QUESTIONS:
1. How is Elder Puma? Can you tell us about him?
He´s great! He´s a really good teacher and we get along really well. He calls me freaking gringo and I call him freaking Perucho and it`s funny. I like that we can poke fun at each other and no one gets mad. The 4 of us are really good friends! It`s been good these last couple months :D
2. How many are in his family?
Just him and his mom! They live with his grandparents in Lima, Peru with a few of his aunts and uncles too. I think they`re all converts too. He got baptized like 7 years ago.
3. How long has he been serving?
He came in the same group with Elder Nielsen, the Elder I trained. So he´s been out for about a year and a half.
4. How was your Zone meeting last week?
It was pretty good. I still miss President Callan, but President Agazzani is really good too. There`s 12 zones in the mission now instead of 11. Caaguazú is its own zone now and so is Coronel Oviedo. And after June of July, I dont remember, Encarnación is gonna be part of the Argentina Posadas mission. So there´s lots of changes in the mission!
We did a couple activities of how we have an end goal, and we´re given lots of tools to make our goals, but sometimes we don´t need all the tools that are given.
5. What has been your most memorable experience this past week with Elder Puma?
We had 4 investigators show up to church! Out of no where.. It was pretty sweet. Between the 4 of us missionaries, we had 11 investigators! And there were 102 people in total! Pretty flippin sweet.
Elder Althoff called me the other day when Elder Puma and I were cutting down a tree and said that a guy stopped them in the street.. The guy said, "Hey I`m a member.. This is my girlfriend, she´s an investigator. We just moved here and she wants to get baptized." And they went to church and everything, and they live in our area! Sweet! The only problem is that he needs to get divorced from his first wife.. He got married when he was 18, now he´s 22. Crazy! But he´s a stud member. They used to live in the north mission and from what it sounds like, the members there are all studs. Everyone fulfills their callings! He came from a branch with 300 members.. Ypané has on average 70! And it´s claimed to be a ward!
Questions from Dad:
1. So how has your week been?
It was good! It rained a couple days so it cooled things down quite a bit, which is always nice for the work. Our power lines keep blowing up, so we went 3 days without power, AGAIN! We slept out in the living room of the house because its bigger, so it stays cool at night. But we called the power place and they came out and fixed it.
I feel like whenever we have a good week here as missionaries, Dad does well and so do all his agents.. Kinda weird how that works out.
2. Have you been able to get anyone to make the committment to live a better life? Last letter you mentioned that your guys had been hard to find, are they avoiding you or are they just busy? I hope they aren't blowing you off!! But I guess it wouldn't be the first time a missionary had his investigators get scared and disappear, huh??
Som people are blowing us off, but I don´t think they do it intentionally.. I think its just their culture. I remember teaching a lady a few weeks back, I don´t remember if it was with Elder Ashton or Elder Ortellado, but it was a hard lesson to teach! The neighbors were blasting their music, her brother that was their with us was drunk, then started smoking, and her kids were all yelling and crying and stuff.. But we still invited her to read the Book of Mormon, pray, and if she were to come to know it was true, to get baptized.. She didn´t really give us a strait answer, but I don´t blame her because of the situation, so we didn´t really make it a priority to get back to visit her. She was one of the people that came to church yesterday! She came up to me and said, "Do you remember me?" And I answered, "Of course! Your name is Aida! Its good to see you here!" Then she said, "I remember you asking me if I wanted to get baptized.. And its something I want to do. What do I need to do to be baptized?" And right there was the teacher of Gospel Principles/Ward Mission Leader, so I introduced them and told her to go into the class. Sweet! So we´re gonna go by her house tomorrow with Gustavo to teach her. It takes a lot of guts for a lady in her situation to go to church alone.. She lives in one of the rougher parts of our area, its far from the chapel, and she brought her 3 kids with her. She didnt know any of the members either, but she went anyway! I feel bad that we didn´t go back sooner. So we´ll make up for it tomorrow and make sure we can have a good environment for the Holy Ghost to be there.
3. Are you getting along well with your new companion? How is it speaking spanish all day everyday? It's probably second nature to you now, but for me to imagine that is difficult!
Yeah, he´s a stud! I like speaking Spanish all day. Being with him makes me realize how much work my Spanish needs. Its been good for the practice, with pronunciation, grammar, and flow. I know I´ll never be able to speak as well as Latins do, and I´ll probably always sound like a gringo, but I´m going to keep practicing! At least I can get my point across though, and that´s good enough for now.
Well, that´s pretty much what´s going down in Ypané. Not to mention I´m on a compter that just gave my pen drive a virus.. But I´ll send some pictures anyways.. There´s another cyber that cleans viruses close by. I still havent sent pictures from our trip to the river! But if it doesn´t work, I`ve only got 4 pdays left after this one ;P
Love you all! Have a great week!
Elder Colby Dane Heiner
