April 16

Hola Familia,

Looks like everything is going good in Qtown. Everyone is busy, thats always good haha. Skylar is having back pain because he is walking wierd or what? Thats cool about Drew and basketball. He is going to be a stud his senior year. I told him I cant wait to watch him play in the Suns arena for the state championship his senior year. And Drew told me his friend Nate wants to get baptized but doesnt know in which church yet haha. I would get on that soon ;)

So this week was honestly, one of the longest eeks of my life haha.  Everyday felt like a year. But its all good. I have made a goal to write more spritual or happy things in my emails so that other moms will send my emails to their sons like you do to me. :) I feel like my emails sometimes sound like a big complaint.

So a couple cool things happened this week. First, one of the lessons we had this week was awesome. We have an investigator named Osvaldo that has been meeting with the missionaries for about 2 months now. He is about 50 years old and has a couple kids. He really hasnt been progressing in the gospel very rapidly but we keep visiting him
because he normally does his reading assignment in the book of mormon and came to general conference. So we decided to take the bishop with us to the lesson with Osvaldo. We started the lesson how we had
planned and shared a couple things and then the Bishop took over haha.  He just started talking and talking and talking and said all the things that Osvaldo needed to hear. Bishop made him feel really comfortable about the church and stuff. Then Osvaldo came to church for the first time and got to hear a bunch of powerful testimonies and really felt the spirit. So cool!

The other cool thing. Tuesday night we were walking down a street and saw a dude standing outside and so we contacted him and said the normal stuff and he let us in to teach him. We sat down and taught a powerful and clear lesson 1 about the restoration and he told us straight up "I am very honored you guys shared this with me. This sounds really important" Then we taught him about the book of mormon and he was so excited that we were going to lend him a copy of the book of mormon. He was like "This book is sacred to you guys and you are just going to leave it here with me?" It was so cool. So yeah that was an awesome lesson. I will keep you updated on how that goes. His name is Carlos (just like 99% of latinos).

Other than that this week has been pretty normal. I am loving my personal studies and getting to know new members. We visited a member family last night named the familia gonzalez. The husband and wife are
both returned missionaries and are really cool. They really enjoyed the family photo that i carry in my scriptures. (The christmas card)

I am excited to hear from you next week and excited to share more miracles!

Rohayhu! (i love you in guaraní)

April 9, 2012

Letter to Mom:

Elder P., Jose, and Elder Johnson

Thats so crazy about your dream haha. I do love you mother! I love this work (most of the time) but the temple is not on the side of a mountain. I dont think there is a mountain in Paraguay. haha. I have been thinking of how if you and dad came to pick me up in Paraguay in October of 2013 I would have so much fun showing you guys where I lived and stuff and introduce you to members and converts. It seriously would be so much fun. 

So this week I left my first area. How sad. I didnt cry but when i got to my new area I realized how cool my first area was and how much I miss it. I feel like Lucerito is my home and I had to move from all my friends and family. How crazy is that. In 4 months I got so close to all those people that dont even speak english. It really is sad but I am excited to start working in a new area. So now I am in an area called Lambaré. It is one of the richest areas in Paraguay, or so I have heard. Every house is gigantic and has the most security I have ever seen. The south american Representative for Nike lives in my area and has the biggest house I have ever seen in my life. It seriously is like a castle. 5 floors high with a huge white marble wall surrounding it. It takes up a whole block. It is all made of what looks to be the same material as the temples of the church. There are only two people living in this house! And he has 5 security guards working 24/7 outside of his house. Que loco! But yeah if you want to know where I live just go onto LDS.org and go on meeting house locator and type in Lambaré and I live basically next door in a little tiny house. 

I have evolved past wiping! -Vance's words

My new companion is named Elder Gonzalez and he is from Honduras! Whats up with all these latin companions? He is WAY different than my last companion Elder Palma. With elder Palma we laughed and joked and had a good time and had success. With Elder Gonzalez, so far, its different. He is super focused, I think, because he never talks to me really. He does all the planning by himself and really teaches all the lessons by himself. His last 3 companions didnt speak spanish barely at all so he is really used to doing everything by himself but he told me this morning that he keeps forgetting that I speak spanish and that he can let me talk in lessons. So I was like "yeah that would be cool if you let me talk but its whatevs." (I said that mas o menos) 

It is great to get emails from you, mom. I really do like your emails. And i saw the pictures of the house that dad sent me and it looks awesome! 

