Oct 27, 2008

Well, they never told me I’d have to learn THREE languages on my mission. I’ll give you a hint as to what the third one is: looking out of the window of this cyber, I can see Brazil... and they don’t speak spanish over there. I guess I’ll explain. Last Monday, literally 2 seconds after coming up the stairs from doing internet, we get a phone call from our Zone Leaders, and I answer it, and E’ Love is like, ‘Dude, I’m gonna miss you.’ And after that, I had to RUN to say goodbye to some people, because at 9.30 on Tuesday morning I had to be in the office for a special change to Salto de Guairá. So I had to pack my bags and all that jazz, and then like all of the elders from the zone came over in the night and a couple the next morning to say goodbye when they found out. And then I was in the office and found out that I would be going on the 9 hour bus ride with E’ Reid, so I was stoked for that!

So now I’m working in a really tiny branch, with a new elder, E’ Peterson, who is in his second change. He’s awesome though, he’s from Canada. But anyways, my area is absolutely gorgeous. And as far as the eye can see, and farther, is all my area. Its HUGE! There are only 3 areas out here, running down the same road that cuts into Paraguay from my town, each about 45 mins apart by bus, and then after that, its 6 or 7 hours to the next nearest area. So that's just awesome. Yeah, and part of my branch’s boundaries go into Brazil, so that's pretty sweet too. OH yeah, so like I started out, there's just a ton of people who just speak portuguese out here, and it sounds like german with a french accent... its definitely weird. Umm... so yeah, this area was in pieces when I got here. The last elder was just a slacker and hadn’t done anything, but we went to town this week and got this place kicking again. We still have a lot of work ahead of us though.

Oh, and we show up at the church today in La Paloma, the next nearest area, to have our district meeting, and two 16 year old girls who were cleaning the chapel come running out and they're like, ‘¡Está quemando! It’s burning!’ So we rush in there and I grabbed the fire putter outer thing (I totally forget what its called in english) and I put out the fire. It was just like the light exploded when it got turned on and then the roof kind of picked up the spark. But still, I stopped the chapel from burning down, so that was cool.

Okay, I suppose I’ll explain the cigarettes. Its a remedy to make people stop smoking, that has like a 95% rate of working. You just mix like 2 packets into about a liter of water, and then boil it and strain it, and then give it to the person. So that's what we did. It worked, he hasn’t smoked since... Oh, and I don’t know how long it’ll take to get my package now, because while they send our letters to us every week, they don’t normally send us out our packages, so I probably won’t get it until we go into Asunción for the next Zone conference, which probably won’t be until the end of next month...

Anyways, I think I covered everything. My new house sucks, I love you all, and its really, really fetching hot!

Elder Dennis