Semana Santa

Well the tradition in Paraguay for Easter is a little bit different than in the US. They celebrate it in a week called "Semana Santa," it's a catholic tradition so unfortunately it is what they all celebrate here in all parts. They pretty much just eat the food they call Chipa. It in the shape of a donut, but is just the flour from mandioca, with Paraguayan cheese. It is actually pretty good, but they’re a little too obsessed with it here. On Tuesday after our district meeting, my companion started feeling sick. We stayed in the house pretty much the entire week. Unfortunately our phone stopped working at the same time, and so we were completely out of contact with everyone. We were in the house Tuesday until Saturday. 5 days of staying inside. It was kind of a frustrating experience, but if my companion isn’t feeling good enough to go outside, I can’t really tell him that we need to go out and work. Needless to say, I got a good amount of studying done. I read the entire April ensign that had arrived that Tuesday. I also am about to finish the new testament…. I’m in Revelations…. And I started the Book of Mormon again, and I’m in 2nd Nephi 20 or so. I also reviewed two chapters in Preach My Gospel. So pretty much it was good to study, but I didn’t have the attention span to be studying the whole time, so I also felt like we just wasted a lot of time. This week was the least lessons that I have taught in the mission, 10 lessons in the whole week… not so great. Well about the lessons that we did teach this week… We were teaching two younger guys that are members of the seventh day Adventists. We had some pretty good lessons with them on last Sunday and on Tuesday as well. On Tuesday we got to their house, and they said that they had read and prayed, and that they didn’t feel anything. We explained the importance of praying with faith, and that we have to have a sincere heart. My companion invited them to do a prayer on their knees, and they accepted. I felt kind of awkward, and was kind of wondering why my companion was doing that since they had already prayed. I was feeling anxious when we started to pray. Then when they prayed, I just felt a feeling of peace come over me, and the thought popped into my head: “¿porqúe no confias en mi?” (why don’t you trust in me?) It was something that kind of surprised me, and I was thinking about it a lot afterwards. I had not put my trust in the promise of the Book of Mormon that anybody can receive a testimony of the book. I had a lack of confidence, and it had been replaced with anxiousness and fear. It really helped me to realize that I have to trust more in the lord. That I have to have a better confidence in the Book of Mormon, if I want others to come to know that it is true. Yesterday we passed again, and they had their brother come out to “listen” as well. They just wanted to argue with us and try to prove us wrong, and of course with both of us having good time in the mission, and both knowing the Bible pretty well just retorted their scriptures with other scriptures in the Bible. We weren’t getting anywhere more than just defending against what they were saying with the scriptures, and so we both started just sharing our testimony, the only thing that they can’t argue with. They still didn’t want to understand, and just couldn’t understand the fact that they can only know if they ask God. I felt such a strong desire to help them understand what we understand of the gospel, but the hardened their hearts and didn’t want to listen to what the spirit wanted. Well changes are coming up again in a week and a half or so. Meaning that I will not be writing again until Thursday. I’m not sure on the whole calling yet, but I’ll let you know when we find out. Love you guys tons, and hope that you have a fantastic week. I’ll talk to you later. Love, Elder Griffin