I still need to write president Callan an email so I gotta go but I hope you have a great week! 

His new companion Elder G. from Honduras and an RM from Chile

Letter to Dad:

I totally forgot that yesterday was Easter until I read your letter. Here in Paraguay no one celebrates it like we do in the states. It is a week long holiday called "semana santa" or holy week. And Thursday and Sunday are the big days but no one does anything really. The most I saw someone do to celebrate was get drunk. Sadly, that really is the only celebration I saw. In Sacrament meeting the talks were about The Atonement and were really good. We had an investigator in the meeting too so that was cool. Haha but this week was so tough. Because of the holidays everyone left! Seriously, so many people decided to go on vacation this week it was ridiculous. We walked around in the streets without a place to go for hours on end. In the first 4 days of my new area I feel like we have clapped every house and got rejected 234,087,234 times. 

But thats crazy haha that Michelson went 3 over par! Hahahaha. How could that happen!? He is a pro! I go 3 over par regularly. And I forgot about the election. How crazy would it be to have a mormon as a president. Think of how different the USA would be if Joseph Smith won his election to be president.

Romina was baptized on Christmas and Leonardo. I can't fix this picture, sorry.

I did see the pictures of the house! So cool! The grass looks so good and the basketball hoop! How cool. I miss sports. The Diamondbacks are going to win the world series!? Whoa! Never would have expected to hear that. 

This past week I have really been trying to take advantage of the atonement and develop more Christlike attributes. I know that if I can be more like Christ, I can help more people accept his gospel.

Have a good week!

April 2, 2012

Ok, So this week was an odd week but really fun. 

So we really didn´t have any stand out moments or anything. Sadly we didnt find a whole bunch of new investigators, didnt have a huge amount of lessons and I felt like we were working really hard this week. I dont know exactly what was going on. It wasnt like i was hating this week but really, we didnt have that much success. I was still having fun though. The highlight of the week was obviously Conference. General Conference was super cool. I can honestly say that I felt the spirit more in this conference than in any conference before in my life. I have narrowed it down to a couple reasons why I think this conference was better than ones of the past. 1. I think I am becoming more spiritually mature being on a mission. Well, I like to think that. 2. I really prepared myself for this conference. In the march liahona (probably the same in the ensign) it had an article about how you can prepare yourself for the conference that is coming up and it mostly talked about reading the conference issue from the last general conference. So everyday last week I read a talk and really studied the words of the living prophets. Doing so, I was a lot more excited for new conference talks. 3. I think that I am getting better at recognizing the promptings and impressions of the spirit. I can honestly say that I felt distinct impressions of what I can do in my life right now in the mission to improve myself. One spiritual impression that I recieved during one of the talks yesterday afternoon (one of the 70s i dont remember who exactly right now) He talked about how we need to be more natural and normal about sharing the gospel and that if we pray and ask God who we should share the gospel with and trust in the answers we recieve, God we tell us who we need to share the gospel with. As I heard that I got the impression that I need to use the area book more and pray about who I can find that will accept the gospel. All the people in the area book have already had missionaries over before and my area never has really had success using the area book. If I dont leave my area on wednesday (changes) I am definitely going to do that. 

But on a not so spirtual side conference was really fun too. All 20 of us missionaries from my zone that speak english were crammed into a tiny little room to watch Conference in english. It was crazy haha. It was like a tiny little sunday school classroom. But then on Sunday we found a way to move ourselves into a bigger room haha. I have a picture of the room on saturday and sunday. 

sorry this weeks letter is short I just dont have a lot to share this week haha. 

Yes, I got my new shoes haha. My old ones fell apart literally in front of the stake presidents house about a week before my new ones were going to come and I didnt have any other shoes. Luckily, we were talking to the stake president as we walked toward his house and as soon as my shoe fell apart and I was standing in the street with only one shoe on he asked "do you have other shoes in your apartment?" and i said "honestly, no" and so he went in his house and brought me out a pair of brand new shoes to use until mine came in haha. The stake president is so cool. 

welp, I love reading about all of your lives and I hope you have a great week!

