March 28, 2011--Posta Leiva

Well hello everyone!

Another week has passed down here in Paraguay, and it was a little more interesting than last week. To start, for the first time in my mission I got insulted in English which was kind of exciting cause I could actually understand what she was yelling from her car. Usually its in Guaraní and I dunno if they hate me or if they are commenting on my sweet ties. Also this week we had two more baptisms! We baptized a sweet dude from San Lorenzo named Norberto. He is just too cool. Most people at church already thought he was a member from the Stake Council or something until they saw him in his neato white jumpsuit. We´re all just stoked to see where the church takes him. We also baptized this cool little kid that told us he was 9, but was really 8. Nobody really knows their own age here which is kind of weird. It hadn´t rained for a long while so finally it decided to do some of that again this week which is always fun. Luckily one of our new investigators gave us trash bags to wear. She´s pretty cool too. She even brought her 20 year old daughter to church with her. Hopefully everything continues to go well with that. We´ve found a lot of cool people this past week that have husbands that hate us, which is kind of lame because we can´t really do anything about that.

The time still hasn´t changed here and nobody knows when it does so we just keep waiting for our phones to change one weekend. It´s also supposedly Autumn around here but I haven´t felt any differences. Please take some of our heat. We go to the Asunción temple this thursday which will be pretty cool! It´ll be my first time here so I´m stoked. Then it´ll be Gen Con so it´s going to be a good week for sure!

I feel like there were more stories than this, but all the days blur together and I don´t remember anything! We´re working hard and seeing some lovely fruits of our labors so I´m just pleased as punch. I think that´s all from me this week but I love you all!

Love,
Elder Morris

March 21, 2011 - Posta Leiva

Oh hey there family!

This week was one of those without too many exciting things happening. Today is the first day of Autumn here which is pretty cool. It still feels like hot death so we´ll see how everything works out. There have been a couple of cold mornings, and it´s really hard to take a shower without hot water. But, we are moving really soon because we have to be out of our house by April 1! Eeek! We have a couple of options so tomorrow will be investigation day! Woo! It´s weird to go house shopping with my comp. That´s what married people do.

Also in exciting news, they apparently have daylight savings time here, but absolutely no one has any idea of when it is, so pretty much every weekend we just hope that our cell phone will auto update and wake us up when it needs to. So far it hasn´t happened. Maybe this weekend?

Elder Sperry and I did a division with the Zone Leader that we live with and his companion. I went with the junior comp of that group. His name is Elder Macias (he´s not latin). He has like 2 months here in Paraguay so it was kinda cool cause for the first time I was the senior comp. I got to call all of the shots like a boss! It was pretty good cause I never got confused when people were talking, and none of the lessons were awful. Yay! It´s kind of cool how I can communicate in a foreign country. I still geek out sometimes when I´m talking and I realize that I understand the gibberish that some spanish lady is telling me. Also in the division, I got to watch Macias go head to head with some lady. Macias didn´t understand everything she said, so from what he understood he thought she was trying to attack him, so he attacked back and it was just great to watch. I just waited patiently for someone to stop talking but it never happened. I think that was a crowning moment in his mission so far. He felt pretty pumped afterward.

On thursday I had mundungo...which was awful. I started dry heaving and it was pretty rough. Mundungo is cow stomach lining, so one side is smooth and the other side is kind of fuzzy and looks like honeycomb kind of. It was awful! Hopefully more of that doesn´t come my way.

In other cool news, we had a baptism of precious Antonio this past week and this week we will baptize two more people. It´s going well here! Antonio was really cold after, but he lived and now we´re going to have a family home evening at their house. Other than that, just business as usual in good ole Paraguay! I love you all and I hope you´re all happy and not sickly.

Love,

Elder Morris

New Pictures

March 14, 2011 - Posta Leiva

Why hello everyone,

I´m not sure what I really do all week because it seems like only yesterday that I was writing to you people! Crazy! I´d just like to point out that it felt like yesterday that I had 6 months and I will now complete 7 in about a week. Weird. Everyone here says that the mission pretty much doubles in time after the first year. I can´t really imagine it going any faster but we´ll see I guess. I´m content here :D This week was pretty normal I think. Yesterday it was freakishly cold (at least it felt like it) so at least I didn´t have to wear a sombrero. Today it was also freakishly cold for our trip to Asunción but the thermometer said it was like 66...I´m not excited for when the thermometer actually says it´s cold. We´re already halfway through the final month of heat here though so I´m pretty stoked. In other exciting news, we had stake conference this sunday so we got to take a bus full of members to San Lorenzo. It was pretty fun. The temple president´s wife spoke and it was fun to hear her super American accent. The natives seemed to think it was funny too. And it was like a record low amount of Guaraní spoken during the meeting so I pretty much understood it all. Yay!

