I arrived in Paraguay in the middle of the night and was able to sleep in the mission office until morning. In the morning we had a meeting where we announced our areas and our trainers. I was assigned “The Chaco Neuland” the other Elders in the Chaco say it's the hardest area and they rarely send experienced Elders here, let alone someone training so that's an experience. The mission president pulled me aside after the meeting and actually just said: “Elder, this is going to be an experience, I need you to stay strong and get creative.” I had to say goodbye to my comp Elder Cannon 😪 Elder Cannon you're the goat, miss you bro .
Me and Elder Espinal (my trainer from Nicaragua) took a six hour bus ride in the middle of the night, and went to work first thing in the morning. We do all of our work in a small indigenous community called Cayin Ô Clim. The people live in tiny brick houses and speak little to no Spanish and little to no Guaraní. They speak Nivacle which is a lot of clicking and grunting. To say yes in Nivacle you literally just gasp, so it's really scary when you ask a question and someone has an actual heart attack after. To “knock on someone's door” here you clap outside their property until you get their attention.
Elder Espinal is the branch president which means I am branch secretary, so we run the church + sacrament meeting and up-keep it. The church is a hallway with a couple rooms. This week seven people came so that was amazing. It also means I need to prepare a twenty minute talk every week. Also their community has four priesthood holders which is so cool. We have a baptism date for the 10th of October. There is no font or river nearby so we have to build a pool and fill it up if we need to do a baptism.
There are diabolical dust storms here and there are a ton of avocado trees that have big fat trunks. All of the roads are sand and it's also 100 degrees every day. I have yet to see a cloud. I am 99.99% confident I'm the tallest person for miles and miles. Also the kids are my favorite, they all run up and hug me (it's probably just to get candy) but they laugh at me and all want to shake my hand. I'm going to buy loads of candy to give them. Sometimes I draw them pictures, and if they are a member and have a book of mormon I draw in it for them. The boys shoot slingshots at us sometimes. Our house's bathroom has the absolute most creatures I've ever seen in a room. Some of the biggest spiders and cockroaches I have ever seen. (I don't know where the cockroaches went 😬)
Most of our service is drawing water out of the wells for people and chopping down their trees with machetes. All the people love to drink terere, which is just water filtered through a bunch of grass and hay. I've had some interesting food as well. The Indigenous make this flat bread that they give us and it's actually so tasty. And they also have empanadas in every store and they are so good.
There is a German colony here and apparently if we go to contact them they'll just shoot us so we stay away from them. There are also dogs EVERYWHERE, but they are all so friendly and some of them are wiener dogs 👀🙈 there are also tarantulas, armadillos and parrots.
The day before P-day we take a bus to another town called Filadelfia to hang out with the other missionaries which is a nice break. I'm actually so excited for general conference next week. It's going to be so great.
I know that life is difficult and there are many changes which rock our worlds and make us want to give up, but there is one thing that never changes and it's God's love for us. Many times this week I felt as if Heavenly Father had forgotten me and I felt frustrated because I came as a servant unto him. But Heavenly Father made it clear to me that he is always with me. My invitation is to sincerely pray. Not a wimpy prayer, a prayer from the heart. God will answer in his time.
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