Les Quiero!

Vance

March 18, 2012

Its all good. I was hoping that you just forgot or didnt get to it in time and werent mad at me for some reason. (Stacy says: my letter didn't get to him last week so he got nothing from his mom) Sadly, the cyber I am using this week isnt pretty sucky and expensive and the computer i am using doesnt work well enough to attach photos. My apologies. i have some sick photos of the temple too! I hope I can send them to you next week.

so yeah I have had a pretty good week. today we got to go to the temple and it was a great experience. I even understood it all in spanish! How cool is that. the only bad part was that it was like a 1 hour 30 minute sweaty bus ride in our suits to the temple and I hate busses. I didnt like busses in high school and the public transport here is worse. there are no bus stops, you just stand on the side of the road and flag a bus down. so the bus stops like every minute. and the people drive like maniacs so its like 100 miles and hour, 0 miles an hour every minute. it makes me wanna puke. but yeah the temple was awesome. the temple president is named president turley and he lives at signal butte and baseline. small world.

On sunday Jose finally got confirmed! what a miracle. He came to only sacrament meeting (like always) but he always learns a lot from sacrament meeting and always is like blown away and how much he learns. pretty cool. its pretty cool to see him learn so much and then to think about how much i didnt pay attention in sacrament meeting before my mission and how much i guess i could have learned. I love sacrament meeting nowadays, its just a good hour that you get to sit down in air conditioning and learn. There arent many times in the mission that the missionary gets to learn or sit in air conditioning so its a good time. And recently me and my comp made a calendar of everyday in the month to have members sign up to give us lunch. My first companion told me that the members dont feed us in this area and i believed him because i was new. when he left i made a calendar and gave it to the relief society president during church and after sacrament meeting she gave it back to me with everyday full with members and thier phone numbers. how legit! so now I have a lot of extra money hahah to buy snacks and stuff. but i started working out better this week too because i think i am getting fat. well at least my face. i am embarassed about some of the pictures i have of myself because my face is all fat. so i am cutting back on dulce de leche and drinking more water instead of soda.

I am getting pumped about general conference! another one of those times where us as missionaries get to sit in air conditioning and learn all day! but the morning session doesnt start till 1 in the afternoon which means preisthood doesnt start till 9 pm. haha that will be fun but i am going to be really tired. I can tell that I have been working really hard lately because when we turn the lights off at 10 30 pm i am asleep before 10 31. its amazing. but 6 30 always comes too fast.

today I got another letter from Josh burley about him quitting track. He was super busy and stuff so its understandable. I also got a letter from bo that he wrote me before i left the mtc. in the letter it says, i know you are in the mtc but i am going to send this to your mission and you will just get it when you get there. hahaha crazy. Oh and i got a letter from harley a couple weeks ago and sent one back to her.

Spencer is who you saw at the temple with Josh! He is going to Peru! thats so cool that he is going spanish speaking and yeah josh told me about Jace coming to my mission! I want to train him so bad, that would be so sick. My best friend from the mtc, Elder Call is training a new missionary right now! so crazy. but his nuevo is from argentina and was born in paraguay. haha so his comp speaks guarani and elder call told me today at the temple that it is super easy to get into a house when your comp can speak guarani.

that is it for this week, thank you for your letter and the pictures! I forgot how different the desert looks. haha here its all jungle like. and the picture of drew! he looks like he shaved his head because he didnt want his parents to know he was doing drugs! hahahaha but yeah i miss having my hair that short. i have to cut it all wierd like here.

I was thinking about track and field this week and i think i want to try and run at asu. they have sick uniforms and logos. and i like arizona too much to leave it again.

love,

vance

March 5, 2012

Haha you wrote mi amigos? Cool beans. They will like to hear about my milagros. Kallan and I can write letters for free since we are in the same area. South america south. But yeah he hasnt written me back yet for like 6 weeks. And the last letter I got was all in spanish (not really a problem) but it was filled with Argentina slang that I dont understand. But I got the gist (jist?) of what he was saying. 

