Email 09/14/09

This week in short...was AWESOME!!!!! But it didn´t look like that to start. President Callen changed the schedule. Before we had lunch at Noon, then we went back home and studied until 3 and left again. Part of the reason for that is that EVERY Paraguayan sleeps during this time, that´s why they call it the siesta. The new schedule says that we leave RIGHT after lunch and keep teaching. The problem with that for me is that I used that time to prepare my lessons for the afternoon and I didn´t see anyone opening up their doors for us. The blessing was that this is the perfect time to visit less actives and this freed up the WHOLE afternoon for the investigators.
The next big blessing was our German family. His name is Lidio. We didn´t know this but Lidio´s dad is a member but VERY inactive. We asked him (the dad) what we needed to do to get him to church and he said that he´s sick (it´s true) and that the church is VERY far (VERY true) and unless we can fix his pick up he can´t go. The first thing that came to my mind was that this was a lost cause but I felt VERY strongly that I had to say yes. The only problem was that the battery cable wasn´t connected to the engine. The spirit helped me remember all those years of watching Dad. We finished and I told Hno. Kaufman that this wasn´t free, and he turned white. "Elder I have NO MONEY." "Not a problem, we just need you to help us gather up all of our investigators." He smiled and said that it wouldn´t be a problem. Sunday he came to our house and picked us up, and then we went around to get all of our investigators. We had to take two trips with a pickup truck to get them all. We had 43!!!! We doubled the attendance in Sacrament meeting. Dany, Ramona, Martin (the guy with the motorcycle) everyone came to church. The zone leaders are organizing attacks in our zone, gathering up missionaries from our zone and bringing them to our area so we can teach everybody. And to top everything off Elder Aidukaitis of the 70 is coming Thursday to have a conference with the mission. I´m VERY excited.
Espinola is still doing wonderfully. Still can´t handle the rain though. He´ll be going next week, and I´m really excited for my new companion. President Callen called me up and asked me how many baptisms we have set up for the 26th. I told him 23 and asked why. He said because he wanted to know how many people my son would baptize in his first week in Paraguay. So I took that as a very good sign.
Thank you so much for everything and I love you so much.
Elder Frank Wills