Email 09/07/09

This is an AMAZING time to be a missionary here in Paraguay. Life is so good. This spirit has been SO strong.
To start off the week, we went to the temple. It was definitely a surprise trip. I didn´t see it coming at all. And it just surpercharged us for the week.
Thursday it rained like no other. Think Jumanji but without the crocodile. It was nuts. I felt pretty bad for Espinola. After a little while its pretty easy to tell when a storm is coming. Here, when there´s a storm, you don´t use a jacket or umbrella. For rain yes, but when it´s a storm, they just make your life miserable. When there´s a storm here its hot, super hot. A jacket would bake you alive, extra crispy. And umbrellas get torn to shreds. Espinola´s a skinny guy and I thought he´d probably get a little cold and at the least get soaked. I told him he should probably use a jacket but he told me that if I didn´t use one he wouldn´t. Poor guy was so miserable. He was completely soaked and VERY cold. The funny thing is that it appears as if the summer has started. I´m not looking forward to hot days until March. That´s a long ways away.
We have two main families that we are going to baptize this month. One is Dany and Ramona. Dany´s sister is our Relief Society President. So that´s a big opening. She introduced us to them a few weeks ago and told us that they had lost a daughter right after she was born. That gave us the opening to eternal families and the Plan of Salvation. It is amazing. Last week they told us that they would do ANYTHING to get baptized and be with their daughter again. They´ll get baptized with their kids and son in law for the end of the month. The other family we found the other day clapping houses. The wife answered and told us that she already was a member but that we should talk to her husband. We came and he was working on his motorcycle. He tried to use that as an excuse not to talk to us so we helped him but the bike back together. He decided he could listen us "but just for a little bit. I´m just fine without religion in my life." We gave him a Book of Mormon. He said he couldn´t read to well but I really felt he needed that. We came back and he had read 3 Nephi 11 and he had written a list of all the words he didn´t know. He told us that he wasn´t sure if he understood it right because the book said that Christ came to the Americas. I said he wasn´t confused and that completely surprised him. He looked at his wife and asked why she hadn´t shared that with him before. He will get baptized the 19th.
As of right now we have 40 baptisms we´re planning for THIS month. The Lord is blessing us so much. I´m trying so hard not to just sing and dance (in my tight shiny pants) all the time because life is SOOOOOOOO wonderful. Elder Espinola is planning to go on his mission when he has a year in the church.
I´m still getting Dear Elders from Marsha and Ginny just about every week.
I love you so much.
Elder Frank Wills