Missionary Work Builds Missionaries‏

(From December 16th)

A little known fact about Paraguay: It's almost summer right now. And hot. We came home at around 9:30  a couple of nights ago and my clock's thermometer read 94 F, and it was a humid heat trap inside of the apartment. While that does mean it was a solid five degrees cooler outside, lets consider that the true heat and force of summer has yet to commence. This will be awesome.

In any case, I thank you all for your wonderful emails and encouragement! Hearing from you guys every once in a whie makes me happy. I hope things are going well and I hope that you guys take the opportunity to ENJOY the cold and the snow instead of suffering! I know I'm going to enjoy the summer and the heat!

This week's work has been tough though. For a long while, we've just been doing A LOT of what's called "contacting" which just translates to clapping outside of gates to try and get lessons to try and get investigators. The problem is, while we get plenty of lessons, they lie to us about return visits or they just won't progress or things just keep coming up such that no one actually sticks around as an investigator. Therefore, when there are no plans nor people to visit, you contact. A few years back, this place was the second most baptizing missions in the world. They came to find that the missionaries were baptizing poorly though, just getting people into the water without actually helping them gain testimonies, and they put a fairly solid stop to that. The result? Better missionary work, but plummeting baptisms. In our branch, we had six from July of 2012 to July of 2013. We're hoping to change that, but it's tough because of the situation before described. Nevertheless, we keep going and it's fun to do lots of contacting and meet tons of people.

The most important developments of the week are these: Sofía came to church again! And we had some really cool lessons with her! She has had a life of Catholicism, as a teacher of Catechism and she almost went through Opus Dei, which is apparently some really deep crazy level of learning in the Catholic Church, but she is super afraid of baptism because she doesn't just want to abandon that and leave it all behind. Regardless, she believes the Book of Mormon to be true, and she feels what she describes as peace when she is with us, when she goes to church, and she even just WANTS to go to "our" church in the future (which really baffles her, because she never expected that in all of her life).

So, what do you do when your investigator has all the testimony they need to get baptized but still struggles? You testify and you talk about the restoration like you never have before. We bore powerful witnesses of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and we read throught 3 Ne. 11 with her to talk to her about baptism, and just Jesus Christ in general. The Spirit was so strong. We finally left her with an ultimatum to just find her answer by Friday, when we'll be seeing each other next. She says okay and you can just tell that there is this schism inside of her that has her teetering on the edge of baptism. 

One of the most important things about our lesson last night was the effect it had on us. The realization that these moments when we feel the spirit are those moments that make us one with God and all the prophets or those to whom we look as examples. It IS God working within us, and we find ourselves in the uniquely sweet position of being therefore tied to EVERYTHING, because God ties us to that. Right now, Sofía is finding these blips on the radar of times when she really synchs up to that deeper flow of truth, but we are promising the gift of the Holy Ghost, which ties us so permanently to Him.

After that lesson, we realized the connection we make and how important that is, how it is, in the end, the purpose of all that we do. We inscribe ourselves more deeply into God when we do His will, or rather, keep all the commandments He's given us and follow His direction for our lives, and therefore tie ourselves to everything and everyone that is good. It is happiness. It is purpose. It is ancestry and progeny and the beauty that only the prophets come close to actually seeing. 

I know that this church is more than "church." More than religion or culture or words or tangibility. It is truth, which is a principle of Godliness. Joseph Smith WAS a prophet of God who was instrumental in the restoration of His power and guidance. The Book of Mormon IS absolutely true and is the instrument of conversion in all our lives. It's tangibility is the intangible fact that we can KNOW of a surety of its truthfulness, and therefore know so many other things. I exhort everyone to do as Christ asks and try Him, feel the marks in the hands and feet of "....the God of the whole earth." You can do this by reading to Book of Mormon, praying to God if it is true, and attending church regularly. Doing so, you will receive testimony of the Spirit and you will know.

I bear this witness in the name of Jesus Christ, as His representative.

Amen.

