Well, as you know we had changes this week. Me and my companion got a change. Elder Richard got shipped out to another area, and I'm staying here in my area for my last change. That'll be 5 changes in total in one area. My new companion is Elder Stephenson, from Nampa, Idaho. He has a year in the mission, so he is a little older than my last companion. He is really cool, and we get along really well so far.
So on Tuesday we got the changes, and my companion and I went around so he could say goodbye to the people. Basically the whole day was spent doing that, so it was pretty boring.... Then wednesday I got my new companion, and we worked in our area.
On Thursday, we finally got to do a service project with a member. His house is like a 30 minute walk from our house, and half way out, my companion realized he had forgotten a change of clothes. We were already a little bit late, so we just went anyway, and I ended up getting to dig a meter deep whole, basically by myself, and my comp got stuck carrying the buckets to go dump out the dirt. It was awesome to actually get a little bit of some manual labor going finally. It's been a while since I've been able to do some hard work in that sense. I'm glad I got lots of practice for that back home with all our digging and stuff in the yard. It was really good getting that done. Later that night, I had to go to another area, to do an interview for a baptism. We were on the freeway waiting for the bus to come, and all the sudden a beaten old truck starts pulling over, and this crazy looking dude just told us to get in his car. We were both kind of sceptical, seeing as we didn't know the guy, and he looked slightly insane, or drunk or something. Then we both just shrugged, and opened the door to the car. There was only one seat, so we got to share that, and I got stuck right on the shifter...... yeah awkward situation when your with a crazy guy. We started going, and I asked the guy how he was, to which he replied "lots of women." Me and my comp just looked at each other, and then he asked, ok, well what is your name. He replied, "there are a lot of them, there's 5 different women." We started kind of wondering what was going on, and then I asked ok, well where are you going to? He said "lots of women." Me and my companion both got a little worried, thinking he was going to take us to a whore house or something at that point. Then I decided to change the theme. I asked him, how is your relationship with Jesus Christ in your life. Then he finally started being half way normal. He said he goes to the Catholic church, and that he already follows Jesus in his life. We conversed for a couple minutes, and then we got to our destination. I left him a law of Chastity pamphlet. Later, the interview went really well. It was a 16 year old kid, and he is really mature. It was a really spiritual interview.
On Friday, after lunch, we went ot Oscar, the one we have been teaching for a while. He had us sit down outside, and then went in to get something. Right as we sat down, a pretty big bug flew right into my eye. When it hit, my natural reaction was to close my eye, so it got stuck in between my eye lids. I tried to get it out, and then all the sudden my eye started burning like crazy. I finally got a hold of the bug, and threw it, and then I ran in Oscar's house, and asked them for some water to wash out my eye. I sat there for about 15 minutes just trying to splash water on it, trying to take away the pain. The pain went down a little bit, and we went back out front, and I kept splashing water on it for about an hour. I got a hold of the mission nurse, and she told me to go to our house, and rinse the eye with purified water. For thirty minutes, we walked to get back to the house, me with just one eye working. We finally got there, and rinsed it out with water good. It was already swollen and miscolored pretty good. Afterwards we went out and started working again. We went to Reinaldo and Silvia, and they asked what happened. I told them, and they told me that all I had to do to make it better, was put breast milk in my eye...... Then they asked if we knew anyone who was feeding...... We just said no, and then, he told his wife to go over to the neighbors house to go get some to put in my eye. Before I realized what was going on, She was coming back, and literally had a cap full of breast milk she had just brought from her neighbors house. I know you're probably thinking right now, "don't tell me you put that in your eye." Don't you worry, I was not going to allow that to be placed in my eye. They tried to convince me to do it, but we left their house, my eye being breast milk free. Crazy Paraguayan remedies.....
So on Saturday, I woke up, and low and behold, my eye was swollen up like a golf ball. Ok, well not the eye itself, but the skin around it. I could hardly even open my eye because it was so swollen up. I called the nurse again, and she gave me a prescription, and I have been taking that, but my eye is still swollen and I can't even open it at all...... no just kidding, don't worry mom, I'm perfectly fine now. The eye is back to normal, and I can see just fine. Lesson learned though, don't let Paraguayan bugs pee in your eye..... it hurts.
I also got a call from some elders in my district on Friday, they told me that they had found a dead man, and that they didn't know what to do. They wanted to know if they should call the cops or not. Yeah, that was a good surprise, that one wasn't in my manual. Well, turns out that a lot of the people told them that they shouldn't call the cops, because then they would become suspects, so I just told them to tell someone else to call the cops....... crazy stuff that happens here in Paraguay.
Well, on the whole missionary work side of things, We had a lot of distractions, and stuff that happened, so not a whole lot happened this week. We did find a seventh day adventist guy, just so happened we found him on Saturday (their sabbath day). We sat down and talked to him, and of course he brought up the whole seventh day first day argument. We just brushed passed it pretty smoothly, and actually had a pretty good lesson with him. We have another appointment with him today, we'll see how that goes.
We also had a lesson with this guy that is named Úbaldo. He was committed to go to church, and on Saturday, we passed by and he said he just can't do it, he doesn't want to change churches. He told us he knows that the Catholic church (where he attends) is false. He told us they are the decendent of those that killed Jesus. He also made a reference to them as the biggest parasite upon the earth. And yet, he doesn't want to change churches. Yeah, I don't really understand it either. Crazy stuff.
Well, things are going pretty good, we're having a little bit of a hard time in the area right now, but this week is a new week, so we're going to change things up here.
Love you guys tons, and hope all is going well. Have a great week. Congratulations on the 50th Dad. Love you guys
Elder Ryan Griffin
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