Ok, sorry, i thought that we weren´t going to be able to email today, but it turns out that i was wrong. Well first things first, I cannot read or reply to emails from anyone but immediate family and grandparents. The only way that I can read the letters from Aleni and Tyler and Kip or any others is if you send them to me via dearelder. Our mission president asked us to only use the email for immediate family, and if we get emails from others, not to read them.
This week has been good, as I said before we got to go to the temple today. It is beautiful inside, but is a little bit smaller than most I have seen. We went through a session of endowments, in Spanish of course. I understood the whole thing, it's amazing how fast you can learn a language if you just trust in the lord. Less than 4 months ago when we watched it in Spanish in the Oquirrh Mountain temple, I didn't understand a thing, and now all of the sudden I can understand and speak it. My companion speaks very little English, and so pretty much all the time except language study we speak all Spanish. There are still times that I get stuck on words, but overall I feel pretty confident about the language. I know that the gift of tongues, and all the gifts of the spirit are real, and that if we earnestly seek them, the Lord will help us with the things that we need. Guarani, however, I still haven't quite picked up.... It's a lot harder than Spanish though. We went to the distribution center after, and I was surprised to find how cheap garments are here. The cost 1 mil Guaraní, which is about 20 cents..... a lot cheaper than in the US. I think I'll be buying some when i am coming back home.
This last Saturday we had a baptism of a 9 year old, who's family had gone inactive, and are now all active after he got baptized. We have a lot of different investigators here that we are working with. We also have members that we work with a lot more here than in my other area. We still don't have a ward mission leader, but we are going to talk to our bishop about giving somebody that calling, because I feel like it will help the ward a lot. One of the members that helps us a lot, went on a mission, here in Paraguay, but when he was on the mission it was Paraguay and Uruguay combined, and only had about 130 missionaries, and that was in 1988-90. In just 20 years now Paraguay alone has two missions, each with about 200 missionaries. It's amazing to see how much the church is growing.
This week we met with a lot of different investigators. We met with one couple named Miguel and Paula. Paula has a testimony and wants to be baptized, but only wants to do it if her husband does. The problem is that her husband likes to drink sometimes, so we talked to them about the importance of the Word of Wisdom, and committed them to keep it, and attend church this coming Sunday. We taught another investigator whose wife is a member, and he was born and raised catholic. He has a problem believing in the Book of Mormon, because he believes that the Bible contains the complete word of God. We talked to him about how there are many churches based off of the bible, but that people interpret it differently, and asked him how can we know which way to translate the bible. We talked to him about how the Book of Mormon helps us to know clearly the way of Jesus Christ, and the way that he wants us to live. He said that he has prayed about the book of Mormon, and he had quite the interesting answer. He said that he had a dream about his father, who is dead. He said his father never accepted any of the missionaries, but that in the dream, his father was holding a Book of Mormon. We told him that this was an answer from God, but he said he wants a clearer answer. We told him to pray again, and we will be meeting with him again later this week. We met with another man, named Juan Carlos, We taught him last week, and we came back this week, he said he felt good about the Book of Mormon, but that he wants to go to church before he gets baptized (which of course we love to hear). We have one investigator who has a date this week to be baptized, and we are teaching him every day this week to make sure everything goes good.
Also in this ward, the teachers are a TON better. The priesthood teacher is the member that went on his mission here, and is a very impressive teacher. Our ward here is great, and I am really looking forward to getting to know the members, and work with them to find new people here. This past week we had 48 people in Sacrament meeting, which is apparently low for our ward.
This Friday, my companion and I get to go to the office to have interviews with the Mission President. I am excited to be able to talk to him, and receive some of the insight that i can from him.
Well I love you guys, and I will talk to you next Monday. T
Cuidense, y tengan un buena semana.
Elder Ryan Griffin
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