January 16, 2011

Hola!

I finished my first change in Paraguay! Can you believe its been 6 weeks! Only 13 more changes here! hahaha.

So this week was just about as good as last week. Not many lessons but it wasnt as boring as last week. Me and my companion forced ourselves to clap houses during the siesta when no one wants to talk and we got some appointments out of it but minimal success. Going from house to house and clapping and then having someone wake up, come to the door and see us and then say "otro dia" over and over again isnt fun. But we made a goal to stay productive and when you dont have appointments, that is about as productive as you can be. 

This week for some odd reason I started picking up Guarani words really easy. I learned how to say "como se llama" "hola" "donde esta su casa" "no se" and some other stuff. It was really wierd. When i first got here I couldnt even understand the spanish and now the guarani is making sense. Wierd. We contacted a guy on the street the other day and he was being a jerk and wouldnt stop talking about how we are just rich americans and stuff and my comp was having trouble introducing the gospel and so i just butt in and asked him a few questions in Guarani and he totally lightened up and told us where he lived and then i told him that we wanted to share a message about jesus christ and it turned out he lived outside of our area. But we took his information and we are going to forward the reference to the north mission. My area borders the paraguay north mission on two sides. So there is a chance that me and my comp could be walking on our border and the north missionaries could be walking on their border and see us but we have no idea how far that border is from where the other missionaries live so it will probably never happen. 

I gave a talk in church on sunday! So crazy, get this. I wrote the whole thing out word for word and then i totally winged it when i got up there! In total spanish! Sweet right? We have a new missionary in our district that is in my ward and he gave a talk too. All 4 of us in my ward had to give talks and the bishop didnt tell us until saturday night while we were planning. It all worked out fine though. And we had an investigator at church! So cool. Number wise, our work doesnt look successful but numbers arent what makes a successful missionary. We are working hard and the success will come. I know it. 

Thank you for the pictures! I love the one of Derek! hahahahaha. 

The pictures I am sending are 1. my district in our last district meeting of the change and 2. The awesome clouds outside our window one morning. Oh yeah, it was pretty rainy this week too. I forgot about that. It rained and was cold outside for like two days straight. But dont worry, its freaking hot again.

Les Amo!

Vance

   

Letter to dad:

Thats good that your week was good. I love the san tans! Its basically impossible to get lost out there, it is all one loop. Kallan and I would ride mountain bikes out there all the time! I miss those days. That is so cool about your book of mormon reading. I am in 2nd Nephi 15 right now in spanish. The first day I got to Paraguay the mission president gave us all a copy of the book of mormon and an invitation to start reading it in spanish and marking every reference of Christ with the same color pencil to build your testimony that it really is another testiment of Jesus Christ. Its pretty cool to see mi Libro de Mormon with yellow marks all over it. All i have done is marked references to the Saviors name. Pretty sweet.

P.S.  Sent with two more pictures

These are photos from my companions camera. One is me looking all deep like into the distance of a South American Rain Forest but if you look closely you can see mydistrict leader hunting mangos in the tree in his backyard. The other one is just me being all excited about the hamburgers that my district leader cooked for us that day. 

My district leader is named Abinadi A.... He is from Mexico and the coolest person I think I have ever met in my life. It still trips me out that I can get to know someone pretty well in a different language. His name is ABINADI!!!!!