Email 04/06/09

This was a good week but we were a bit limited on what we could do this week. Tuesday we had zone conference. For those of us who don´t live in Asunción we go to Ciudad del Este. It`s almost directly east of Asunción right on the Brazil border. It`s about a 3-4 hour bus ride from Ca`a Guazù. It was really cool to see another part of Paraguay. I felt really different. About half of the city speaks Portuguese but it´s not that hard to understand. It was wonderful like always but it was a little sad because all of my buddies from the MTC are in Asunción right now.

The conferences were awesome. We got to see all of it. One thing that was amazing is that those of us who are American, and really anyone else who wanted to, got to listen in English. The stake secretary is amazing. He is a good friend and he did that for us. Name´s Elias. I was quite impressed about all of the talks about the temple. That was quite the motivator for me. And the music. Oh. I don´t remember it being that beautiful before. Amazing.

One blessing I received this week was very interesting. A little bit after I came to Ca´a Guazú, I went on division with Elder Changoluisa. He´s from Ecuador and this is his first transfer. I went to his area and they had NOTHING planned but he didn´t tell me until after we had walked in circles for about an hour. I got irritated and asked who was someone we could visit that lived on the block we were on. He said there was a family of inactives that lived close. Great. So we went. Familía Sanabria (not to get confused the the Familía Sanabria that lives in my area). Really nice people. Fed us really good. But the dad did not see any reason why anyone should go to church every week or read the scriptures every day. We taught that they were commandments and he said "Fair enough, I´ll make sure my kids go to church this week." This hit me kinda hard so I read 2nd Nephi 25:26 to him. It´s the whole we believe in Christ we testify of Christ scripture. But the kicker is how it ends: And we do this that our children might know of Christ. I told him that the only we to teach the commandments to his children was to show them the commandments through his life. We felt the spirit, and then we left. I haven´t thought of them until yesterday. With us listening to conference in English we were separated from the rest of the people in a different room. I went to go get a drink and there were a couple of cute kids that looked familiar. I said hi and the oldest girl goes running off shouting "I found him I found him!" Usually not a good sign but I didn´t go hiding. Out came the whole family of these inactives. I go to shake the dad´s hand and he grabs me and gives me a huge hug. He tells me that I gave him the kick he needed to come back to church and because he came back a month ago, he came to conference yesterday. And because he came to conference, he and his family decided that they WILL go to the temple and be sealed. I was very impressed and very touched by them. He told me that I was the reason that this will happen.

We did get to work a bit this week. Elida told us that she would leave her boyfriend so she could get baptized. That will be end of April. Raquel was so surprised that her mom would do that she called us up and made an appointment for tomorrow for us to talk to her boyfriend personally. Cynthia will get baptized for sure with her mom. And this was quite the surprise, we went to visit Teresa (she just had her baby) and her daughter Viviana said that she understood that her mom´s not interested but wanted to know if she could get baptized too. YESSSSSSSSSS.

The blessings are pouring in again. It feels so good. I don´t know what I´ve done, in this life or in the one before, because I´m being blessed so much. In EVERYTHING. I can´t believe it.

Tomorrow we will found out about transfers. Who goes, who stays, all that good stuff. I think Perez for sure goes but who knows.

Our zone leaders, poor guys, are absolutely anti-socials. They refuse to do ANYTHING with us but we were very surprised that today they played soccer with us. It was the first time this transfer. One thing that´s a bit surprising is that I´ve gotten fairly good at soccer and REALLY good at being goalie. It´s pretty cool being far from the last guy picked for teams. After soccer today, because it would be the last time the six of us would have together, we had a feast. We did peppered steak, fried rice and chicken stir fry. It was AMAZING. It was so fun. I could not believe that everything worked out perfect. I buttered the pan and put a bit more than I used to in the rice and NOTHING stuck.

One cool thing is that in my weekly letter from Aunt Marsha and Ginny, Ginny gave me a recipe to make the cream soups so I´m excited to try that. Please thank them for that and for all the letters.

I got a letter from Brother Broadbent today. It was so wonderful. He really is one of my best friends. It felt so good to hear from him. I´ve been missing him a bit lately because in my branch right now there are two guys that feel like him and Levi Wilson. Ismael and Carliño. Best friends that are the priesthood rocks of the ward. Such goofballs. They usually play soccer with us on P-days along with a few other guys from other branches. Because they´re both single they´ve gotten into the habit of eating Sunday dinners with us. They always bring something to go with the food, usually a big salad and dessert. I´ve got quite the family here.

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

Elder Frank Wills