Down by the River

Cockroache infestation

Well this week has been another difficult week, but a week that I have learned a lot.

On Tuesday, we had a district meeting, about an hour away from our area. We got on a bus, but it was the wrong one, so we sat on there for about an hour and a half, and then finally got to the meeting. After that we did splits with the district leader and his companion, who was in my district in the MTC. I went with the one that was in my district, and the district leader went with my companion. During the day, it started out clear and hot, then a cloud came, it poured for a little while, and then was sunny again. Then a little while later, it did the same thing, and finally did it again during the day. Three times of rain and then getting hot and humid, quite the interesting mix. We taught some really good lessons with a couple of the investigators from their area, and then the next day I returned to my area. During the week we only taught 25 lessons, but we found a lot of really good investigators.

One investigator we found is named Ramon. He is atheist, but not strongly atheist. He basically just doesn't really believe that there is a God. We talked to him, and left him with a Book of Mormon, and left him with Alma 22 to read. We told him to pray for confirmation that there is a God, and then to pray about the things that we had taught him. We still haven't had a chance to talk with him again, but we are going to go back there today or tomorrow.

Another family that we found is the Family Benitez. The husband had an accident with a machine, and only has 2 fingers on his right hand. He also can't see out of his right eye. Anyway, we taught him, and his wife, and daughter (in her 30's). At the end of the lesson, they asked us, "how can we get one of these books?" We of course gave them the Book of Mormon, and left them with the challenge to read it. After that we ended with a prayer, and the daughter prayed, while she was thinking of something she was thankful for, her dad said "and this book". I'm excited to return to see how it went with them today.

This week I've really been thinking a lot, because I have been so focused on the numbers. Sometimes I am just teaching the lessons, and doing the things to get a number, and nothing else. I have really been thinking about the fact that I need to focus more on the people. The numbers are to help the people progress, not the other way around. I also was praying for help this week, because I just have felt like I was doing everything in vain. Today during my personal study, I ran across a scripture in Corinthians that says something to the effect of "when you are in the work of the Lord, your work is never in vain" It really helped me to realize, that as long as I am trying to work as hard as I can, the things that I'm doing aren't in vain.

This week was the "birthday" of the virgin of Caucupe, on the 8th. The Catholics here worship the virgin Mary, and on the 8th, there was almost nobody in the streets or anything, because they were all in Caucupe to worship their dolls. It really is amazing to see the power that Satan has down here in Paraguay, that he can blind people into thinking that we have to worship the mother of Christ, and break the 1st commandment. The people here are really just blinded with ignorance, and our main goal is to help them start thinking for themselves....

Also this week we had a zone conference with President, and Hermana Callan. It was a really good conference, and I feel like I learned a lot from the things that they talked about during it. We also received calendars with pictures of all the Elders on it. Also I got some more name tags that I ordered a while back, so now I have one in Guarani.

We have had a problem with the cockroaches for a while in this apartment, and so we bought some poison stuff to kill them. They have this nest that is behind the counters, and we always find them when we get in the house after the day. We sprayed it all over in the spot that we knew where they were, not knowing if it was going to work very well or not. After that we were standing in the kitchen talking for a little bit. In literally about 2 minutes, the cockroaches started leaving from their nest, and we started killing them. After about 30 minutes or so of killing them, they finally all had come out (or at least we hope so). In total we killed literally about 70 cockroaches that came out of there, quite a nasty experience, but at least now we don't have to live with all those. I took a picture of it, but my camera battery is dead, so I can't send the picture that I took of it, but there was literally a pile of cockroaches by the end.

Well thank you for the support and the love that I always have from you all. It always makes it easier to work the rest of the week after reading your letters. I hope all is going well with you, and the pups.... and that you are all healthy and well. I love you all, and look forward to being able to talk to you for a little while on Christmas. Take care, and let me know about the time of calling next week.

