Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Sports analogies

Hey family!

How´s it going? It sounds like you had a great thanksgiving week! That is awesome! So I guess the new back door is made out of steel then? I guess I will have to be careful in not getting my hand stuck in there when it slams shuts. That wouldn´t be fun at all. Not a bit. Got to keep working hard at surfing! You can do it! . That`s great you went to go visit Brandon. I am sure he enjoyed the company. We had a good week, so I`ll get started.
Well... on Wednesday we had our zone conference. It was a really good experience. It helped me learn and realize things I need to work, both as a missionary and a as a person. We had many examples that were rather enjoyable (no rules, what do we do, rules, basketball, golf clubs - you can carry 14 with you, who needs 14? Really??, use everything available, situations of being obedient, stuff like that). It broke the routine of what we normally do in zone conferences so it was a really nice change. Elder Eddy also had his final interview with President Callan after the zone conference. Whoa!!! My second companion who has finished his mission with me. It is quite the experience, let me tell you. I have learned a ton in these 4 months with Elder Eddy, and putting them in practice will help me a lot. The beginning of the week was pretty rough with our investigators... everyone just seemed to lose interest and not want to make changes in their lives. But, the end of the week was really good! We had an awesome lesson with Craig and Daniela, the return missionary and his wife from Argentina, where she expressed some of her doubts and was able to resolve some of them by herself on the spot. Pretty cool! It is a process still, but I have faith that she will be baptized! On Saturday, we went to go to talk to a man that´s a friend of a member who is a single father with 6 kids, ages 13 12 10 8 6 3, and works from 12 - 9 every afternoon except for Sundays. He, Martirez, was really receptive and is an awesome guy! His kids are pretty cool too! It was a big find for us, so we will be working hard with him so that he progresses and comes to church next week. Saturday night, the other missionaries from our ward had a baptism of a 24 year old guy, Victor, and he shared his testimony after his baptism. He´s got a strong testimony. It was cool to hear about his progress and where he is at now.

I still don´t know the changes, but I will be staying here. It makes me happy to be here with the members and having yet another opportunity to find those people waiting to hear the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

SI SE PUEDE!

Con cariño!!

Elder David Watson

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving

Hey Family

Well, it sounds like you had a great week! That is awesome! I did have Bill Garfield as a sub before. That is sad to hear that he passed away.

Being busy is good... better than having nothing to do!!! :D.

This week was all right. We´ve had to drop a few of our investigators because they weren´t progressing. That´s always a little hard to do, especially when they are very good people. That´s life though. We have to make changes if we hope to become better. We did find a family this week that has been going through some tough times. The mom had some experiences with the church when she was a youth and has desires to change. Her kids are pretty funny... every one of them has a nickname for around the house. The oldest kid, Marcos, is 16 plays the guitar really well and sings. He is in a youth group type of thing where they have a band that plays religious music. He played a song at the end of a lesson that was pretty cool to listen to. They are all super good people so we are going to help them progress!! We also were working with a couple, Craig and Daniela. Craig is a return missionary from the 90´s and his wife is from Argentina who has known the church for a very long time. They have been coming to church, and their little girls participated in the primary presentation the other week. They are progressing little by little, so we will see where that comes out to. Another member from who lived in San Lorenzo brought his girlfriend (who is a lawyer!!) to church and she is interested in the church. Currently she is living in another area but she will be moving this week. Hopefully she will progress too! That´s all that we´ve got for now... but this week should be a good one. And yes, it is raining here. But that´s nothing new... it´s been raining every weekend for the past month, except yesterday. Which was nice. But yeah, we are working, and hopefully everything will come out the way we planned!

Thank you for your love and support. It means a lot for me. Take care of yourselves! I LOVE YOU!!!

Elder David Watson

Monday, November 14, 2011

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Dear family,

First off... HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! I didn´t forget, and I have it written in my agenda if you don´t believe me. ;). And for your birthday, like Dad´s last year... BAPTISM! Yeah! ;) What luck, huh?? Good news around the board it sounds like... I do remember you saying something about Elder Sessions a while ago... I think when I trained. Around then. Pig Latin... please no. English is hard enough. Hahaha. The paper letter? It should arrive in time (1 month´s time) and that would be cool to get right before Christmas. Digamos a christmas present. ... Digamos would be.... let´s say? Something like that. Kewl... 14 hours of school. It works.

