2/22/11

Dear Familia!


Wazz up? Dang sounds like a lot has happened and is happing right now! That is really cool about Junior Miss. Are you glad its over mom? Ha dad you’re getting old, and I am missing your 50 bday party! That’s okay I can teach you about the plan of salvation in a couple years so you don’t fear, Alma 40 23. But I loved your letters and thank you. First off, with the gaining weight, I don’t think I’m gaining weight either cause my arms are really skinny and my legs are white! As for the food items, I’m going to try a couple of the breakfast ideas that tiffany sent me but the majority of those I cant make here. Anything that involves tortillas can’t be made. They don’t’ exists here. As for the fresh fruits and vegetables.... not so much. They are really expensive. We buy bananas a lot cause those are dirt cheap but other than that we don’t eat a lot I will try and do better though. My companion has lost 300 mill this month which is a lot of money and so we are living on noodles and seasoning right now. My companion said that he is going to ask president if he can talk to the women in the ward to see if someone could feed us more. He’s going to chicken out! 
This morning we played futbol as a district and it is growing on me it is really fun! This last week was better. I knew it would be. We had 35 40 in sacrament but we did a lot of visiting and finding members so we didn’t have much success with new investigators or anything. The ward has really kicked in gear with ward missionary work. They have been helping out so much these past two weeks making visits and stuff they haven’t done before. I love our branch president. His name is president Toralez.
 Although one awesome story did happen. Last Monday we went to the familia aguira and she kept walking in and out of the lesson and we didn’t know why, till the end she finally said I’m sorry I have been taking care of my grandma she is suffering. I wish she would just die so she wouldn’t have to suffer. That nigh, my companion and I prayed that the mother would feel peace in this time of suffering and that something would happen to push the family forward. We returned and the grandmother had died.... I think we killed their grandmother in a prayer. After that we had a very spiritual lesson and she was saying how she feels more at peace when she is reading the libro de mormon. It was awesome! But she didn’t show up to church and we don’t have her number... so this week we are going to find her and bring her to church! I think eventually that family will get baptized. They just need time. We have a baptismal date with the son that is 17 but he is so hard to find. I think we are going to have to push back his baptismal date.
 Tomorrow is my first zone conference and President Callan is coming with his wife. I’m so excited. Hermana Callan is like a mother to every missionary and every missionary loves her! Of course mom, she could never replace you though! I love you family. Keep reading the book of Mormon. If a family reads the Book of Mormon together, the family is so much stronger. I just got out of the Isaiah chapters in 2 Nephi and was so frustrated cause I did not understand anything. Then Nephi in chapter 24 or 25 makes fun of Isaiah for being so confusing and I loved it cause its so true and I started to understand more!
 Love, Elder Shaw

2/15/11

Hola Familia!

That is awesome about Gunnar and Jordan. I wonder where Jordan will

go? As for your questions about what I eat in our pensions........

I have no idea. It is horrible. We eat the same stuff all the time and

we need help in this area but its so hard to find essentials here. If you have

any ideas for breakfasts and dinners I would love them. I eat coco and

toast all the time! We will get to hear conference at the end of March

and its like the super bowl here! Every body is making chains and

counting days, its awesome!

This week, well, the last 4 days have been very challenging. We had a very hard

day Saturday and all our lesson fell through and we got really sick of

clapping house and lost our cell phone so we couldn’t make calls, but

we did visit that perfect family I told you about. The 17 year boy

pretty much quoted chapter 11 in 3 Nephi but the rest of the family had

not read it. Then we found out that the 17 year old boy left today

to go to Asuncion for a year so we are down to three and we

challenged them to read again. I will keep you up dated on that.

Also with another investigator we can’t find her and she was suppose to

get baptized last Saturday so... we’ll try and find her. We only

had 15 in sacrament yesterday. It was a difficult week it’s amazing

how hard Satan is working on this rama. Satan knows something big is

about to happen here so he is working over time on the padres and alot

of the priesthood are struggling. At sacrament yesterday was the most

spiritual bomb awesome wizard like meeting ever! It was on ward

missionary work and it was so powerful. I know this week is going to

be awesome and we are going to have assistencia of like 40 next

week! This week is going to be awesome.

