Email 04/05/10

This was an amazing couple of weeks. We´ve been working our bun buns off.


Easter week is a VERY interesting week here in Paraguay. Starting Wednesday they start making a Paraguayan food called Chipa (cheepa) if done right it comes out like a corn based spongecake and it´s really good. But what´s funny is that although ALL Paraguayans make Chipa during Easter season only a few know how to. So for the rest it comes out like burnt cornmeal. Everyone and their dog gave us POUNDS AND POUNDS of Chipa. On Thursdays everyone makes Sopa Paraguaya. It´s like cornbread but without sugar or baking powder. Again, only some know how to do it. And then on Friday...EVERYONE´s unconscious. Saturday and Sunday go back to normal. It´s a very interesting phenomenon. Very different from the Easter we know. We didn´t do an Easter dinner because of Conference. For us Conference started at 1 p.m. and the last session ended at 7 p.m. That´s my prime cooking time so we didn´t make much yesterday but we´ll be doing a chicken dinner to day for P-day.

Conference was wonderful. To go Saturday or Sunday night we had to bring investigators. Raquel was a lifesaver and went and rounded them up for us. We watched conference in our stake center which is about an hour drive away. Our branch provided a bus so it made it REALLY easy for us. I absolutely loved conference. The Sunday morning session was SOOOOOO spiritual and just so beautiful with all the different testimonies of the resurrection. I don´t remember liking conference too much but I sure love it now.

Things are going great with Elder Burley. He´s a great guy. We are struggling with Spanish though. He gets pretty discouraged when we have a lesson and then afterwords he had no idea what happened. But he tries SOOOO hard and studies so much that I know it´ll come. Our area is about an hour from the mission home but it takes two different buses. I´ve been playing the piano every week in our branch. They have the nicest piano I´ve used in this country. Almost all the rest are in SUCH need of tuning and this just sounds SOOOO nice. We tried the Mom´s chocolate cake from the Fat Sisters and EVERYBODY loved it.

It´s funny Marian mentioned that in Paraguay because of the big hydroelectric dam, we probably never have power outs. We get one at LEAST once a week. The power is there it´s just that there´s no maintenance of the power lines or transformers. It makes me happy that we have a gas stove.

I got my "TRUNKY" papers last week. I don´t know specifics yet but it looks like I go home August 20th. I love the mission, I love the work, I love Paraguay but this week we had an experience that made me realize how much home means to me. There is a missionary who is from this branch and is coming home in two weeks. His family aren´t members and the mission office had us contact them to give them the information about picking him up from the airport. When we showed up at their home the mom started crying. "My son´s coming home, he´s coming home." I hadn´t given any thought about it before but it made me so grateful to know that my family is waiting for me. I will work strong to the end with a very large smile but I´m VERY excited to be with you ALL again. I can´t believe it´s been almost 20 months.

I love you all so much.

Elder Frank Wills