Posta Leiva - April 24, 2011

Oh why hello everyone back home!

My first Pascua in Paraguay has come and past. The holy week is pretty weird down here in a country that is mostly catholic. They have all sorts of fun traditions that we got to see. We also ate a lot of chipa. Sperry and I even made some ourselves in the house of a member so that was pretty fun! Here they don´t have any egg/bunny/chocolate traditions normally, but it just so happens that one of the ward members does a little egg search and whatnot because they learned it from someone in the states. She hid little bags of candy for us, so my Easter here was pretty sweet! (no pun intended) I also learned that you´re allowed to hit people on Easter as long as you say Pascua right before you did it. It´s usually what the godmothers do to their godchildren. If they've been bad for the past year, they hit em to make them be good. If they´ve been good for the past year, they hit em so they stay that way. Yay!

The week was pretty rough on the missionary side of things. This was one of the two times a year that everyone in Paraguay actually goes to church (the other being Christmas) so inviting people to ours was kind of rough. It also rained a lot on Saturday, but I bought myself a nifty umbrella like a champ so I stayed kind of dry. Sperry just went out in a sweater. Not so dry.

Norberto (our recent convert) got the Aaronic Priesthood on Sunday which was cool.

I´m trying to think of more things to say, but nothing more is coming. Apparently it was a pretty uneventful week. But sometimes it´s better that way I suppose. Anywho, I believe that is all family and friends. I shall report more in a week´s time! I love you all!

Love,

Elder Morris

Posta Leiva - April 17 2011

Oh why hello there everyone back home,

This week was another magical week in South America. This week also marks the semana santa here. Yay! That pretty much means nothing to us as missionaries except for that it´ll be harder to contact people cause they´ll all be either travelling or mourning and stuff. We also will get lots of chipa (the paraguayan bread stuff) which is sort of exciting I suppose. Also something else cool this week: tomorrow, by national mandate, is "clean up your jungle areas" day to try and kill all the homes of the mosquitos. They pass a disease called dengue and as of now, it´s killing around 30 people a day in one of the main Asunción hospitals, so that means it´s probably killing more than that. Crazy right? Those darn mosquitos! So tomorrow might be a lot of machete using for us missionaries, but that´s always a good time.

This week was sorta normal. I saw my first turtle here just crossing a road so that was kind of exciting. I carried it for a little bit but then got bored of it. Now it´s just wandering around Posta Leiva somewhere. The weather here doesn´t really know what it wants to do. It´s really hot some days and then really cold some. I like the cold days more cause I don´t have to have a sombrero. Also, this Sunday we had a baptism of that girl that finally got permission to be baptized which was just great! We went to visit her Sunday evening and talked to her sister who said "now the next person you guys are going to baptize is me!" And then we said "how about the first of May?" Then she said "that sounds good to me". So now we shall baptize her 18 year old sister hopefully. She travels a lot so we´ll see how everything works out. But, it was a pretty cool little happening.

Also, Elder Claypool (we live with him) got his new little trainee straight from the MTC this week. He´s from St. George and really likes to play frisbee. He challenged us to a game of frisbee today, so the four elders that stayed in the zone challenged the 4 new elders. Long story short, we won cause we´re bosses.

But, other than that I think it´s all been said. I´ll be doing a lot of chipa eating and contacting lots of mourning people, so it should be quite fun. My third change with Elder Sperry is now in full swing and going magically. It´s less hot which is always a plus! Stay happy up there in the good ole U. S. of A. Chau!

Elder Morris

The Shoes Will Not Last

Now we'll see just how good Missionary Mall's shoe warranty is.

April 11, 2011 - Posta Leiva

Oh hey guys!

So, this week was pretty neato. First off, it´s started to cool down, so we don´t sweat all day which is quite nice indeed! And also, daylight savings has come and it now gets dark before 6. Which is not quite so nice. When it gets dark, Paraguayans go to sleep, and refuse to come out. The advice that we´ve recieved from the assistants is to "get your goals during the day", because they know we just walk around for 3 hours in the dark now. Haha not very inspiring. But, we shall continue to try to force people to leave their houses. It´s not dark when we wake up now which is quite nice.

In changes news, Sperry and I are staying together for our third change together which is actually quite rare. Usually they swap em out after 2 changes, but I´m okay with that. It´ll be his fourth change here and my third, which means I´m pretty much staying here for at least one more change after this one to show a new guy where everything is. That makes the next changes not quite so exciting but oh well.

For Pday today we played some rockin ultimate frisbee with our zone before they all leave tomorrow. I had some pretty awesome throws and whatnot. Yeah!

In other news, I went to a birthday party for a 4 year old and they played the Pokemón theme song but in spanish which was pretty cool. It made Sperry pretty happy. They had a piñata there too, but in Paraguay the piñatas are really just big thick balloons. And they just stab it once with a knife. Not quite as cool. But yeah.

This week was fast sunday so we got to fast. The day was pretty crappy which isn´t very much fun while fasting, but.........one of our older investigators (months ago) randomly got permission from her parents to get baptized so we´re doing that this Sunday! Woo! Also we´re working with two other people to get baptized in two more Sundays. We´re just trucking along like champs here.

Well team, I think that´s all for the week. I´m staying here for at least six more weeks. Probably for 12 more, but we´ll see what happens. Ooooooh yeah, and we´re going to move here pretty soon, and the new house that we´re going to has a tatakua out back which is a paraguayan brick oven thing! We´re going to make chipa! Woo! Now I think that´s it. I love you all! Work hard and be smart.

Love,

Elder Morris

Posta Leiva - April 4 2011

Well hello everyone back home!

Everything is just wonderful down here. This was a pretty sweet week cause we got to go to the temple on Thursday and also we had Gen con so it was just sweet. It absolutely refuses to stop being really hot which makes me kind of sad. I found out however that there is an area up north in the desert of Paraguay that is around 40 degrees Celsius in the winter...I hope I don´t get called out there. In other news, we played some sweet frisbee today as a zone which was great. I didn´t have to eat any mundungo which was also quite lovely.

While this week was really cool, I´m also glad it´s over because it´s just a nightmare trying to invite Paraguayans to General Conference. We have to take a bus to the stake center which is like 20 minutes away, so when we´re telling them how legit conference is, the only thing they ever hear/remember is that they have to ride on a bus for 20 minutes so none of them went. Silly silly people. There was a room in the stake center where they showed the broadcast in english so all of us missionaries were just cooped up in there, so it was pretty cool. Then the neighboring stake´s stuff wasn´t working so like 14 more missionaries ended up coming. We have a new rule that we can´t carry our cameras with us like ever so I don´t really have any fun pictures or anything to send so sorry about that.

I´ve come across 5 dead dogs this past week which is a new record! There are way too many dogs out here. And they have scary burrowing parasites so we aren´t allowed to touch them. I wouldn´t want to anyway. Also, one of the elders in our zone got bitten by a dog, so now he probably has to get rabies shots! The doctor was kind of embarrassed when he told them that rabies is actually still kind of a problem in Paraguay. I´m not really sure what to make of that. Crazy stuff for sure!

Well family and friends, I think that´s all I have for this week. It was a very good week for sure what with lovely conference and the temple. Also, Norberto, our recent convert dude, came to all 5 sessions of conference cause he´s just too cool. He´s really excited to help the missionaries so that´s pretty sweet! But anywho, by you all! I love you all!

Love,
Elder Morris