feb. 20 2012

What’s up family! 


Thanks for the letter mom and dad. It’s great to hear from you. Wow that sounds like a great ward. Send my HI to Brother Greeve. Where were the boundaries?. and WHAT THE HECK, dejàte de joder, that is crazy is Danielle really engaged? Do me the favor of dropping the cane on her for not writing me or telling me jack. Tell her to write me! As for changes, ya this week is changes. I am almost 100 percent sure that i am staying here with my comp Elder Snow. I haven’t written much about him but he is great. We work very well together i think. Our only problem is that our area is very very small and so we are running out of ideas for finding new investigators but he is awesome and very spiritual. He is doing a very good job of talking me out of my idea of going to Taiwan.  But this last week we didn’t have much time to work in our area so it took a hit. We went to interviews and then to zone conference in Encarnacion. The conference was amazing. It was focused on being a better teacher and teaching by the spirit. In this last conference elder...? gave a talk on how to teach by the spirit, not behind or in front of but with the spirit. My comp and I and 2 of the elders in Encarnacion were the investigators and all the missionaries took turns teaching us and then analyzing and teach again. It was amazing to see the difference in a missionary. You can tell how big a testimony is just by hearing him talk. When a missionary is trunky or not focused you can hear it in his voice. But the testimony of a focused obedient missionary is more powerful then a holigraphic charizard! And its applicable to church members too in the teaching of classes and strengthening the members. I don’t know what it’s like as a normal person but it’s very obvious when i don’t have the spirit or when the spirit leaves the room. As for investigators, right now we are teaching many young couples where one of the couple is fantastic and wants to get baptized and the other needs a great beating from a bull whip. It’s getting pretty hard, we don’t want to leave them cause we love them but we can’t progress in the work because they can’t get baptized due to the law of chastity and their partner stinks and doesn’t want to get married. There are like 3 of them right now. We found one girl named Gabriela that was going to get baptized this last week but fell because of her mom flipped out and wouldn’t’ give permission. We had a good talk with her Thursday but she wouldn’t budge. 
I will let you know how changes go this next week. I’m praying more for the elder that come into the zone then for myself. We really want some good district leaders! I love you all very much, braiden caleb, tiff, ty mom, dad, nicole, devin, and the creatures that they have.
Love, elder shaw

2-14-2012

What’s up family. 
I don’t have much time to write today cause i am not in Pilar. We had to travel for a meeting and interviews with president so this one will be short. I’ll write more for the next one.
Well sounds like a pretty boring week back at home, except basketball. That’s cool that they are winning. What’s Caleb up to? He isn’t playing anymore? 
Ya i really hope that one day you all learn Spanish come down here and meet the family Servin. They are fantastic. They have not missed a day at church since the very first day that we talked to them. They are progressing fine. This last week was great. We are being blessed alot right now in Pilar with lots of new investigators all the time. Sadly almost all of them fall within a week but they are all very cool at first. We have a couple of people that seem like they will make it to baptism. They are all girlfriends or boyfriends of members, or most of them.  
A funny story yesterday in church we had a person give a talk in the sacrament meeting that was like screaming and flailing her arms at one point. It was a very hectic talk and she kept yelling the word commandment at everybody very slow and loudly.  It was horrible and we had a couple investigators in church. Hopefully that didn’t scare them away, but we talked to alot of people after and everybody seemed to have liked it. 
I love you all thanks for writing.  I’ll write more the next time but ya dad changes are coming up. I’ll let you know what happens, oh ya and dad guess what the other day we were buying some groceries at the store and on the speaker was the music EARTH WIND AND FIRE BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was fantastic. 
elder shaw

2-6-2012

Dear familia,


Sounds like a pretty quite week, but I’m glad everything is going well. Where is the new ward going to be dad? And no dad i have not been able to go to the temple for a very long time. During the Christmas season the mission took a hit and we think that some of the missionaries lost their focus so president said that is a privilege and we have to earn it as a mission but in these last few weeks we have taken off and i think we will be going in early march...... TIME passes quickly. But hey i totally can make German pancakes here! I don’t usually take the time to do it but i can. A normal breakfast would be egg sandwich or ramen or cereal. I don’t eat a very good breakfasts but my lunches are doing great. I have lost a little bit a weight in these last months and my exercises dad are pathetic! I sit in a chair trying not to die from tiredness doing curl with a soda bottle filled with sand ha! But i manage to wake up and do my exercises everyday. A month we average about 25 baptisms sometimes better sometimes worse. We had 35 the other week. There are many stakes here in my mission but i don’t know how many. My mission is very weird speaking of my area. Asuncion is about 75 percent of all the areas and has all the stakes. President for some reason has never let me go in Asuncion. That’s why i have gotten really good at guarani. I have been in every single zone outside of Asuncion, about 6 hours from the mission office. But I’m glad i love all my zones i hear that the people in Asuncion are a little bit hard. Wow family i really can’t describe the amount and awesomness of all the miracles i saw this week! This was a week of success and i am so thankful to my father in heaven. We did changes with the assistants this week. They both came here to Pilar and we did changes with them and the 4 of us work here in our area. We had a lot of success in one day. We found 7 familias this week that we are teaching!!!!!!! but the biggest blessing we had was the marriage and baptism of the family Servin! I love them so much. I cried at there marriage, they were amazing. We baptized the mom AND THE DAD. I had written before that the dad did not want anything to do with us remember and never in my mission have i seen such a change in a person from the gospel then i did with him! This dad did a 180 degree turn! He went to church and to the baptism of his children and Tuesday night we went to their house and had a very spiritual lesson. God sent him the spirit it slapped him in the face. At the end of the lesson we asked him if he would get baptized with his wife this Saturday. He looked at the floor for like 15 seconds then looked up at us and just said YES. It was one of the most spiritual moments in my mission. It was such a testimony strengthener that the gospel changes people. 2 weeks ago this man did not smile or laugh or talk to his family. Every time we go over there we are laughing and smiling and this guy has completely opened up. He only has one time in church so technically we were not supposed to baptize him but you have got to see the conversion of this family!!!! I love them. Saturday before the marriage we went over there to wish them luck and stuff and at the end we did a kneeling prayer and the wife gave it and we were all crying it was so nice. She was thanking God in her prayer for knowing us and for being in the church. This week was a miracle. I’m very grateful for this family. Easily my best converts, they will never go inactive. They walk 40 minutes to church in the Paraguayan sun and don’t complain. They get there with a smile. Don’t let the pictures fool you. Paraguayans just don’t know how to smile in pictures. They are happy people! Side notes
1. I ate huge cooked ants, like the size of walnuts. They tasted like hot sauce
2. My English is better (not spelling) but Spanish goes down, we should talk in Spanish more
3. Children can also be a tools to distract from the spirit (personal thought not doctrine)
4. God is awesome.
  Love you all and thanks for the letters they were very fun to read. Braiden and Caleb advice: keep the Sabbath day holy!!!! love ya 
elder shaw