Not much has happened in 4 days so I’ll send a better one next time but

I was looking at a picture today and my face looks fat I think I’m

gaining weight!

I love you familia

Elder Shaw

2/10/11

Hola Familia
Okay so on change weeks we have Pday on Thursday and then again on Monday so that's why I didn't email. This last week and a half was awesome, we found a lot of investigator but struggled a little bit at getting people to church. Thanks for the pictures! Those are awesome, I'm sorry I haven't sent many pictures. My camera is hard to hook up to the computer so I'm waiting to see what kind of chip you sent so I can buy an adapter here and then it will be easier. It's so weird that it's already the 10th of February! Time flies here but at the same time it can be so slow my sense of time is warped like crazy! We had changes this week and our entire district didn't change. I have the same companion and place which is really good cause he is a good teacher and I'm learning a lot from watching him. Everybody is the same so I think we are making hoodies this Pday that are custom made and it will only cost like 10 dollars. I love that about this place. For the last 4 days it has rained so hard, I always end up soaking and it's so much fun but it really isn't good for the work. It's also really hard to get a picture of the crazy rain storms because I don't want to carry my camera with me for fear of getting robbed or rained on. Sunday we struggled with attendance and only had 13 people which was really awkward usually we have like 30 and the Branch President was out of town and he doesn't have any counselors so we did everything! I have played the piano for the last 3 weeks. I slaughtered one last week! It was hilarious. This last week the funniest thing happened, I laughed all the way to our next appointment. There were massive puddles outside from rain yesterday and we were walking on the side walk and people were driving in the street and there was a motorcycle with 3 teenagers on it who thought it would be funny to splash the Mormons. So they swerved to hit a massive poodle next to us and I was closer to the road and it engulfed me like a wave and I was soaked in mud because it was mostly muddy water. They didn't think through the whole situation and hydroplaned on their motorcycle. I was walking and laughing at the fact that I was soaked because it felt really good. It was so hot I wasn't mad. The best part is they hydroplaned and fell into a bigger puddle. I feel bad for laughing so hard but I think that was a way for the lord giving them some karma. They fell and they all flew into the puddle and were so wet but not hurt.
Also this last week me and my companion found a family and set a cita with them to come back the next day. When we returned it was pouring a windy and they still answered the door which was a miracle. They let us in and we taught 5 people all teenagers expect the mom and we taught them by the light of a candle on the table cause the storm had knocked out the electricity. It was so cool! We taught the whole lesson one and got to the Book of Mormon and the 18 year old kid said, "I have always wondered that, why Christ would only help the people in Jerusalem and not here in the Americas' because I know there were people here because we are their descendants." It was amazing they were so interested, and then the best part is we got to teaching them how to pray and the wife interrupted us and said, "Elders I have been taught this before (she is a Guaraní teacher) I talked with a tribe of Guaraní and they told me that I was praying wrong and that we can talk with God directly and not through priests, they said that their ancestors were taught this way to pray by God himself." She actually met some direct descendants from that time and she said I know this is true because of my encounter with them. It's hard to describe in an email but it was so cool and we are going back tonight to set fecha (baptism date) we will see what happens
A great week with finding investigators. It was a answer to our fast because the day before we fasted to find more families.
I feel like the language is coming along fine. I can understand and I know most all the words people use but now it is the problem of forming them together to make sense in my brain fast enough which is difficult.
I hope everything is going really well, and I pray for you every day, I actually pray like 50 times a day but you're in at least a couple.
I love you
Elder Shaw