My First baptism

Well, this has been a good week here in Acahay. We had the baptism of Mirta, and it was the first time I have performed a baptism. It was pretty cool to be able to have my first time baptizing in a little river here. She was baptized and confirmed this week. She is the one that doesn’t talk, or hear, or read. I’m sure you can imagine how hard it was to try and teach her and interview her. Anyway, she left her boyfriend, and drinking so that she could be baptized, and has been coming to church every Sunday. It is amazing to see the faith of somebody like that. She can’t hear anything, but most important is that she can feel the spirit. It really was uplifting to me to learn that sometimes we don’t have to hear to be able to feel the spirit, and be edified as a person. Also this week, we had our priesthood and relief society class for the first time in this ward. We had to new people ordained to the priesthood. One being José that we recently baptized, and the other was a young man that is 16 years old. We now have 4 others in the priesthood, so it is really awesome seeing the improvement in the branch here were we are serving. On Monday my companion and I got our hair cut. It was a one dollar haircut (5 mil guarani), and quite possibly one of the worst haircuts I’ve had. Although, I think my companion got even worse. Luckily my hair doesn’t look all the bad when I put gel in it, but his is like a bowl cut. I got a package from Dana and Court. Tell them thanks for me! I’ll try to write them a letter, but it will take a couple weeks, so if you can tell them thanks for me it would be faster. On Sunday, we had a really good day. We found 8 new investigators, and taught 10 lessons. We found a lot of people that were really prepared by the lord, and we are really excited to be able to keep teaching them more, and see their progress in the gospel. I sent you some pictures of them, but as you can see, we found a lot of spider in this week. One night when we were opening up the door, I found that tarantula that you can see on the ground. The other tarantula was in our house, my companion threw some poison on it, but it ran behind a thing in our house that we can’t move, so we’re not sure if it actually died. Our house has a lot of little holes that bugs can come into, so we have a lot of crickets. Just about every night one of us wakes up and has to go cricket hunting so that we can actually sleep. Oh and don't worry, it's not our pet monkey. I am now feeling a lot better with my health. It’s really nice to get better from a sickness and all the sudden feel like I have a ton more energy. It makes it a lot easier to work the whole day, and not get so tired. Well, I love you guys tons. Thanks for all your support and advice, and love. I hope everything goes well with you guys, and that you always have the protection from the lord. My prayers are always with you. Love, Elder Griffin

Weeding Paraguayan style

Hola familia, Well this has been an interesting week here in Acahay. Well on Tuesday, my birthday, our cell phone stopped working in our district meeting. We had divisions, and the district leader came to our area with me. On the way to our area in the bus, an American started talking to me. It is a guy named Cameron, who is from Las Angeles. He is in the Peace Corps, and has been here for 6 months. He also is a member of the church, but hasn’t been able to attend church very well. He lives in our area, but about 2 or 3 hours from the chapel. Later, we had the interview of José and it went well. We had to make some calls, so we had to go to a cabin to make some calls and figure out everything with the matrimony on Friday. Later we finally got all that figured out and I went back with my companion. On Thursday, the day before the marriage, we went and did service with José. We went and weeded…. Paraguayan style. We used machetes to cut down the weeds and stuff, it was pretty tough in the heat, but pretty fun. After that we figured out that they had to renew their stuff to get married, so we went to make a call and then returned. When we returned, Liliana, the member was crying. She tried to tell us what happened, but we couldn’t understand her. We took José aside and found out that he had been cutting more, and was tired, so he laid down in some shade. Then she came to look for him, and thought that he was waiting for someone. Anyway, they got in a big argument, and neither one wanted to get married. We talked to José, and had him do a prayer to see if he felt like he needed to get married. He did the prayer, and said that he felt like he did. We then talked to Liliana, and did the same, and she said the same. We then talked to the both of them, and we had them do a “companionship inventory” like what we do here in the mission. It worked really well, and they decided that they would get married. On Friday, at 12 we had the marriage, and then on Saturday José was baptized in the little river in our area. It was quite the stressful baptism, but it went all well in the end. On Sunday, he was confirmed a member of the church. Also on Sunday, I got fevered, and when we went to our house to eat afterwards, I collapsed on the bed and fell asleep. I felt bad the whole day, so we couldn’t go out and work or anything the whole day. After sleeping so much, I feel a ton better now.

Are there any good men in Paraguay?