This week went by so fast! It was like a blur! The big highlights of this week are:

On wednesday President Callan (mission president) came to one of our lessons with Jose! So cool! We taught the law of tithing and it was good to have a person with more experience with a career to explain the blessings of tithing. It was a great lesson. That day, wednesday, we also recieved 8 referalls from one person! This lady gave us the name to every person on her street! Hhahaha and we have contacted 3 of them and one of them is a progressing investigator now. 

Thursday I did divisions with Elder Clement. He is from St. George, Utah and is an assistant to the president. Dont ask me why the assistants wanted to do divisions with normal missionarys like us. Like, we dont have any leadership positions or anything. Wierd. But cool. I learned a lot. And Jose, our investigator who was closest to baptism, called us and said he wanted to move his baptismal date up from the 10th of march to the 3rd! 

 

Jose's baptism

Friday was crazy. We had one day to get everything ready for the baptism. We spent a lot of time in the chapel getting the font ready. It had been about 2 months since a baptism so we had to clean the nasty font. Then we had to fill it up with water and that took over an hour. But then we left to work and we had a final lesson with Jose at 7:30 and we were going to teach him the word of wisdom. The last lesson he needed before his baptism. He texted us at 7:20 and said that he had to leave and couldnt meet with us but that he would be at his baptism. We started freaking out a little bit. He had to know word of wisdom! So we asked our zone leader what to do because he was doing a division in our area. He said that we should call Jose and explain to him over the phone enough about the word of wisdom so that he understands what it is so that he could still get baptized on Saturday. So we went to our house to call him at around 8:20 and he answered and right away said that he was almost home and that we could come over if we didnt have anything to do. So we ran over to his house and taught him word of wisdom and went over the baptismal interview questions. We were at his house till almost 10! (dont tell president ;) ) We ran back to our house after that. 

Elder Palma, Jose, Elder Johnson

Saturday we had the baptism! So cool! He is such a good guy. He is going to be a great member. Now we are going to try to work with his family but his wife doesnt really ever want to talk to us. So we will see how that goes. 

It is good to hear from you mother! I love reading your emails! 

I am still in my same area with my new companion Elder Palma and we are loving life. We get along super well and are working well with members now. We even made a calender yesterday before church for members to sign up to feed us lunch and within an hour every day was full. 3 families volunteered to feed us every tuesday, wednesday and thursday of every month. So yeah, life is good. and the lunch we had yesterday was the biggest and best lunch I have had in paraguay. So freaking good. I wish I had had my camera. 

That is it from me this week!

Rohayhu!

Vance

February 26, 2012

Letter to Dad:
Sadly the video didnt work. It is 16 minutes long or something. I could probably make it work if i was at home but I cant do all the things on the computer that I used to. What was it of? Ugh, the keyboard I am using is sticking so bad... public computers, blech.

New companion Elder Palma

Haha my letter was good last week? If you thought that was good, just wait to read the one this week. Miracles are happening in my area. I have a new companion named Elder Palma from Mexico. In the last 4 days, his first 4 days, we found 11 new investigators and our investigator, Jose, who is closest to baptism finally came to church again and Elder Foster of the 2nd Quorum of the 70 was there! And so was our misssion president. They both gave talks along with an area 70 from Argentina. They all 3 talked and said exactly what José needed to hear. We should have a baptism saturday. But President told me after sacrament meeting that he wants to come with us to a lesson with José! So crazy. Then after church we found a family of 6 that totally accepted and understood the lesson of the restoration. So cool! Then an invesitigator thought we looked hungry so she asked us to eat lunch with her! And it was asado! So cool.

Benitez Family

Thats pretty cool about ward conference. Before my mission I never would have looked forward to something like that but now that sounds like something really interesting and that I would like to go to. I use that scripture Alma 37:6 and 7 a lot with investigators. I like it alot, but in spanish its better. ;)

I am glad you had a good week, my week was awesome too. Mom asked me to send my emails earlier in the day so that is why I am emailing earlier now. and my new companion likes to go in the morning and I could really care less. But I dont have an email from mom today. But I will send a general email anyways.

Working that hard?  Or poorly made shoes?  Just kidding.

