Family Fun

Haha it's good to hear that you guys are able to enjoy the sun and the fun with the Ballards. It sounds like there was a lot of fun this week and a lot of successful things on everyone's part.

Mom and Dad, congrats on your first prom together

Liv, go kill finals and please don't get killed bringing Henry back

Josh, way to go, go show em who you are in Vegas
Gabe, way to get back in the room! Enjoy it! Make sure you have fun with it

Jamo, keep doin what you do in baseball and everything else that's going on in life.

I will propose one thing though, I appreciate the love of the rap we worked so hard and diligently on, but 2 things scared me, 1 is that Jamo is texting, which makes me assume he has a phone. Scary 2. He used the phrase "lit rap" What is going on and why do I have the sneaking suspicion that a lot of things have changed since I've left? 

So, today I get my trunky papers. It's what you get when you have 3 changes left and the secretary has to start paperwork. So that almost made me want to throw up. I think I just got out of my trunky phase of thinking about BYU and home and now I'm just like "holy crap, I have so little time. I need to work! What is happening. I CAN'T LEAVE PARAGAUY. I'M NOT READY YET." I find myself looking out of windows or buses and WANTING to walk in the rain tracting just because I think, "In 4 months, when am I ever going to be able to do this again." It's kinda freaky to me......BUT 4 MONTHS IS STILL 4 MONTHS. I still have a ton of time to work. It just is scary how fast time goes by.

This week was really good though, we had 4 big ticket items.

 

1. President went out of country for a presidents meeting with Elder Russell M. Nelson for 3 days, so that put us in charge of the mission and fielding hard questions, and getting many medical calls from missionaries who have had Shebibi (the runs) a few days longer than they had hoped for.

2. We had a division with the elders of Pai Ñu, which was a lot of fun, that was my day of walking in the rain with Elder M from Equador. It was a fun day of just getting out and working, which was SO Nice. 

3. We had a training meeting for trainers and new missionaries that went over really well.  We had worked hard this last week creating a fun and interactive training on the 4 pillars of excellence of the mission which is 'Find, Plan, Study, and Teach' and it went over well. There were some funny moments as a comment from a new young missionary was, "But why do we have to keep finding and looking for people to teach if none of them progress? Why do I have to talk to everyone if not everyone wants it? I feel like I'm wasting my time, why don't we just focus on people who will progress?" Which led to an Elder Yocum with his mouth hanging open, a series of scriptures, and PMG quotes and caña. But everything went really well.  The only weird spot was when we sent the new missionaries to go do paperwork stuff for visas and all of a sudden we had 3 HOURS WHERE WE HAD TO MAKE UP STUFF TO DO WITH THE TRAINERS. It was the most wing it thing I've ever done, but it went really well. The mission has made me more prepared for anything than boy scouts ever did. 

4. We ended the week yesterday with divisions with the Elders of Ñemby. I was with Elder S who has 4 months here in Paraguay and was called as Zone Leader of one of the biggest Zones here in the mission and between learning the language still and his other gringo comp who has only 6 months in the mission, you could see how kind of shaken he was. It was awesome! We were able to talk about a lot of good stuff and help him a lot. I enjoyed the division a lot, and more than anything hearing a pure testimony from a young missionary who still isn't jaded by rejection or thinking that they know everything. It was nice. 

This was the first week of sweater weather. It's getting cold and rainy, but I love it. It makes work a little hard, but at least I'm not sweating like I usually do.