Well this has been a good week, a little interesting, but pretty good. To explain to you about the meat.... well pretty much all the good meat in paraguay, they export, and then sell the crap for a higher price. So in other words, there is no possible way to get really good meat here in Paraguay, and since my area is in the middle of nowhere, it is even worse. First off, we got a real map of our whole area, instead of just the city of Acahay. It is about 90 kilometers from side to side, in other words we have to take a bus just to get to another part of our area. The area is doing well, we have found a lot of future elders, and familes that we are now teaching. On Wednesday night, we got a call from our district leader telling us that we had interviews in Asunción the next morning at 8. We live a little bit outside of Asunción, so we had to wake up at 3 in the morning, get ready and take the first bus at 4. We got to the office at 8, and had our interviews. The president talked to me about my old companion, and understood everything that had happened there. It was a really good interview, and he helped me a lot with what he said to me about opening our area and everything. We have a lot of work to do with making it so that the ward actually has some families and preisthood holders instead of just women and children. Then on Saturday we went to a city called Paraguarí for the conference. I watched the first two in English and then the last 3 in Spanish. I learned a ton from all the talks. There seemed to be a couple themes that they focused on a little bit more. I feel like I got everything out of it that I was needing. I saw that it had snowed when they showed outside the conference center. On Saturday we went to pull out our money, usually 750.000, and could only pull out 700.000 because apparently the dollar dropped a bunch. The last time I looked it was 4200 guarani to a dollar, when I got here it was 5000 to a dollar. How is the economy over there? It seems like Barack Obama is doing quite well as president.... We had one investigator that came on Sunday to the conference. It was José, the one that is going to be married this Friday, and then baptized Saturday. If they both stay fatihful in the church, I'll be able to enter into the temple with them in a year or so. We have one member in our ward that has 5 children.... all from different fathers. A couple days ago we passed by her house the day after her now x-boyfriend abused her. He had punched her and beat up on her pretty badly, and almost killed her. We were guided there the next day, and talked with her for a while while she told us all the happened. I felt impressed to turn to Doctine and Covenants 121 and explained to her that sometimes we ask god: where art thou? that sometimes we feel alone and lost like Joseph Smith did. She said that she had asked that same exact question the night before, and so I asked her can you read your response from god then? I gave her the book, and slowly and sobbingly she read the two verses that I firmly believe in that time were a direct response to her prayers. We talked a little bit more with her, and helped her feel a lot better, and have more hope. She went to the conference, and seemed to be doing a lot better. After conference, a man stopped us and started talking to us about her. I asked him his name, and it was the same man (if you can call him that) that had beat on the sister. It was hard trying to talk to someone like that when I knew what he had done some nights before. It's really just a sad situation here, the women here in Paraguay just have such a hard time actually finding a decent man that doesn't have problems. Well, anyway, I'm doing well. I'm learning a lot more guarani now, I will probably be able to speak it by the end of my mission. We are having good success in our area, and everything is going well. We fixed our oven, and bought some things to be able to use the microwave. We are eating a lot better than we did the first week here. Well i hope everything is going well with you all. I love you tons. I'll talk to you next week! -Elder Ryan Griffin

Learning Guarani

I am glad to hear that you are focusing on the less actives more. Really it is the duty of the wards. The wards here blame the missionaries for the inactivity in the wards, but our job as missionaries should just be to teach and baptize the people and let the wards focus on retention. Unfortunately here, we have to do the both, as well as many times pretty much serve as the bishop. There really are so many families that just need more support from the members so that they can return to the church again. Our area is... very interesting. We are literally in the middle of nowhere. Every direction that I look in our area I just see trees. We are about an hour away from all other cities. Our area is pretty small, the actual city anyway. We have to walk a lot, because there are streets that just go out in the fields and stuff. The people here speak pretty much just Guarani..... If they speak spanish, they don't understand it very well. Anyway, we've been studying a lot in Guarani to be able to communicate with the people, and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to speak it pretty well by the end of my time here in this area. Our church started an hour late, and so we just skipped preisthood, and had sunday school, and then sacrament meeting. The entire meeting was in just Guarani... so I didn't really understand all that much, and had a headache after trying to listen for a while. Our ward pretty much consists of a family machuca and all of their relatives. There are pretty much just women and children in the ward, adn almost all of the women are breaking the law of chastity. We have one man that was recently baptized, our investigator that is going to be baptized the 9th, and the branch president that is from a different area. There were 28 that attended, so pretty much all women and children. The branch is pretty much just a big mess, so we have a lot of work to do. Most of the people just don't really understand the gospel. Our problem is that almost all of them are single women with children, and our mission has a rule that we don't teach single women, and we don't have men to go with us. Anyway besides the ward we are doing really well. We found a lot of good investigators, and have been working really well. We have two investigators that went to chuch. One is the boyfriend of the member that has a baptizmal date. The other is a women that is deaf and can't speak. It has been quite difficult to try and teach her, but she wants to be baptized, so we are doing everything that we can. The people in this area are even more poor than in other parts of Paraguay. The typicial person lives on about 10 mil guarani every day, which is the equivelent of 2 dolars. It's really sad to see the poverty here, and the biggest problem is that there are so many single women with lots of children. They find a boyfriend, and have more children, and then the guy leaves them, and so on... There is pretty much no such thing as chastity here. Well anyway, things are going better, we are now able to cook better, and we are good and safe in our house. I hope all is going well with you guys, my prayers are with you dad, I know you will do a fantastic job. I know that God called you there for a god reason and that you will bless the lives of many people as the bishop of our ward. I love you guys, and thank you for the letters. Hasta luego. -Elder Ryan Griffin