The pictures I attached are of me and my new comp Elder Palma, my shoes (I am going to talk to mom about those), my egg and pizza that elder nielsen didnt believe me that it was good and does now, and me and the Benitez family. The older guy in the soccer jersey sitting down is the stake president. Coolest guy I have met in Paraguay so far. He came with us to a lesson with our investigator and basically sealed the deal. And he took us to his house in his truck so that was awesome.



Chow!

Vance

Letter to Mom:

Gracias por tu ayuda. Sorry for being a pill, it never was my intention. (Stacy says: He and I had a disagreement about what was going onto his blog, but we resolved it.)

So this week was really a week of miracles. I´ll go through my days for you.

Pizza with an egg on top.  Johnson family favorite.

Monday: Bueno, monday really wasnt that great. Pday is fun but we dont really do much missionary work. We had a family home evening with a recent convert and she had invited people to come over at 8 but no one came until about 8:55 and we have to be home at 9. So that didnt work. I heard that people came and it was a good night after we left.

Tuesday: We woke up, studied as usual and then went to district meeting. We recieved the changes and elder Nielsen was going to another area called Ita and I was staying. And I was getting a companion named Elder Palma. He was in an area 6 hours away. So after district meeting we went back home and had a last lunch with the other Elders (Avendaño and May) and then we left to "work." We just visited investigators that Elder Nielsen wanted to say bye to. So we did that until the day was through. Elder Nielsen stayed up till 1am packing his things and I went to sleep at 11 or so.

Wednesday: We go to the bus terminal to get our new companions and drop Elder Nielsen off. I pick up Elder Palma and we take off back to Lucerito. We arrive back home at about 9 am. We didnt have any food so we went to the super and bought some food for the week and then came back home and started working after lunch.We visited some members to introduce Elder Palma and then had a couple lessons with new investigators. Good day.

Johnson, Palma, ?, Nielsen

Thursday: We visited a couple investigators and had 2 lessons that day. It wasnt an awesome day but it wasnt too hot so it didnt suck. We set up an appointment with a family we found for sunday. and we also met with the stake president who heard about one of our investigators who was having a hard time making the decision to get baptized. President Benitez wanted to come with us to a lesson.

Friday: We started off the day working in an area where we had a couple set appointments but that fell. So we were just trying to talk to people outside and found two guys resting from work who let us teach them and they both turned into new investigators! Then we had lunch and went back out to work. At around 6 we had a lesson with a guy named Noel. We passed by a members house named Mario who was going to come with us. So we got him and then started walking towards our appointment which was kinda far from his house. So we get finally all the way over there and the dude wasnt there! So we tried clapping a couple houses and nothing worked. So we decided to just head back the other way because we had a lesson with José and the Stake President. It all the sudden started to rain really really hard. We ran as fast as we could to an over hang on the side of someones house and waited for a minute but the rain wasnt stopping. So we called the stake president and asked him if he could come pick us up but we didnt know exactly how to explain where we were because we were really far. and the only way I could explain it wouldnt work because it was a dirt road and surely was a river of mud and water by now. So we told him to meet us at a members house which we thought was close and started running. We were soaking wet in the matter of minutes and still had a long way to go. The roads were rivers and we were running through knee deep water. We finally get to a bus stop that had a roof and we called the stake president that was waiting for us in his truck at this members house and told him where we were and he came and got us. He picked us up and we left to our lesson with José. The lesson with José was one of the most powerful lessons I have ever been in. José wanted to get baptized but couldnt just make the decision to just do it! President Benitez knew exactly what to say to him and it was amazing. So that finished that really fun and amazing day.

Saturday: We had another day of 4 lessons not counting the lesson we had with a member family who is going to have family home evening in their house on saturday and invite some friends. It was a good day but nothing huge. Still was really cloudy and not hot so the day couldnt have been bad.

