Falling into temptation

Well another week has come and flown by again. We have been working all the fat off that I have gained in the mission so far. ;) The week has been interesting, difficult, and full of blessings of the Lord. On Monday we both got our hair cut. It was pretty much just a hack job…. People here don’t know how to cut hair very well. The lady did terrible with both of our hair. It was incredibly uneven when we got home. I decided to take matters into my own hands, and fix it up. I used the mirror, and pretty much cut all my own hair. It actually turned out to fix it pretty well. I evened it out, and now it doesn’t look so bad. I figured out that my companion knows Chad Hugie. He went to the same school as him, and they had some classes together…. It’s a small world after all. The Copa America (American Cup) of soccer has been going on this week. Paraguay tied with Brazil, Venezuela, and Ecuador. Then Paraguay had to play Brazil again to move on, and won in a shoot out. They now have to play Venezuela again, and then they play the winner of Uruguay and Peru for the finals. In church this week we had 12 people in total. We had two investigators that came. They are a family, and they are…. Well let’s just say they are missing a couple of screws. We gave them a hymn book to start out the class, and I had to teach the first class. Every time that I would say a page number for the scriptures, the man, José would look for it in the hymn book. Also he stood up in front after one of the classes and started saying something in Guarani. Then with the sacrament, my companion was passing it, and the woman, Estela took like 5 pieces of the bread. Well anyway, we’ll see what happens there with them. This week our appointments were dropping like flies, and we ended up having to knock doors a lot. Seeing as our area is so small, and I’ve almost already talked to everyone, it was a hard week. We ended up finding a lot of investigators though, 26 in total. 7 of which were families. We are working as hard as we can, but unfortunately we aren’t seeing a whole lot of progress in our investigators. I know that we just have to keep working, and trust that God knows what he’s doing with everything. Sometimes it’s hard to have that trust, seeing as we want to have immediate success. However, I know that we also have to have a test of our faith every once in a while so that we can progress and learn. José and Liliana had a marriage problem. They went to a party, and Liliana drank a little bit. We aren’t exactly sure what all happened, but they ended up separating. José left and went to his mother’s house. We found out what happened, and went to talk to him. They haven’t gone to church the last 4 Sundays now, and so they have let Satan take control of their lives. We explained to José that they need that help so that they don’t face problems like that, and that God was giving them a trial to help them remember him. We told him he needed to pray and ask God what to do to solve the problem, and then do it. That same day, he went back and now they are back together. Now we just need them to actually go to church. Anyway, we have changes next week, so we’ll see what all happens with the area, and what the will of the lord is for the people here. All I can do is pray and hope that it doesn’t close, and if it does, accept that it is the will of the Lord. I love you guys tons, and hope all is going well for you. I’ll talk to you next week. Love ya, Elder Ryan Griffin