Acahay

Well it has been a good week. Thank you for your prayers on my behalf. On Monday last week I was feeling a little bit fevered on the p-day. The next day I woke up with muscle pains in my back and legs, and a splitting headache. I took my temperature, and it was at 101. We went to the district meeting and I felt even worse when we got back. I was kind of frustrated with other things, and got a little bit down. I knew it says in my Patriarchal blessing that I would be protected from sickness and injury so that my work won't be inturrupted, so I was starting to wonder why i was getting sick so much. I decided to get down on my knees, and ask heavenly father that he could help me through it, and that I would be able to work. We went out after lunch, and went to a couple of appointments. It was hot and I was still feeling sick. Then we had planned to go to a young man that we had contacted a while ago, and we found him in his house for the first time. We taught him the first lesson and set a baptismal date with him. After the lesson, I felt completely fine, no headache or anything. I know that it was a miracle, and that the Lord was waiting for me to put his faith in him. Had I decided not to go out and work, we probably never would have found or talked to him, and I would have still been sick. It really helped me strengthen my faith, and have more trust in the Lord. The next Tuesday we recieved the changes. I left El Alto, and I'm now in an area called Acahay, which is an area that has been closed for a while now. So I got sent to open an area, and my companion is Elder Watson who has 1 year 3 months in the mission. He is from California, so my first American companion, finally! The town we are in is literally in the middle of nothing. There is just forest and fields surrounding our area. We didn't know any of the members, nor where the house was or anything for that matter. The only thing they gave us is the number of the district leader here. They sent us off on a collectivo, after waiting for 3 hours in the terminal, and went on a bus for 3 more hours. We got off the bus and luckily we were right by a taxi stop. We got in a taxi, and after 45 minutes of driving around found our house. We unpacked a little bit, and then went out to work at 3 or so. We only had a big map, so we couldn't bring it with us, and had to just wing it. We called the district leader who gave us the number of a member that lives here. We called them, and miraculously found their house. We talked with them a little bit, and then she sent her son to show us some other people in the area. We met a couple other members, and one of them told us that her sisters boyfriend has gone to church and wants to be baptized. We went over to that house, and taught them a lesson, and set a baptismal date. He has already attended twice, and they want to be married. She is a member, and he wants to be baptized. He has already read almost all of Principles of the Gospel, because he didn't have a Book of Mormon. We then went to a less active family that have a daughter, and a friend that both want to be baptized. We literally were guided in the day by the spirit, considering the fact that we knew absolutely nothing about the area. We had a great first day, and then returned to the house after buying some stuff to cook. The office gave us a new refrigerator, which was nice. Unfortunately our oven they gave us doesn't work, so we thought about using the microwave. Well, unfortunately they also didn't give us anything to use in the oven. All we have is a microwave, a pot, some utincels, two plates, and 1 glass (they broke the other 3). Anyway, I got the package with the changes, and so needless to say, I have been living off of the cookies for a day now, because we can't cook anything. Thank you for sending the package..... with like 15 cookies. They gave us old matresses, and mine is terrible, and it was hard to sleep. We have no airconditioning, the heater in the shower is broken..... well pretty much everything they gave us is broken, or at least really really old. Regarless I know that everything will work out, and the Lord will help us with what we need. My companion is awesome, he is obedient, and happy. I feel like I have gone from one end of the spectrum to the other with companions. All the sudden I am more happy, and feel a lot better about the work. I am excited to work in this area, and know that the Lord will help us with whatever we need. I haven't taken any pictures yet, but I will try and send some by the next p-day. I love you guys, and hope that all is going well in the house. I hit 9 months in the mission yesterday.... I can't believe how fast the time goes by in the mission. I'll talk to you guys on Monday, and let you know how it's going in the area.