-Elder Ryan Griffin

It is hot and getting hotter

Hey family!
Sorry that I wrote the whole letter last week in Spanish, I was going to write a letter to Taylor, and then to you, but I ended up not having enough time to do it. I told Taylor to translate it for you though.
This week has been one of the harder weeks of the mission, but also one of the weeks that I have learned the most about myself, and strengthened my testimony. I have been sick with a stomachache and a headache almost all of this week. We went out and worked every day of the week anyway. It was difficult working this week, because I didn’t feel very good, and didn’t have very much energy to walk all day. This week I started feeling how hot is going to be getting here. We had a day in the 40´s Celsius. I think that is like 104 Fahrenheit. On top of that the humidity here is ridiculous. Apparently underneath Paraguay is one of the largest amounts of water in the world, and for that reason, if it is hot, it is also humid. During the days that we are walking, my shirt gets completely drenched in sweat; it never even got this hot in Texas when I was there. Also the weather here is completely unpredictable, it can be perfectly clear, and then in literally ten minutes clouds come and it starts pouring rain. Other days when it looks like it’s going to rain, we bring our umbrellas, and of course those days it doesn’t rain. When it does rain, it is literally like a flash flood, and when we don’t have our umbrellas, it’s practically taking a shower with our clothes on. The streets always fill up with water, and there are literally rivers that we have to go through to get back to our pension.
This week, we were doing our personal study (Elder Merrill and I; my companion and the other one from Ecuador just talk during personal study) and the elders from Villa Elisa got a call, Elder Paledines(the companion of Elder Merrill) answered it and it was the president, he said he wanted to come and talk to his companion, and that he would be there in 40 minutes. Of course we hurried and cleaned up the apartment, and then started our companion study. President came in and talked to us a little bit before he left. Apparently Elder Merrill´s father has liver cancer, and was going in for an operation, and so president came to tell him.
Also this week it rained like crazy on the morning of Sunday, for the second week in a row. We had only 15 members that came to church, we started with only 7. Once again none of our investigators came to church, and so the 4 baptismal dates fell again. I don’t know if it’s a lack of faith on their part, or on ours, but we are trying everything to help them go to church. I think part of it is that we aren't teaching clearly enough the importance of going to church.
Anyway, now I am not feeling so sick, and at least I know that this week can't be any worse than this last week. Also we have a conference for Christmas this Friday with President Callan and his wife.
I love you all, and I will talk to you again next week. Hope everything is going well, and that you are all healthy and well.
-Elder Ryan Griffin

Wow a whole letter in Spainsh

Taylor, (this is a translation of a letter Elder Griffin wrote in spanish. The original letter follows this one).

(how are you?) Thank you for the letter, I now know how to understand spanish better than when I was in the M.T.C. It is surprising the gifts of the spirit that we an receive as members of the church. I do not have a doubt that the Lord helped me to learn so quickly. There is no way to learn a language like this in less than three months without the help of the Lord. We spoke about the gifts of the spirit this last week in Priesthood, and I realized that during the mission, We are very close to God. and we receive many blessings from Him. If we only could remain faithful we could always receive the gifts God wants to give us. There are many things that I have been learning here in the mission. It is sad to see that there are many inactive members here(I am guessing it was the same in your mission) In almost all of Paraguay, there are 10% of the members that attend church each week. When it rains, there are only about 5% that show. I began to think alot about this..why so many people don't go to church. The truth is, I think there is one reason...it is because they don't read the holy scriptures every day. With each less active member with whom I have spoken, Their inactivity started with the same thing of not reading the scriptures. It is like Lehis dream that the iron rod is the word of God, if we study it each day we will not fall. I desire to help the Lords converts better understand this. Because I don't want them to fall away from the church after they are baptized. The two girls that were baptized a few weeks ago, are not attending church, and it is very difficult because I feel responsible for not teaching them clearly enough. I don't want this to be a problem during my mission. I don't feel like I am helping people if they fall from the church after their baptism. but it is impossible at times to know the impact I am having as a missionary. I am praying each day for the guidance of God to know how I can know what to do better to help these people.