2/1/2011

Via La Porte! Familia
 Dang sounds like alot is hapening with everything. I can't believe everybody is finally leaving on their missions. When is Gunnar's farewell? Every week I want to write an email to all the guys that are going on missions but I never have time. But that is awesome. It is also weird to think that this is the last pday of my first change. Next week I will have completed my first change, and I think my companion will get a change and I will get a new companion because there are 21 new missionaries coming this next change and I will probably get another trainer. It is going to be a bummer because he is such a good teacher, every story he tells is just a small story but I love the elder to death! Mom how is junior miss? Dad is business picking up? Tiffany how is the baby, any kicking or pictures or whatever the heck happens in your body during this time? Caleb when in the world when did you get so good a snowboarding. I could never grind and the one time I tried to spin I manage to hurt my MCL or whatever that thing was? Braiden...dang that’s so cool. Keep up the good work. Thanks for the package too it will be the best! My companion got a Dear John in the MTC and throughout his mission he has gotten 6 dear johns from different girls but his family sends him packages all the time to make him feel better ha!! I get some of his candy some times.


This week was a trial of patience that's what the Lord was trying to teach us this week. We did find two men that look pretty good but neither of them have phones so we have to walk 1 and half hours away to see if they are even home and we have failed 3 times now so we don't know what to do. This last week it rained 3 different days and when I say rain, it's like taking any Arizona monsoon storm and multiply the heat and water by like 10 fold. The streets were rivers and I saw a dog floating down the street! Paraguayans are afraid of rain so all the rain days we only got like 4 lessons in... It’s difficult and we were soaked... but I love the rain!

I have one good story! SATURDAY- okay so we had a baptism this day and we went to church at 11:00 to fill the font and the font wouldn't work so my companion did something with the pump and it filled at about half the rate, then some internet people showed up to install internet in the building and the President called and asked us if it would be alright if we stayed with them because they couldn't be at the chapel alone. He said it would only be an hour or so. The font was due to finish right at 7 when the baptism started. The bad news is the internet people took 5 hours!!!! So it was 6:00pm when we finally got out of the chapel to go get ready. We had to travel to another rama to get their baptismal clothing because we didn't have any. It was about 6:25 and we were 30 minutes from home. We had the baptismal clothing and got on a bus. But wait, when I got off the bus at I left the baptismal clothing on the bus. The baptism was starting in 5 minutes. I lost them. We had no idea what we were going to do. We walked to the chapel without baptismal clothes and turns out that the President brought some without knowing why. The water was really low. We started like 5 minutes late. Her name was Gisel, and she picked me to baptize her, the clothes were short and fat on me but I stapled them around my waist, and stepped into the font with this 14 year old girl and baptized her! 
That’s what we fight for every day. It was a hectic day and I'm sure that didn't make much sense because I was everywhere but it was amazing!


I'm trying to upload a foto but i cant... ill try and send it next week. Hopefully this next week is a bit more productive and efficient. We have a 35 year old man who we are trying to get to keep his commitments but he won't go to church! So we are working with him. He had a fecha to be baptized this week but it won't work. We are going to have to push it back a couple weeks. The language is coming slowly. I just really want understand people’s doubts and to be able to respond to them but its so hard, especially when they switch over to Guarni.


Oh a couple quick side notes
1. I found a basketball, and a court in our area. From now on we are waking up at 6:10am and running there and playing!
2. 2 Nephi 4:32-35
3. I'm sending a letter home with a couple letters inside it because it is 3 dollars to send a letter so could you put them in the mail with a stamp? It's so much cheaper. I won't do it every week I promise.
4. Funniest thing, I walked into the bathroom and found my companion washing his hands and face in the badee´ haha, we have switched over and use the badee´ as a face and hand washer because it is so powerful it hurts to be used another way!

Oh I forgot to say something, the planter warts.... gone, it's a miracle but they are completely gone. They were ugly and I have some pictures of them here but they disappeared one night! And at the baptism our piano player didn't show so I played... ya I messed up but I'm getting pretty good again, because I play in church every once in awhile. 

Les amo mucho
Elder Shaw