Trunky companion

Hola familia, ¿Que tal? Well this week has been a little bit rough again. I am just ready to get a change finally in a week. The problem is that my companion is more and more trunky every day, and has less and less desire to work in the day. I honestly feel like I am companions with Satan sometimes.... He is just really negative, and it makes it hard to stay positive. Not to mention the fact that we can't keep investigators for more than a week, so we have to walk around looking for pèople a lot. Anyway, I am still trying to keep going and finish out this change, but it has definitely been a trial. I have been kind of down with the fact that I have only had 1 baptism in three changes with a companion that is so challenging. this week though I have really realized that I have been with him for a reason, and that even though I haven't had a whole lot of fruits in the changes, I have definitely planted a lot of seeds. I have been reading Jesus the Christ a lot, and I read about the parabol of the (sembrador?) I'm not sure what it is in English. Anyway, it's the one about the 4 types of soil where the seeds fall. I've been thinking a lot that as missionaries we are the planters of the seeds, but we can't choose the type of soil, nor can we force the tree to grow. All we can do is do our part to nourish it, and have the faith that it will grow to bear fruits. Although I haven't seen a whole lot of fruits yet during my mission, I honestly feel like I am working as hard as I can to plant the seeds and nourish them. I have done all of my part to help the people, and maybe my roll as a missionary isn't as much a harvester, but rather a planter of the seeds. Although it has been hard working so much without seeing many fruits, I know that the Lord is testing my faith, and that as long as I keep working, the Lord will do what's best. Although my faith has failed many times during these changes, and I have felt negative at times, I know that I just need to keep moving forward, and be the best missionary I can be. This week the weather has been changing a little bit, it's finally cooling down slowly. It makes it a lot easier to work when it's a little bit colder, because I don't sweat so much. I have gained a little bit of weight, I'm now at 160 or so, about 20 pounds in one year.... not too bad. Pretty much all my pants are a little tight aroung the waist now, but don't worry, I'm not really fat, I'm just not skinny now. I am still the same height, my hair is a little lighter colored now, and my skin.... well not so much. Pretty much all of my clothes are in pretty good shape, the shirts aren't exactly white now, but they aren't too terrible yet. My Spanish, after 5 changes with only Latinos, as you can imagine is getting pretty much fluent now. I actually have to use easier words in the lessons now, because the people here don't speak very well. There are about 3 Americans to 1 Latino in the mission, so it's a good chance that I won't be with another Latin this next change, but I just hope that I get somebody that actually wants to work. The mission has gotten a little bit more strict now. They want us to already be out on the streets at 10 (so without Language Study, even though in Preach my Gospel it says we should study it every day) and they told us we only have 20 minutes to eat, and 10 minutes to share a message with the people. They want us to count every second of the day that our "line is in the water," or in other words whenever we are talking to people. I understand their purpose in doing it, but I think it's kind of wierd to be timing our contacts and our lessons..... Anyway, it's kind of tough sometimes, because the president gives us rules sometimes that are against what it says in Preach My Gospel, and I want to be obedient, but I don't know which one I should follow. Preach my gospel is from the apostles, but it also says that we should obey the president..... kind of a tricky situation.... Well, anyway, wish Taylor a happy Birthday for me, since I won't be able to talk to you guys till the 24. I love you guys, and I hope that all is well in the house. I'll talk to you in a week and a half. -Elder Griffin