I am always in agreement with that, that the most difficult times are the best times. The days that we are tested to the limit, are the days that we grow the most. It is still hard to have a great attitude during these hard times. I am very grateful for the oppurtunity to serve a mission. I have grown in knowledge, testimony, I have matured...I don't know if I have grown in height. but I know that I still have alot to learn before I finish my mission. I cannot believe that I already have been out five months.

Yeah, I heard you have a girlfriend, I still have not seen a picture. I am happy that you have found someone, and I hope she is a good girl for you. The girl that I was going-out with has not written me during my mission. I feel that that is better, I can now be more focused in the mission.

Take care of yourself. I hope to hear from you again.

ELDER GRIFFIN

Querido hermano mio,

Mb'ateko? (¿como estas?) Muchas gracias para la carta, ahora yo puedo entenderlo mejor que cuando estaba en el CCM.... Es sombroso los dones del Espíritu que podamos recibir como miembros de la iglesia. No tengo ninguna duda de que el Señor me ayudó para aprenderlo tan rapido. No hay una manera en que yo pude aprender un idioma así en menos que tres meses sin la ayuda de Dios. Hablamos sobre los dones del Espíritu en el Sacerdocio la semana pasada, y me dí cuenta que durante el mission, estamos muy cerca al Dios, y recibimos muchas bendiciones de Él. Sí solamente podemos siempre permanecer fiel así para que siempre podamos recibir estas dones que Dios quiere darnos. Hay muchas cosas que he sido aprendiendo aquí en la mision. Es triste para ver que hay tantos miembros inactivos aquí (supongo que fue mismo en su mision). En casi todo de Paraguay, hay un decimo parte de todos los miembros que asisten a la iglesia cada semana. Cuando llueve, es mas como 5 por ciento de las personas. Empezé de pensar mucho en eso, porque hay tantos personas que no van a la iglesia. En verdad, pienso que es de una razón.... que no leen las escritoras sagradas cada día. Con cada menos activo que he hablado, siempro empezó con la misma cosa, dejar de leer las Escrituras. Es como el sueno de Lehi, que la Barra de Hierro es la palabra de Dios, si lo estudiamos cada día, no vamos a caer. Yo deseo que puedo ayudar mis conversos para entender esto mejor, porque no quiero que caen de la iglesia inmediatamente después de su bautismo. Las dos chicas que bautizamos algunas semanas atras ya han dejado de asistir a la iglesia, y es muy dificil, porque siento que es mi culpa por no enseñarles bastante claro.... yo no quiero que esta es una problema en toda mi mision.... yo no siento que estoy ayudando personas si caen de la iglesia después de su bautismo, pero es imposible a veces para saber. Estoy orando cada día para la guia de Dios para saber que puedo hacer mejor para ayudar las personas mejor.

Es muy interesante en la mision para ver que hay tantos misioneros disobedientes. Por ejemplo, ahora en nuestra pension tenemos 4 elderes, 2 de Utah, y 2 de Ecuador. El elder de ecuador(no mi compañero) siempre roba mi comida.... es muy dificil, porque todos recibimos la misma plata, pero, el lo gasta, y por eso siempre no tiene comida en el fin de la mes. Siempre esta robando mi comida..... y ya no recibimos mucho. Tambien el y mi compañero siempre quieren hablar durante el estudio comañerismo, y entonces, muchas veces, no lo tenemos. El parte mas dificil, es que mi compañero es muy negativo..... siempre esta diciendo que los miembros son terrible, y que no tenenmos buenos investigadores, y cosas así que no me gusta. No obstante, esto tratando de disfrutarlo, el generalmente esta dispuesto a trabajar cuando salimos de la casa, y por eso no es tan mal.

Siempre yo he estado en acuerdo con esto, que los tiempos dificiles son los mejores. Los días en que estamos probado al limite, es cuando crecimos lo mas. A veces todavía es dificil para tener buen animo durante estas situationes. Yo siento tan agradecido para tener la oportuninidad a servir una mision. He crecido en conocimiento, y testimonio, madurez (no sé si he crecido en estatura) pero sé tambien que todavía tengo mucho mas para aprender antes que termino mi mision. No puedo creer que ya tengo 5 meses en la mision, pasa demasiado rapído.

