February 15, 2010

¡Hola Familia!
¿Comó estan?

Well, it has been a hot week here in Paraguay, getting up to 120F. Too hot I say. It has been a good week. There are animals that run all over the place here, cows, chickens, horses, frogs, bigger frogs, lizards, cats, dogs. I can really tell that this place is a 3rd world country, but that is okay. We are expecting a lot of rain this week. Today we had a downpour. The buses here (called colectivos because they ¨collect¨ money) are insane. They are old, broken down, some of them have holes in the floor or you can see the ground. The doors are left open and people can get on at any part of its route. It's a little scary going on it during rain storms because they don’t have windshield wipers so they just go by what they know. haha. We have a gate on the door of our house mainly to make sure people don’t rob us, and once and a while a huge grasshopper will fly in and land on one of our shirts and we will freak out haha.
That cat is from one of the families in our ward that we visit often and this is the last week of this change. My first change. There are 16 changes for each missionary. So after this I may be with my companion or I may change. But we are pretty sure we are not going to change.
I have the names of Gabriela and Victor, Gabriela Gonzalez Castro and Victor Andres Portillo Rojas, and their daughter is Nayara. They are awesome! I can already tell they are going to be strong members of the church. The bishopric ordained them and gave them the Holy Ghost. And also we have a baptism date for this week. So we have our fingers crossed for that.
My comp. and I were talking and he said that our mission has probably the highest goals of all missions. Our mission goal is to baptize one person every week! Which is really hard in this area.
That is really cool to hear all the other elders from our ward going out to serve missions too. My first month has flown by and I can’t believe February is already half way over!! I knew that our new mission president was from Buenos Aires, but I didn’t know his name. Oh and one other thing. I remember you mentioning about an Elder Curtis that was going to be picking up the missionaries from the airport. (I think that was his name) But I met him. He is one of the Assistants to the President. (Elder Curtis, Elder Maddox, and Elder Peterson (from Calgary haha) are the AP´s. But anyways, Elder Curtis is a great missionary, who was the trainer of my trainer! So technically he is my grandpa here in the mission haha. And last week we did a division with him so we were in a trio and that was a lot of fun. I will be sending a picture with me, Elder Hanchett, and Elder Curtis on my second day in Paraguay.
You mentioned if I wanted to have all my information on Facebook. It is all there but there are like 3 different mailing addresses. So if you want to go on there with someone that knows how to edit it, you can fix it up. And yes that is the right cable to send.
Well thanks for all your love and support. I love the work here it is hard but it is worth it. I love you all.
Con Amor,
Élder Rodgers