Semana 8

June 1, 2015

So....it turns out we had hot water the entire time and that Hna just never told me that there was a special switch that turns makjes the water warm. thank you for that. Which means the past two months of cold showers were completley unwarranted annnddddd the 7 warms showers that I have had were not a gift from God, but just my companion forgetting to turn the switch off. But YAYY hot(ish) showers from now on!

The i-watch sounds pretty legit, go apple for being all cool and fancy.

Anndddd hullooooo I was totally driving the JUMPSUIT bandwagon BEFORE I left and it wasn't popular !!!!! Super bummed that I'm missing out, I totally would have rocked that trend.

On the colectivo

This week we have Zone Conference with Elder Viñas, de la setenta, and it was super awesome and spiritual and all that good stuff, except...he printed off a list of the missions Recent Converts from the past two years and read off ALL the names. Half of the people we hadnt ever heard of them or they wanted nothing to do with the church, so that was really sad. Conference focused a lot on the Sacrament and how EVERYONE needs to be renewing their covenants EVERY WEEK, because we are constantly making mistakes and sinning all over the place, which is true, but woahhhh yeah I felt like I was in trouble.  Conference itself though was way fun. They fed us hamburgers, except they put corn and peas on it which everyone was complaining about. Yeah, that was a little weird, but I have been craving a hamburger for the past 2 weeks so I didnt really care. Apparently they have Burger King and Pizza Hut in Paraguay though, so that is pretty awesome.

There is an Elder, not in my Zone, that refers to me as "the Asian" or "Asian Persuasion", which ehhhhh please dont. ITS HERMANA TO YOU BUDDY!!!!!! Yeah, some of the Elders are...real special.  I said goodbye to Hna. Gonzalez for real this time since she finishes at the end of this transfer. It was really sad and tears were shed. It is crazy how fast you can get attatched to people. I think it was just especially hard because she is from Paraguya and...I am not.

So.....my birthday is coming up hehehehe and if you want to send a package it really is easy! Hna Fielingstone (who is super awesome because she is also obsessed with Taylor Swift) received her 5th package in a year (that is love) and she only had to pay...it was either 40 pesos or 40 dollars, I cant remember. BUT for some HOT TAMALES and KNEADERS SYRUP it would totally be worth it ;)

This past week was TERRIBLE AS FAR AS THE WORK GOES. So so so so so so much rejection and so so so so so many lazy people. We started off real awful with one of our investigators who started yelling at us telling us that "Joseph Smith is not a God and I dont care about the book he wrote" Normally we would have just shaken this off but we have been working with him ever since I got here...so...yeaah. no more.

We found a new menos activa, Margarita, who reads the Book of Mormon everyday, says her prayers, has an amazing testimony, and when we asked why she doesnt come to church? "eh, I am just lazy"...are you serious. Silly people.

Anyways, Saturday smelled worse then a decaying dog carcus (which is really bad), our numbers were futile, almost all of our appointments kept falling through. At one point Hna was so frustrated she almost started to cry, and then I wanted to cry and then we were getting all negative and she wanted to go home. And that was really bad because I am still in the phase where I always want to go home, but then I remembered Alma 26:27 and it couldn't have been more true...

Alma 26:27 reads:  "Now when our hearts were depressed, we were about to turn back, behold, the Lord comforted us, and said: Go amongst thy bretheren, the Lamanites, and bear with patience thine afflictions, and I will give unto you success.   

Introducing. Ignasia. She is an investigator we have been working with ever since I got here and she is a cute little old lady that hasnt been making much progress but Hna still wanted to visit her so we keep teaching her., she cant read so we dont know how to help her gain a testimony of the book of mormon, but we just keep teaching her. She is SUPER catholic, but we still keep teaching her. she wont come to church, but we still keep teaching her. every day her heart opens little by little, but not fast enough, because i am a super impatient person. fin.

So after an absolutely terrible week, we walk into the chapel Sunday morning and who is sitting there? IGNASIA!!!!!!!!!!! So many tears. she was crying, hna was crying, ignasia was crying. she said that she was praying and God told her that she needed to come, so she did. she said that all she wants to do is serve God, and that even though she doesnt know very much and cant read she wants to learn and has faith that God will help her. WOAHHH!!!! So awesome.  Also, 10 other of our menos activos showed up!

And the talks were ON POINT! Usually they are soooooo boring, but woah it was exactly what everyone needed to hear! And the ward had the best attendance that I have seen so far!

Heavenly Father definitely rewarded us for our labors.

These are my miracles so its a little hard to share them with everyone because I know no one can really understand this feeling, but just know the Spirit I am feeling is so strong and this work is so real, and I am almost to the point where I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY! Not yet, but almost.

It is hard, but as you can read in "Our Heritage" the pioneers suffered 100X more then I ever will, sooooooo I have no room to complain about anything. My life is awesome!!!!! And I can take hot showers now!!!!!  Woo Hoo !!

les quiero todos!!!!!!!

CHAU!

Hermana Cannon