Email 02/16/09

Valentine´s day really doesn´t exist here. People might say something and there´s decorations in the Supers but noone does anything. The only holidays that are celebrated are Christmas, New Year´s and Easter.

Rosalina was baptized Saturday. The problem wasn´t her size. We found out as she got into the font that she was scared to death of water. The only thing her size did was that I couldn´t force her down. So after 11 tries she finally relaxed enough so I could baptize her. She has such a sweet beautiful testimony.

The Aguilars are still my favorite part of church right now. One wonderful thing is Hector Aguilar lives next to Alberto and so he always gathers up Alberto´s family to bring to church and activities. They are amazing. I just so hope that we can help them get strong enough to keep on being like this.

The Medina kids are rocks in the church. They´re the kids that catch everything. Every Sunday the four kids come to church on their own. They live about a 20-30 minute walk away. The oldest two, Roberto and Nery (pronounced Netty), received the Aaronic Priesthood this Sunday. Marian, the kid that Wight wanted to baptize was Jorge. He got baptized in January. And please thank Mike for the email and the stories. Be sure to take lots of pictures in France, especially of Victor Hugo´s house.

This is a bit of news I always forget to tell you. After my first month or so here the bishop told me that I should teach piano. My response was that a very long answer for no. I didn´t feel comfortable in my Spanish to teach piano. A couple of weeks later there was some sort of leadership meeting and our Bishop Mereles got to talk with President Bradley. The conversation was as follows:
"Bishop how are my missionaries doing?"
"They´re good missionaries but I wish that Elder Wills would teach piano in our ward. We´ve got people that can play they just need some reinforcement."
"I´ll be sure to talk to him then."
In my next interview with the President the first question was "How long have you been playing piano?" quickly followed by "What night can you teach piano?" A while back a senior couple that served here made a book for teaching piano. Essentially it´s Look and Listen in Spanish. President gave me the book and said, "Good luck. One of the things you will be able bless your areas with is giving them other people to play the hymns when you leave." So that´s what I´m doing now. Every Wednesday night I teach piano at the chapel. I´m working with this one woman named Teresa who´s the official accompanist for the ward. She can read music but only the right hand so we´re working on the left. I´m also starting from scratch and teaching Roberto Medina and his sister Maca. I really am enjoying doing this. I have later come to find out that our mission is really big on teaching piano but I am the first elder to teach it.

Oh and a little bit of gossip, not this week but next week, Elder Jay G. Jensen of the Pres. of the 70 and Elder Richard G. Scott will be in Paraguay and they are going to speak to us so we´re really excited about that.

Thank you so much for everything. I love you all.

Elder Frank Wills