Si, ya escuché que tiene una novia, pero todavía no he visto una photo. Estoy feliz que ya ha encontrado alguien, y espero que ella es una chica buena para usted. La chica que estaba citando no me ha escrito en todo mi mision, pero pienso que es mejor, porque puedo enfocar mejor sin esta distración en mi vida.

No tenía tiempo para escribir a usted y a madre y a padre, entonces puede decirles a traducirlo, o usted lo traduce por ellos? Gracias hermano, te quiero, y espero que todo vaya bien en su vida.

Cuidense, y espero que le escucho otra vez.

-Elder Griffin

Gotta get the investigators married

Hey,
That’s crazy to see how much snow we have there in Utah. We have pretty much the opposite here in Paraguay. Almost every day is hot. It rains every once in a while, which just makes it more hot and humid. This week it’s been pretty hot, and I’m getting a nice tan, and haven´t been burned yet. Right now I’m darker than half the natives here, well my arms and face are anyway. I have some major tan lines already that are just worse and worse every day. One where my collar is, and the other where my sleeve ends.
This week has been a good week. It definitely wasn’t one of our best weeks, but we found a couple of new investigators that we are now teaching.
One of the new investigators that we have now is named Ramon. He is about 14 or so, and we found him a couple days back. We taught him this week, and for the first lesson that we taught him we set a baptismal date for the 18 of December. We left him with the commitment to read and to pray, and we are going to return tomorrow. Also he knows a member that is about his age that lives a couple houses up, so we are going to bring this member with us the next time so that he can help him go to church and everything.
Also this week we have continued teaching Miguel and Paula. Miguel has completely stopped drinking, as far as he has told us, and seems to be doing better. The problem with them right now is that they still are not married, and as of right now don’t have the desire to get married. We have talked to them multiple times about matrimony to try and help them, but usually it ends up in a fight, and they just say the things that the other one needs to change before they get married. We are going to bring a couple from our ward this week to talk to them, because obviously we have absolutely no experience with marriage.
Also this Sunday we talked to our bishop about doing Ward council. In our zone conference, and everything they are pushing really hard to start doing ward council more in the wards. We talked to him about doing it every other week, like the presidency has asked all wards. We are constantly trying to get our leaders here to do stuff, because they are always really lazy, but we are trying to support them, and show that we are here to help them, not to be a burden. We want to start doing ward council so that we can actually involve the ward more in the work. Out here it feels more often that we constantly have to beg and plead the members to give us references, accompany us for lessons…. And we want to have it so that the ward has more of a desire to help the missionaries. We have one leader, the 2nd councilor that does pretty much everything in the ward. He does all the responsibilities of the bishop, he just lacks the calling. Anyway, he is helping us a lot to talk to the bishop, and start working more efficiently with the wards here.
My companion right now is….. interesting. He is one of those missionaries that wants to have fun on the mission, and sometimes just doesn’t know when it’s enough. He is usually willing to work if I tell him lets go or whatever. It’s kind of frustrating, because I just find myself getting annoyed with him a lot, so it’s hard to feel unity. Anyway, he is good at teaching when he is serious, and he is willing to work when I push him along a little bit. For the most part he knows really well how to be effective in the days and use our time wisely. Although it’s difficult sometimes, I am trying to learn to love him so that we can have unity and not impede the spirit from teaching the people.
Anyway, love you guys, and I'll talk to you later. Thank you for everything.
Elder Ryan Griffin

Elder Cow?

Hola otra vez mi familia,

This week has been a good week again. Elder Gutiérrez already had 4 changes in this area, and so of course we had a change. He went to Cuidad del Este, and left 2 days ago. I now have a new companion, named Elder Vaca, or in English.... Elder Cow. He is from Ecuador.... the third native companion in a row. The other elder in the same apartment as us had a change as well. We now have two elders from Ecuador, and two from Utah. The other elder from utah has 3 changes, one more than me, and he is from Layton, his name is Elder Merrill. Anyway my companion has 1 year and 5 months in his mission, a little bit more than my last companion. He is a great elder so far, and speaks a little different than the people here, but for the most part I can understand him.