You Win Some, You Win Some More‏

(From December 9th)

Hello Family!

I have pictures! So, lets get to business on those first and we'll guide this email by that, shall we?

Exhibit A: 

Chocolate covered popcorn. This is winning. I like to call it "refusing to believe that there are snack food combinations that you can't do in third world countries."

 

Exhibit B:

Tempura! It's actually Korean and called Ottogi, but we just called it tempura and it was good. We just found a random bag of ottogi mix in the supermarket, which was written entirely in Korean, and we had no idea what the instructions said other than 500 grams and 800 milliliters, with which we made ottogi!!!! Yes. We are that cool. We won that one.

Concerning more important things, I received just WAY TOO MANY CHRISTMAS PACKAGES. I'm incredibly grateful, rest assured, but I picked them all up during a conference, so there were lots of other missionaries, and when you're walking out of the office dwarfed by six packages when most other missionaries feel super lucky to get one small one..... You tend to get a false sense of pride that causes you to eat way too much candy in the subsequent days. Also, have you guys ever ridden to different buses back home while carrying several kilo boxes of things? People look at you funny. I must say though, it's kind of hard to notice the wariness of others when you're so overwhelmed with gratitude at the love of family. Thank you all so much! I'm throwing in some pics for everyone to prove that the packages were epically giant.

 

 

All gift packages and non-food items will be opened up on christmas day, unless you guys tell me otherwise.

Another Christmas note: I'm going to be able to make two 20 minute skype calls back home. We think we'll do it on Christmas Day (Dec. 25) at 4:00 our time (12:00 in Utah). How do we all feel about that? All in favor, email aye when convenient.

 

As far as the work goes,

Dec. 8 was the day of the Virgin of Caacupe (Cah-ah-coo-PAY), and that meant bad business for us. Our one progressing investigator didn't go to church and her extreme Catholicism is coming out in greater force. She keeps emphasizing the virgin in her Book of Mormon readings! It's crazy! Interestingly enough though, the thing that ended up being the strangest to me was when she compared Mary, her example and model of goodness, with Eve, who to her was weak and guided easily to evil. It really ate at me that so many people accross the world have that perception, but I am comforted always by the restored light of the gospel. In the Bible Dictionary under Eve, it specifically refers to her nobleness in partaking of the fruit being stated in Moses 5:11, and I can't deny the plan of God, its greatness and contrasting that with the misperceptions of it just really fortified my testimony this week. 

We're struggling to find people or help them progress, but we fight on! I hope all is well at home. Feel free to ask anything about Paraguay, language, gospel, me, or anything.

I love all of you! 

Have a wonderful day.

Elder Harris

Still No Pics Available

(From December 2nd)

I have so much I want to show all of you! But, I can't upload pictures from the computer I'm at. It's just a wee bit archaic....

Anyways though, this week was interesting. Thanksgiving Day passed by without note, but we did have a solid lesson with our only investigator, Sofìa Ortiz. Unfortunately, she had to go to a family member's birthday which was far away on Sunday, so she couldn't come to church. That was frustrating. Especially since she didn't read the Book of Mormon or pray to know if it's true all weekend! That is the source of testimony! It, and church attendance, is what keeps us going! Note to all: Study the scriptures every day. Pray about them every day. Attend church every week. This is how we feed ourselves spiritually. If it's been a while since you read the Book of Mormon, read it, and every time you do, ask God if what's in there is His word. It's probably one of the best things you can do for your spiritual well-being. It's like the spiritual equivalent of a bodily health cleanse. Do it.

Anyways, this week was fairly uneventful. I have officially finished being trained though! I am now only a Junior Comp, not a trainee. We were frustrated by a lack of attendance in church, even though we're still inviting at least twenty different people every single week. Sigh.

This week, I took too long on some personal emails, so next week, I'm going to write an extra big update and include pics, but this is all the time I have this week! I'm so sorry everyone! But keep on keeping on! Two Christmas packages await me in the office! Thank you so much!

I love you all.

Elder Harris

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!