restored when the people are ready again to receieve it. If we can teach this format really well, then we'll be able to teach The Great Apostasy, and ask the investigator, "What will God do to take the world out of the Apostasy?" And, if you've taught well, then they'll get it. Hard in practice, but it's exciting.

So, thank you all for all of your love and support! Keep writing! I love you all!

Elder Harris

I think it's really obvious these posts are very behind.......  ~Taylor

A Summary: Reforging the Blade that was Broken‏

Post for week 11/04/13

Huddle up close kids! I got some stuff to tell you all about.

So, I don't have a lot of stuff going on this week, but I thought I'd tell you all about the Branch, the Zeballos Cué Branch (mine). It's really old, and has 1400 members on record. We usually get 73 people in church every Sunday. Honestly, if even half of these people were active church members, we would have at least two branches (possibly three) and probably another church building. This means that there is a lot of work to be done with Less Active and Inactive members. 

BUT, there are all of these crazy issues. Within the leadership, not a lot gets done and we're really struggling to get member support, even in spite of the leadership actually wanting to improve things. Within the congregation, there are a lot of cultural problems and difficulties with understanding doctrine. Some members still have their little shrines from back when they were catholic (yes, they build full-on shrines to different saints to whom they give worship. One saint is actually the Baby Jesus, to whom you pray and give worship differently from the adult Jesus). Many members think my companion and I are haso (hah-SO Guarani word meaning someone overly strict and just kind of a kill joy) because we won't play sports with them or drink Tereré (a cold drink drunk in Guampas with Bombas that mixes Yerba Mate with a lot of other things like Mint and Lemon), both of which other missionaries have done over the past five years, both of which are extremely against the rules and always have been in the Paraguay Asunción North Mission (which has existed for a lot longer than five years). 

But this lack of doctrinal understanding means that, to a pretty big extent, our church just kind of turns into Catholicism. People don't understand that it's actually a commandment from Jesus Christ personally to go to church and partake of the sacrament (3 Ne. 18), they don't know about doing missionary work, they don't know modesty rules, temple work, temple worthiness, or even a lot of basic doctrines (like the Plan of Salvation). This means that pretty much anyone at any time can just go inactive for really poor reasons, because they don't see the importance of church participation. 

This might sound like complaining; it's not. I'm explaining why there are so many less active members, and why so few people have gone through the temple. But that's what we're working in right now. Can you guys imagine it? Church every week is a battle, and we meet new less active members every single day, all of whom we invite to church, with whom we share spiritual experiences, and even so nothing comes of it. It means we've been learning to work in new and different ways, and it means that we do just as much of that as we do actual work with investigators. 

In order to really bring people back into the gospel, however, we need a place to bring them back into. That means we need a Branch that is active, where people have callings, there are home teaching assignments, information gets entered into the computer and recorded, and this is where I draw epic ties to the Lord of the Rings. We are now trying to focus on reinforcing this ward. Making it something that can sustain growth, rather than being crippled and broken by it. And even though there is so much trial, I believe we are finding success. Our church attendance has been over 110 for the past two weeks, we have new callings extended, and the Branch actually looks like it's growing well.

So, to conclude, the work goes on here. I just thought I'd give everyone a small ideological glimpse into my little corner of things here. I hope it wasn't bad... I mean, things aren't bad here. In reality, it's amazing. I get to learn how to make a Branch function and grow, I get the opportunity to grow in love and understanding of other people, and it's in a really awesome place too with good people.

Speaking of people! I think there's room in the day for a spouting off of quirks and fun bits of information!

-The people here fully believe that if you consume Watermelon (called Sandia here) and milk together in somewhat large quantities, you will sí o sí die within the hour. I was privileged enough to drink lots of milk the first time I ever tried watermelon. Telling people this pretty much turns them pale and they just end up telling me I'm super lucky to be alive.

-There's fruit everywhere! The most common tree here is actually a mango tree, and the season hasn't hit yet, but kids are already walking around eating some pre-season mangos (they apparently taste different when they aren't in season).

-Piqui Vole: I think that's how you spell it (It's pronounced peeky volley). It's a Paraguayan only sport played on a Volleyball court with a full volleyball net, but you use a somewhat deflated soccer ball and you cannot use hands. I have seen some Paraguayan guys jump ridiculously high and rocket a ball over to the other side using only a chest bump. This stuff is awesome.

-Weather! The weather can be pretty crazy. The rain is fun (in my opinion). It floods things and will utterly shut other things down (school gets cancelled for just a little rain, no one goes to church, colectivos- buses -don't run). A normal day of Spring will be in the 80s and 90s, and a normal hot day in the springtime will get up around 100. My comp says that there are times in the Summer where 90 feels so good, because that's literally the coldest it will get for a week. But the weather also fluctuates quite a bit, which means a really badly rainy day could be just before a really hot day, which turns into terrible amounts of humidity. For some reason though, the more extreme the weather, the more we missionaries seem to like it. Not in the moment, but I think it makes us feel all cool and tough and manly. No one is allowed to complain about heat when your summer comes though!

