16 April, 2012

Elders on Bikes

Well, this week has been really good. We have seen a lot of miracles in our area, and things are really starting to pick up. We are seeing the hand of God work in our behalf here, and we are both doing really well. I'm actually writing you from Asuncion right now. We had to travel here for an operation. Don't worry though, I'm fine. My companion is the one that had to be operated. He had an ingrown toenail that was getting pretty bad. We left our house at two in the morning, and after 8 hours on a bus(there was only indirect ones at that time) we finally got to the office. The operation was fine, they just cut his toenail a little bit, and now he should be alright.

We now have bikes in our area. Some other elders in the district had them, and weren't using them, so we were able to take them to our place, and now we use them to go out to a part of our area that is like a 30 minute walk. It's saved us a lot of time this week. The only problem, is that the roads here are all cobble-stone, and so it's not exactly the most comfortable to ride them. On top of that the seat is hard as a rock, and they don't have any shocks. Can't complain though, it beats walking that far. It is really weird riding a bike after so long though, it just feels weird not to walk. We don't use them all that much, only every other day to get out to Ca'acupemi, and then we leave them at a member's house. The people in our area just can't get over the fact that we are using bikes, because they always just see us walking around everywhere. Now when they see us they yell, "hey look, the Mormons are using bikes now!"

Well, the long dry streak is over finally. After 5 months now, I finally got to see a baptism again. We had the baptism of Miriam on Saturday. My companion baptized her, and everything went over pretty well. The only problem was that all the people that said they were going to come, didn't. We only had her family there, which was a little disappointing. Other than that, it went well, and she got confirmed. We made a cake, and all the people really liked it. It was a jello-cake, new innovation for them.

On Sunday, we had a miraculous turnout.... of investigators anyway. We had 8 investigators in the meeting. I think that was the most I have ever had. The attendance was 45, so the members were really surprised, and now the branch president is actually getting excited, he sees that we are going to be baptizing a bunch here, so they realize now that they gotta start getting stuff going. Oscar came again. We have been teaching him a lot. He is trying to stop smoking and drinking. We did a fast with him on Saturday, and he didn't smoke any cigarettes during that time. He has a baptismal date for this Saturday, but we are thinking he still needs another week. We also had Clarise there, the sister of Miriam. She is 9, and so we are still waiting on her baptism until she has more support from the parents. Right now she has a date for the 28. Their dad came, but the mom is not really caring at all. She did come to the baptism at least. We also had a family of 5 that came. Renaldo and Silvia, and their son, and 2 nieces. They are progressing really well, and have a baptismal date for the 5th of May. We have been finding some really good people as well, so right now we are having the potential to start baptizing almost every week in our area. It would really be a miracle if we can pull that off seeing as in the last two years, this area has had 6 baptisms.

We get to spend the rest of our p-day on a bus for at least another 6 hours to get back to cuidad del Este, that'll be really fun. We are both doing really well, still getting along well and everything. That's about the gist of what has happened this week. It's been a little rainy, and has cooled down a little bit. One of the only three active men in our ward, and the one with a car just got divorced with his wife(non-member) and no longer lives in our ward..... that definitely didn't help us a ton. Well, that's all for this week. Love you guys tons and hope you all have a great week. Until next time, hasta luego.

Elder Ryan Griffin

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