Also this week we had our zone conference with Elder Foster of the 70. He is the area president here in Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay. Him, his wife, and the callans all spoke to us during about 3 or so hours. Elder Foster talked to us about this mission. In the past 5 years or so in this are of the three countries, the attendance of members has decreased by 3000, but the baptisms have increased the membership constantly. The problem here is that we constantly are having oler members stop attending, and a lot of the converts stop going to church. We talked about how we need to start doind ward council every other week so that we can start keeping the members in the church, and keep the converts active. The president had all the stake presidents have meetings with the bishops to train them about ward council and everything, unfortunately our bishop in our ward was too busy to attend the meeting.... so we have to train him on how to do it. The other problem, is that he is not all the excited to start doing it. Anyway, we talked a lot about how much the mission is struggling, and that we need to start increasing the memberships and everything else here.

This week I have to know all the investigators and members and the routes of all the collectivos, and all that good old stuff after being here for 6 weeks. Our area is huge, and I still haven´t even seen about half of it, but I know where all of our investigators live, and all the members, and everything pretty well. It's kind of weird having to be in charge of it for now, because my companion doesn´t know any of the people, so i have to pretty much teach the lesson.

The investigators are doing pretty good for the most part.....

Miguel and Paula- They still have to get married before they can be baptized. She wants to be baptized, and he kind of does. The problem is that they don't want to get married. they have four children, so we can't try to seperate them either. Every time we try to bring up marriage, they start to argue, and say that they don´t want to get married until the other one changes. we have tried just about everything that we can think of to help them to want to get married, but honestly can´t figure out what to do. We are constantly praying for guidance that we need with them, and I know that if it is the will of the Lord, that we will find something to help them

Jorge and Ruth- They are a couple that we found more recently. Ruth is the cousin of the two girls that we baptized a little while back, and she attended their baptism. She told us she really liked the baptism, and that it was all really good. She attends some evangelical church, but hasn't been baptized. We have taught them a couple of times now. Jorge is Catholic, or in other words he attends the catholic church sometimes. He has told us that the catholic church does a lot of bad things that are against the bible, but that he thinks that they are the only churhc that teaches true doctrine. Of course we responded that the doctrine of a church is the things that they do and the things that they teach, not just the things they teach. We also told him that the true church of Jesus Christ should not have anything contrary to the teachings of Christ, or have any bad fruits (Matt. 8) Anyway we committed them to pray about the Book of Mormon (they had already read the part we had left earlier) Tee next time we returned they had done it, but they told us that they didn't feel anything. She however told us that she thinks our church is true, and that she feels good when we teach them and when she reads the Book of Mormon. I think that part of the problem, is that Jorge doesn't want to recieve the answer that the church is true, but we are still working with them to try and help them to gain the testimony they need

We have another one named Jonny, who has read and prayed, and is great. All we need to do with him right now is have him attend church. He works a lot, so it is hard to do that part, but we are trying to find a time that he can come to church when he doesn’t have to work. Other than that, there is a whole lot of new stuff that has happened. Everything is going really well, and I still haven’t been sick yet. Spanish is going fantastic, the president and Elder Foster complimented me on my Spanish during the zone conference, although it’s not really thanks to anything that I did. It really is amazing to see how the gifts of the spirit are manifested during our misisons. I cna not believe how fast Spanish came, and how much stuff I could remember from the little bit of Spanish that I had in Junior high. I have started studying Guarani now, becuase there is a book of Guarani in our apartment. But I haven’t learned a whole lot yet. It is a lot harder because you have to use your nose to speak. I hope that I can learn it before i’m done with my mission so that I can bear my testimony in Guarani.

Elder Ryan Griffin

Baptism Pics