Alrighty. This week. Hard, but good. BAPTISM!!!! Yeah!! Finally!!!! But we did receive some rather strange news on Wednesday... Blanca, the lady who was going to be baptized, was told by her older son who is 21 that they had been baptized about 12 years ago in Ca´aguazu (Where I started). She didn´t remember anything, but we sent off her information in search of the truth. Lots of calls between the office, the missionaries in Ca´aguazu, and finally an email to Buenos Aires confirmed that she is a member, on Friday morning. CRAZY!!!! That drove us both up the wall because we had to figure out stuff for her interview, the baptism that weekend, but in the end, everything came out really well. Her son, Hugo, got baptized and was SUPER EXCITED! Elder Eddy baptized him and it went really well. Hugo even participated in the Primary program this Sunday, and did a great job! It is so cool to see his energy and excitement, and that his mom has a new growing testimony with which we are going to baptize her other son who isn´t a member and work with the oldest son and his girlfriend. Yeah! Rain threatened to postpone everything, but with the help of members and their cars (WHAT A BLESSING IT IS TO HAVE A CAR!!!!!) everything came out really well. We also had a big scare on Wednesday, the second counselor and the Bishop had a motorcycle accident, the 2nd counselor is a motorcycle taxi driver, and as they were approaching the Bishop´s house and turning the corner, another motorcycle slammed into them at full speed from behind. Luckily, they both were wearing their helmets and nobody was hurt really bad. Even the kid who crashed (and wasn´t wearing a helmet) came out of it all right... it will take a while for him to get back on his feet though. We found out when the 2nd counselor got home with his beat up bike and pretty torn up clothing... so after giving him a blessing, we went to the Bishop´s house the next day and gave him a blessing too. Motorcycles are insane... but everything came out alright. What a blessing. We are still working hard and trying our best. Life is good, and that´s the way the cookie crumbles.

Well... that´s about it. Happy happy birthday, have a great week. I love you. Thank you for EVERYTHING!!! Please please take care of yourselves. LOVE YOU!!!

Elder David Watson

Monday, November 7, 2011

Awesome Week!

Dear Family,

Awesome week! I am not going to lie, did not miss Halloween. I can´t imagine trying to proselyte that day. Crazy stuff. Thank you for the pictures! They are great! I will ask President if I can send Jake a quick email every now and then. He did tell us only immediate family members, but who knows. I am going to have to type quickly today, so excuse the errors!

This week was good! We are finally having a baptism this weekend!!! Yeah!! The first one in about five months... give or take. In Paraguay, as we are constantly told... that is a long time to go without baptizing someone. But she is a single mom with a 9-year-old son, and they are great! She went to church in Caaguazú a while back, but she is doing great now. We are pumped for their baptism this weekend. We are teaching the mom of a somewhat recent convert who is from Brazil, and I cannot tell you how nice it is to be able to teach someone who understands completely what we say and read. It´s hard sometimes, well a lot of times, because of the illiteracy level here, to read scriptures and have people understand. We have to simplify many things we teach, leaving out more detailed stuff, and then going back to reteach the same lessons but going into more depth. But Rosane, she immediately can read, understand and apply. She understands Spanish, even though she is from Brazil, which is awesome. The Guarani language barrier here can be really tough at times, but luckily here in Ciudad del Este we don´t have to face that too much. We had some other investigators drop this week due to the father and his decision that we can´t come by anymore, and that was hard. The area they live in is pretty sketchy, but it is always hard to leave those people that are accepting of the restored gospel. The trip to Asuncion was really really tiring, but that´s the way it is. We had breakfast burritos this week!!! Yeah! Elder Eddy and I made them twice, once with the Bishop´s family and today... so good!!!!!! I am really enjoying being a missionary and loving life here in Paraguay!!

Thank you for all of your support and love!! Please keep up the hard work! I love you!!!

Elder David Watson