Investigator news is that precious 10 year old Antonio is getting baptized this Sunday which will be pretty cool. His mom´s boyfriend is the Norberto guy and he´s just legit. He´s been coming to church and just eats all the stuff up. He even bought himself a tie so he could be legit too for conference. We´ll be talking to him tonight so we´ll see what happens there. He also has an 8 year old daughter that likes primary a lot. They are just a precious family. :D

The whole Tsunami and stuff in Japan is really scaring the Paraguayans here. Lots of the members keep predicting Apocalypse stuff and it´s pretty intense.

Also, today Elder Sperry and I went to Asunción to go to the dentist! Sperry kinda broke his tooth a while ago eating really really tough/crappy meat and so we went to get it fixed on Thursday. Then they told him to come back today to fix other cavities, but when we got there they told us to come back in 2 weeks. Sigh. I hate taking the buses to Asunción.

Other than that, I think it was business as usual. We´re working hard and my feet hurt sometimes, but we´re seeing lots of success so I´m just pleased as punch. I love you all back home! Stay smart and happy! :D

Love,

Elder Morris

March 7, 2011 - Posta Leiva

Sup everyone!

Well we´re already one week into March, which means it´s going to cool down soon here! Hopefully. There were a couple of interesting things this week. Firstly, last Monday night I learned how to make nokis! They are sorta mashed potatoes mixed with flour. And then you roll little bits of them on a fork to give them like a buggy texture. They were pretty dang good. They are also the most filling food I´ve ever had in my life. We got out of that place kinda late and we had to run home which was magical. That same night the renter man of our house had a birthday party for his son or daughter outside our house in the yard. It was cool cause there was music until 3 in the morning! I can sleep anywhere so it didn´t really bother me. We also had changes this week. Sperry and I are still in good ole Posta Leiva A. Our zone leader who lives with us got changed out to somewhere awful, and Elder Claypool from Missouri came. It´s pretty cool being with all Americans. Yeah! We have to move though because our house is technically not in our area so as of now we are searching for a house during our contacts. It didn´t rain or anything this week so we got to do some good work which was nice. We just found out today that they are changing all of the numbers that we have to report to our Zone Leaders and stuff. Now we have to report how many references we get from members which is going to be really hard because Paraguayans are really bad at volunteering other people to hear the Gospel. We´ll see how it goes though.

Today for P-day we played some sweet futbol and some frisbee which was cool. We aren´t allowed to leave our zones anymore for any reason so we can´t really go do anything for P day except play random sports and stuff. Also, today the colectivos (like the city buses) went on strike so no one can really go anywhere anyway. Hopefully they are done striking by tomorrow cause we have to travel for District Meeting! Last time they went on strike they had to raise the bus fare 300 guaraníes. That´s like 6 cents. It´s pretty sweet to hear that AF isn´t super bad at basketball this year. Too bad they lost to dirty LP.

In other exciting news, we visited a less active member this past week around the beginning and we found that she had a son that wasn´t a member. Sooo we went back to teach him and found this lady´s boyfriend who lives in San Lorenzo and his words were "I´m really open and I want to know about the church. I´ll come to church and afterwards we´ll see what happens with it." Yay! They all ended up coming to church and he had all sorts of good questions so I´m pretty stoked to keep teaching him. He really likes it so far. He also told me he likes jazz music. Nobody even knows what that is here so he´s already super cool. We also found a cool girl that´s like 17 and she was really interested too. We went back the second time and she was sleeping so her boyfriend dude came out (he´s 18) and was like "she doesn´t like you guys at all, so don´t ever come back". We´re thinking there was some jealousy issues with that one, but good news is he doesn´t live there so continue we shall! :D

But, I think that´s all I have for this week. Now we are going to do family home evening with that neato family we found! I love you all!