Sunday (Crazy day): We wake up at 6:30 like normal and before 7 we got a call from our district leader that said President Callan was coming to our sacrament meeting and that two general authorities were coming! Whoa! Luckily we were going to have José in sacrament meeting with us. So we got to church early, and were waiting outside shaking everyones hands when President Monson showed up!!! hahahaha just kidding. But President Callan did with his wife and soon thereafter Elder Foster of the 2nd quorum of the 70 (his picture is in the liahona) and an area 70 named Elder Giovanni from Argentina. So sacrament meeting was at 10 and at 9:30 José still wasnt there. So we left to go pick him up and when we got to his house he was getting ready like he woke up late. He was taking forever and finally came out and said that his wife was really mad that he was leaving with us and started crying (his wife doesnt really like us) so he said he had to calm her down before he left. So we left to the church on the way stopped on the side of the road and said a prayer that he would be able to say something to his wife to calm her down. During the sacrament he showed up! So Cool! Then the talks by President Callan, Elder Giovanni and Elder Foster were exactly what José needed to hear. What a miracle. José is going to pick a date to be baptized this week. We are visiting him tonight. Then later in the day me and my companion found a family of 6 that accepted our message and understood it and everything! Then we went to visit another investigator family and they were busy because they had family over or something and didnt have time to let us in and share a little bit but asked us if we wanted to come in and eat lunch with them! Hahahaha so cool! and it was asado! Then we went to a family home evening where a recent convert invited her friend from work and he doesnt live in our area but we passed his reference to the missionaries where he lives. Ahh, what a day!

This week seriously has been the best week of my mission so far and I am living with someone who doesnt speak english. And I am getting your package tomorrow, possibly today. I am in Ñemby again so we might pass by the Hermana´s house to pick up the package.

El Señor estaba guiandonos esta semana. Yo sé que esta obra es la obra del Señor. No puedo explicar el gozo que viene cuando las personas aceptan el evangelio. Yo amo mi vida ahora. No quiero parar. ¡Voy a seguir adelante y bautizar a full!


Les Quiero,

Vance

February 13, 2012

Happy Valentines day to you! haha my comp uses hankerchiefs as well not always a paper towel. But the hankercheifs get dirty and he uses paper towels when his hankerchiefs are getting washed. I dont have to use any of those because I dont seem to sweat as much as everyone else. It is so hot here though. I cant believe it. Last wednesday it was 110 degrees with 100% humidity and we left the house to work at 1pm. Its crazy. We freeze our water bottles and they are warm within less than a half hour. 

Oh grocery shopping, I remember the times. When we go grocery shopping here it takes like 30 minutes max and then I remember shopping for hours on end in wal mart. hahaha. (Stacy says:  I was telling him about getting groceries one day and it took over two hours)

So this week in Lucerito we had a really tough time getting lessons. We felt like we had been working as hard as we could and we went all week with only 6 lessons. We put one new investigator with a baptismal date in the first lesson and he said for sure he was going to come to church and he didnt come. and it turned out that he gave us a fake phone number and so we went to his house, some lady inside just started yelling at us and said that he is on vacations and he is traveling right now and she doesnt know when he will be back. Kinda disappointing. Its hard not to be disappointed when you have no numerical success. But we did have a good lesson with one of our investigators named Jose. We have been teaching him for basically the whole time I have been here but his wife wont let him get baptized. So we have been trying to think of a way to get on the good side of his wife and finally we thought of something. We had a lesson there at his house one day and we saw something that looked like a calzone so my comp started talking to him about it and we got on the subject of food and Jose started telling us that his wife loves to cook. So we decided to set up a lesson where we could make some american food for them and share something spiritual as well. So we made a peach cobbler and took it to their house and finally the wife came out and talked to us! It was only for about 5 minutes but it was the most we had ever talked to her. And she invited us back over on tuesday and we are going to eat some more food and we are going to watch the restoration movie. Hopefully everything goes well. 

The last two days (sunday, monday) i have been pretty sick. I had a fever of 101 on Sunday and today I felt just as bad so i asked for a blessing from my comp and my district leader. I still dont feel totally better but a lot better than Sunday. Hopefully I feel 100% tomorrow. 

I still have not recieved the package but tomorrow at district meeting I might get something that notifies me that it is in paraguay but then I have to pay for a company to bring it to my house. So the earliest I could get it is the 21st of February. Mail is slow. Have you gotten the letters I sent home?

The church is true.

Love,

Vance