Double Digits: Week 10

Whatsup guys,

This week was fantastic week, just like any other. It's starting to get crazy hot and it's also crazy humid, so that's fun. I don't know what it is in Celsius, but it definitely feels like about 90 degrees lately, and I heard it only gets hotter in December and January. I'm sure it's starting to get colder in the States and I'm jealous haha.

This week we got a list of all the members in our ward and found out there's 444, and every Sunday there's only about 40-50 people, so a lot if inactives! So we're trying to reactivate, as well has find children that haven't been baptized yet. It's super hard to find people's houses here because none of the houses have numbers. All we have are street names and often you can't even find those haha. So just a lot of walking and sweating.

Usually I email my mom before this group email, and I forgot I haven't shared a lot of the weird and different things about Paraguay, so I'm just gonna list a bunch of them right now.

- Paraguay has 2 languages. Most people know Spanish and speak that, but there's also another called Guarani. Right now I'm in the city and so most people speak mostly Spanish, but I've heard the further out you go, the more Guarani people speak. I'm already struggling to speak Spanish, let alone learn Guarani haha. Elder Guerrero says he doesn't know it either and he's been here for 21 months, so I'm not too worried about it haha.

- I'm pretty sure this is true in a big part of South America in general, but the fast food places and SUPER chuchi (fancy in Guarani). I'm talkin like 2 story McDonalds haha. They're also just as expensive as the United States. We went to a McDonalds earlier this week and it was HUGE. There were even people hired to open the door for you haha. 

- When it rains here, it freaking RAINS. It usually rains about 1-3 times a week and it usually rains the whole day and it's awesome, I love it. Last Saturday is rained like CRAZY for an hour. The streets were flooding and we just had to stay in our house and study.

-You know how usually when you go to someone's house, you knock on their door or ring their doorbell? Here, you literally just clap your hands hahaha. A lot of people don't have doors and their houses are pretty small, so everyone just claps their hands here. I love it haha.

I'll try to find more random things about Paraguay every week because it's so different. I'm loving it though. Thanks so much for all your emails. Love y'all.

Pic 1 I feel like I look really bad in this picture lol but oh well. This is me and Elder Guerrero eating milanesa. It's kinda like a chicken parmesan, but not? I don't know, it's a little hard explain. They're pretty popular here.

Pic 2 We helped one of the members in the ward paint his house and it was really hot. I got a sunburn on my arms and face, but not where I usually put my watch so it's just pure white there haha. I was trying to get a picture of that but I thought I looked bad in all of them, so here's just a picture of me livin. You're welcome.

I tried sending a video of all the rain, but it takes a while to send, so maybe I'll try next week.

 

 

 

 

HI,

This week felt like it went by a lot faster than some of the others haha. Right now we're doing really well. We're contacting a lot of inactive members right now and reactivating them as well as finding kids in their family that need to be baptized. It's a lot of walking and it's also hard to find houses cuz there's now house numbers hahaha. But besides the blazin sun, it's been well.

Unfortunately Jose isn't preparing for baptism right now, he has some problems he's figuring out right now. We do have this one girl (Margarita) preparing for baptism on the 17th and I'm really confident she's gonna go through with it. She's already been taught almost all the lessons and is praying and reading her scriptures and everything. President Hansen has set a goal of 1 baptism every month for every companionship, so hopefully Margarita will be ours for November. ALSO, President Hansen just changed the rule on time on the computer on P days. Originally is was 60 minutes, but he just changed it to 70! I was always just barely running out of time to email, so whoopee.

I was actually with Elder Sapp's companion, Elder Ortega, last time. But actually tomorrow we're doing another companionship exchange and I'm gonna be ELDER SAPP'S COMPANION. It's gonna be awesome haha. We're gonna be in Republicano again, so it'll be hard again to know where everything is, but I'll live.

Yeah, there's a Gospel Principles class and the only people who attend are our investigators and us haha. There's a teacher for it, but he's not there half of the time, so then we teach. It's basically just like any other lesson we have throughout to week. I'm not sure how it's gonna work when we have 2 hour church, so I guess we'll see.

They don't celebrate like any holidays here hahaha. Only Christmas and New Years.

Elder Sapp said his Mom sent him a package a week after he left for the MTC and it's still not here hahaha so good luck with that. If at all possible, could you send me a can or bottle of Mountain Dew Voltage? Hahahahahah I'm super missing it.

THANKS SO MUCH MOM LOVE YOU

Your favorite son,

Elder Erichsen