Church Issued Unit
Fam and friends, it's been another beautiful week in the heart of South America. You know the drill; let's get straight to what's been going down.
Splits:
Took a little day trip over to Caaguazu so we could do splits with the zone leaders. My companion for the day was E. Valerdi from México, and he's an absolute dawg. In only one day, I learned a lot from him, and we were having very successful spiritual lessons. We were straight pounding Caaguazu with the gospel. I'm also convinced that E. Valerdi is like a church-issued conversion machine or robot because homie does not eat. I swear he only feeds off of the scriptures and giving people baptismal dates. So by the end of the day, I was starving and absolutely devoured two of the greatest sandwiches I've ever had. What a blessed day it was.
Gnarly petting zoo:
In Paraguay, there's just about every domesticated animal you could possibly imagine roaming the streets here. I mean, they've got everything. The animals that I've yet to see include things like unicorns, woolly mammoths, and ligers. But luckily, I'll probably see some of those in the coming weeks. Some people find this animal situation pretty scary. But it's much better if you look at it like one big petting zoo that's completely free and extremely interactive. I will say there have been a couple of dogs that will run up and try to bite me in the streets, but if you just hit that little crane kick from Karate Kid, they realize they don't want the smoke, and they don't like the taste of a Doc Marten to the face either. #sweepthelegjohnny
Back to the roots:
E. Radcliffe and I were walking past this park, and there were a bunch of dudes playing ball. So we stopped to chat with them for a minute, and we even played a little game to 5. As for the results of this game? Let's just say the gospel isn't the only thing being taught down here. One of them met me under the rim on a fast break and got absolutely baptized. Hopefully, he accepts the church invite so he can be actually baptized.
The Work/Spiritual:
Okay, let's get a little more serious here. Oviedo is starting to feel like home, and the work has begun to pay off. An area that was previously called dead is starting to be revived, and we now have three people on date, and they haven't had a baptism here in quite a long time. We honestly witness little miracles every day. For example, we met this kid this week, Victor; he's my age, and during the first lesson, the spirit was undeniably present. I felt I needed to share about the beauty and essentiality of baptism, and then I invited him to be baptized, and my brother accepted and is eager to continue to learn more.
Then Saturday was crazy. It was the hottest day I've had out on the mission so far. It got up to almost 106 degrees with 78% humidity, so it felt like more than that. We were out in a pretty rural area with not a lot of shade, houses, or previous success. And so the sun was absolutely pounding us; we were walking on this long dirt road, and we were just getting worked. After a minute, we found some trees and rested for a minute. In this moment, E. Radcliffe and I both prayed for the strength and the guidance to carry forward with tenacity. We stood up and walked to the next house and clapped out front (that's what they do here). Then a man opened the door, invited us in, gave us water, and we had a powerful lesson with him, and you could see the spirit working in this lesson, and he was beyond stoked to get the BOM from us. He and his whole family are very interested.
I am forever grateful for these experiences and the opportunity I have to be a tool in the Lord's hands here. This week's scripture is a classic 1 Nephi 3:7: “And it came to pass that I, Nephi, said unto my father: I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.” There IS a way prepared for us to execute the things in which the Lord commands us to do, no matter how impossible they seem. Walking around in pants and a heavy shirt in 106° weather for hours is something that, to other people, only crazy people do. But with a strong reliance and unwavering faith in the Lord, we are able to effectively accomplish anything.
Sorry to all the light readers; this one was a little bit more of a read.
Love you all; it's been real as usual.
Hit the inbox with a life update if you're a real one.
Google Photos contains the day-to-day action so peep: https://photos.app.goo.gl/
Elder Pick
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