 

 

Triumph in the Midst

Hello World!

This week was... something else. I suppose that spending last P-day in/near the temple required that the Adversary make daily life feel as far from perfect as possible, and he tried really, really hard. Let me break this down:

The mother (Hna. Rolòn) of our 10 year-old Investigator (Yanina) bore a testimony the week before last in our fast and testimony meeting, and during that testimony, she said that her daughter would be baptized this Friday, which we had planned, but at the same time, we thought maybe it wouldn't happen because we still had a LOT to teach her before that day, and we still had to do a baptismal interview, AND Hna. Rolòn is practically never at home, so we figured we wouldn't see each other every day. Well, our beliefs concerning all of that changed of necessity when she bore such a testimony.

That was actually a cool moment, and I realized that the Spirit works through others quite often.

Well, we had to meet EVERY DAY after that. Lesson on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and then a baptismal interview on Thursday, and then the baptism on Friday, and we also had to bake ourselves a cake for the baptism, find baptismal clothes, and fill the font. Sound impossible? It gets better.

Miraculously, all the lessons go through, she has the baptismal interview, we promise her a banana cake, and bake it. Done, done, and done. But, upon having baked the cakes (yes plural, we made two) and arrived at the chapel to fill the font, we discovered something wholly unholy: no one drained the font since the last baptism (which was at least four months ago). It was fetid, disgusting water... So, we had to drain it all, clean it, and then fill the font. No biggie, right? Wrong!

The pump to drain the font needs to be full of water in order to actually pump water out, and whoever screwed in the bolt where water is put in did it with a wrench, which means we can't unscrew it to put water in without a wrench. We don't carry wrenches on us.... Nor did the chapel have one... That was an awkward moment.

Well, that was solved eventually when the Branch President just so happened to show up with his car fixing tools, which include wrenches. We felt blessed. Nevertheless, the baptism was to be held at 8:00 sharp, and we finally got the pump working at like 6:00. So, we then play the waiting game; or so we thought!

I was asked to play the piano for the Primary Program which was held yesterday, and I'd accepted, which means that I also accepted to practice with them on Friday, at 6:00... So, I'm playing all of these different primary songs for the very first time while a choir of kids backs me up, and I can't even swat the mosquitos that are feasting upon the me. That was very stressful.

Finally, the font drains and we clean it out, but now we have to fill it, and it's already 7:15.... So, we scramble together a hose to help fill the font faster, and then we wait some more, but members are getting anxious as we get closer, and some families leave once 8:15 rolls around and we're just screaming that we're only ten minutes away. Not only this, but the Branch President, who was the only other priesthood holder there at the time and therefore absolutely needed to be one of the witnesses, starts to leave...

Nevertheless,

Yanina was baptized! We had everyone seated and ready to go at 8:30, and we had ourselves a lovely little baptism. In the midst of so much trial and difficulty, the work of God moved on. That built my testimony a lot, and Yanina was confirmed the following Sunday as her mother made the last Sacrament Meeting attendance necessary to officially be considered Active status. 

It just goes to show that although the work may move slowly at times, and although there may appear no possible way for it to be accomplished, if we show faith by putting in all our efforts towards success, God will help us and everything will turn out as it should.

Speaking of the primary program though, it went incredibly well! Lots of little ones came to church to help out, and they really sang loudly for all of the songs. I was really praying for help on the whole piano side of things, and that went well also. So, on the whole, we have success!

Look forward to some emails of Photos!

Tiny Post

Just kidding.

Okay everyone, ready for the five minute wonder? I hope you are:

• Last week:
• We had 40 different lessons and found over 10 people we legitimately expect to baptize within the coming months.
• We set a baptismal date for this upcoming Friday.
• We created the single greatest Noche de Rama activity that there has yet been over the face of the earth. It was great.
• We discovered some great things about the poorest area of our area and just met some interesting people.
• This Week: (Including today)
• We expect to have a baptism Friday!!! Yay! (Of a 9 year-old named Yanina. Her mom is reactivating).
• I'm hoping to cook something awesome (I'll keep you posted).
• I cleaned and then stood on the top of the Asunción Paraguay temple! It was awesome.
• We hope to have another few investigators with a baptismal date.
• I'm going to play the piano in a Primary Program.
• Good things will happen!

That's pretty much what's going on thus far. I'm going to write a real email next week though, so worry not. I actually got attacked this week with family emails (which is a very, very good thing. Just don't expect a response until the week after.....). I love you all!

-Elder Harris

Extra!

I just thought I'd show you my entire Zone! This is all of us (except for four of us, but they are office workers, so they're just different). This was just today at a restaurant called El Peruano! I hope you enjoy it!

 

 

Posted by Taylor from email in which Shelby asked to add this.

 





 

Another Post

Hey guys, I'm so sorry I didn't post anything last week! But, lots of stuff has happened since then, so I'll have a lot to talk about (especially since I can't upload pictures right now). Also, I want to share some Guarani with you this week!

