This was an amazingly crazy week. Now the transfers were supposed to be this Wednesday, the 1st, but that´s the day that Pres. Callen comes in so Pres. Bradley moved the transfers to Thursday of last week so he wouldn´t have to start like his mission like that.
Last Wednesday Mercado went home, ended his mission, and his new companion Elder Beyer was really excited. I will send pictures of people next week because this computer won´t read USB drives of any kind. Everything with Elder Reed has been absolutely awesome. He loves to cook but he doesn´t know how to cook anything. He throws things in a pot and waits till the smoke clears to see if it´s done. So what we´ve done is we´d go together in on the food and we´d LEARN how to cook it right. My only rule was random experiments when the outcome is not known and there isn´t a ghost of a recipe to guide are ILLEGAL. We´ve been eating very good, a combination of American, Italian and Chinese, just not at the same time. As for Elder Reed´s Spanish, it´s not that good. Speaking only English for 5 months killed him. We´re working on it though.
We said goodbye to William today. His plan is to go to Ciudad del Este than go to Argentina for a month and go home in August. He told us not to worry about him and missionaries, he said he found missionaries in every city he has been in since he got to South America and he lives 10 blocks from the temple in London. He told us he will get baptized when he goes home.
We´ve had AMAZING blessings this week finding people. We were walking past a school and a lady came out. "Hermanos, my friend said that you teach the word of God, do you have some time to come teach us?" We go in and it´s her and three other people, all professors. They work for the government to teach teachers. Brilliant people. It was so wonderful to teach them and they all seemed SOOOOOOOO interested.
We found some really good people this week.Thursday though I got a big surprise, I GOT TRANSFERRED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I could not believe it. The zone leaders told me and I thought they were making jokes again but it´s the truth. I asked them if I could say goodbye to both areas and they said no. There isn´t enough time. I was VERY upset. A little while later Pres Bradley called us to find the number of a member in our area and I asked him if I could say my goodbyes and he said "Elder Wills, you got yanked out of one area without warning and helped us clean up a mess, of course you can. Who told you that you couldn´t?"
It was so wonderful to see them. I got some wonderful pictures of the people that I love in both areas. In the two weeks, TWO WEEKS, that I was in Branch 1 I made some wonderful friends. There was this one family, Familía Amarilla, absolutely heavenly. This dirt poor family sings like angels and their kids and absolutely adorable. I was very sad and very surprised to go but this is what the Lord wants.
One wonderful blessing was to be in the office and see all of my friends that I haven´t seen in ages. There is one part of Paraguay called Encarnación. It is a 10 hour bus ride from Asunción. Perez is there now and it was really cool because all of the missionaries thing I´m this force of nature because he hasn´t stopped talking about me in the last 3 months.
I am now in Ciudad del Este in an area called Hernandarias 3. About 6 hours from Asunción. Huge. TONS of mud everywhere. Because we´re so close to Brazil the TV and radio are in Portugese. The cool thing is that where I am there is a lot of Guaraní.
My new companion is Elder Morales from Chile, he´s got a month in the mission. Wonderful man. It´s like being with Perez again. Ciudad del Este is a huge city but I´m WAY out on the outskirts. A really cool thing is that I was able to jump into the work here. There is one investigator named Berna that had only talked with the missionaries once. They gave her a Book of Mormon and she hasn´t stopped reading it. After a month she finished Alma. Last night she wanted to study 2 Nephi 9 really thoroughly so we went verse by verse. In verse 24-25 it talks about how necessary it is to be baptized and so I asked her if she would get baptized on the 11th of July. She said yes. I´m THE KING OF WORLD!!!!!!!!!!!!! The Lord has not stopped to bless me since I set foot in this country.
I love you so much.
Elder Frank Wills