General Conference! It was simply amazing as many of you know. I loved it, and it has such a different perspective if you're a missionary. There were a lot of talks this round about member involvement in missionary work, but not just missionary work, in Home Teaching and in working with Less Active Members or Inactive Members. They were things I really wished my Branch leaders had heard so that they would get really involved with the work, because things are going slow with the Branch and what we really want is to pick things up.

Before I go back to General Conference, let me talk a little about my Area. It's a little sort of suburb-ish thing in Ciudad Asunciòn Norte, but it's really poor. Most people lump it together with another area nearby and call all of it Zeballos Cuè, but it's actually locally known as Viñas Cuè, and it's fairly close to the center of Asunciòn Norte (20 minute colectivo- that means bus -ride away). 

Anyways, within our Branch boundaries, we have on record about 1,500 members, but our weekly church attendance lays somewhere around 75 or  85. That's a huge problem. So, we changed all of our goals to mean increasing number of people attending sacrament meeting, because over the past two decades really, the baptisms have been rolling in, but the Branch hasn't grown. Ever. So, since they started the kick to focus more on helping inactive members reactivate, baptisms have gone way down, and I'm kind of glad about that just because some of the people who are active weren't baptized under the best conditions as far as having a real, tangible testimony goes. And one reason why so few remain active for long, as far as they say, is because no one visits and so they grow to feel like no one cares. Which brings up the issue of Home Teaching, Visiting Teaching, and visiting Inactive members. Those things don't exist super well here, but when we finally got out and visited some inactive members with the Branch President, they wanted to reactivate. It was really cool.

Anyways, it means that Conference felt really inspired for my situation, but no one goes to sessions other than Sunday morning because it's all in the Stake Center and it's not part of the culture. So, it was just a bunch of missionaries and a few small youth (not a single soul from our Branch) up until Priesthood session when  few people come or Sunday Morning when a good chunk of the Branch comes. So, the moral of the story is for all of you Utahns, you have easy access to all sessions and a pretty strong culture of actually watching it! Don't take that for granted. I still love you all though!

Other than General Conference, we also had Stake Conference, which was important because the Area Authority, Elder DiGiovanni, came to speak to us, and he asked that we gather all less active and inactive members into the Stake Center. They even printed invitations for us to give and arranged for a free colectivo to pass by a certain spot in Viñas Cuè so that everyone could have an easy time going. We didn't have one single Investigator or Less Active Member with whom we're working show up. That was a really frustrating day just yesterday. The work has been really slow this past week. We have three Investigators that have been taught everything necessary for baptism, but can't be baptized for various reasons (two need to get married and one needs parental permission). It's also become hard to find a new solid investigator, and so everything just slammed into a standstill in the way of Investigators. But, the fact that a lot of less active members didn't come either just makes me feel like I did nothing for a week. It's frustrating.

However, God will provide, and I am doing my part. I need to improve in a lot of ways, but Elder Yauney and I really are working hard and trying to make progress. There's the giant hand of Agency though that continually is giving us sweets and then turning around and slapping us in the face continually. It gets fun after a while!

Okay, this sounds way too hopeless. In reality, I fully believe that this Branch will grow and become more than it now is and that I will get to be a part of that process. I'm happy over here even though it an emotional rollercoaster and my comp and I are having just tons of fun. So, please don't worry about us over here!

I have something very important to tell all of you though, so litsen up!

You can all send me things! The missionaries have all gotten all of their packages, so there's not a worry there. However, my telling you this so late means that you would need to send a Christmas package soon, so I thought I'd take all of the work out of it and send you a list of stuff I either miss or actually need! Send it all to the address I posted in the first post! Here's the list:

The only candies I really want are these, and I care not how many I receive, so if all of you just so happen to send me some, that's wonderful. ;)

-Skittles

-Starburst

-Rolos (Possible Resse's Peanut Butter Cups, but the other three are more important).

If it will keep, I want some canned Tomato Sauce. The stuff they have here mostly looks brown and just doesn't taste right... If you think it can last a plane right and 6-8 weeks of travel, send me some! Not too much, but a couple of cans.

Pens! I'm running out fast. Mostly crappy ones, but if one or two of you has found a cool pen you want to give me, I'd love that too. If you can find any, it'd also be cool to have a few color changing pens that include the colors blue, green, orange, and purple. I need those colors specifically.

Small Amounts of Money..... It's kind of dumb, but if you could slip it into a package... I just realized I don't have much money for cool recuerdos, like buying anaconda and crocodile skins and then getting people to make me stuff out of them (that's popular amongst missionaries here).

100% Cocoa Powder, the highest they have here is 50%. Also, if anyone could send me some holiday-cooking spices (nutmeg, cloves, cream of tartar, ginger, etc.) Not brown sugar, we've actually started making our own. But I want to make myself holiday goodies!

And yeah! Send it to the address I first posted! You guys can coordinate with who's buying what in the comments section..... I feel selfish posting this, but if it so be that I am, then I am! I love you all. The gospel is true; I see it every moment of every day. I'm so glad to be here.