After several long months of waiting I
am finally here. I have made it safely to Posadas and for the last week
I have been in my first Area of Villa Cabello. It has been a very
tough transition because it is always super hot here (around 90) and
always humid (10000000%). The people here are awesome!!! I am in a
Trio with my trainer Elder Merrill and Elder Worthington as well. We
have been working hard and we have taught a lot!!! The people here are
so willing to listen to our message and the spirit talks to them
strongly!!! We try to talk to everyone about baptism and in our first 5
days here we have around 15 people committed to Baptism!!! Now I know
things will not be easy but with the help of the Lord I know we can get
everyone of those people Baptized!! The first night here we got all of
our stuff and got dropped off at our Pinch, or our apartment. It is a
dump. When we got there, rat poop was everywhere, bugs were everywhere,
we had no AC, a broken fan, and a leaky ceiling among other things. I
was in shock. The night before we had stayed at the mission home and It
was one of the nicest homes I had ever seen. I was so nervous to even
lay on the bed. We had to have the assistants bring us new mattresses
and mosquito nets! My trainer is always so positive so it helps! He
along with a couple of the other missionaries in the mission were in the
MTC with Dallin which is awesome!!! They said to say hi to Elder
Utterton!! Anyways we are constantly teaching which is great it means
we get to stop walking around this inferno. I would guess we walk
around 6-7 miles daily at least. On Thursday, Elder Merrill had bad
kidney pain and he had to be taken to the hospital. Turns out he had a kidney stone and was ordered to rest for 2 days. Elder Ake (zone
leader) was my step-dad for those 2 days and we had a ton of success!!! A
lot of things about the culture here have put me in shock!! Like for 1
thing half the time we are tracting, we see a ton of drunk guys just
walking around trying to talk to us. One guy even gave us a karate
demonstration haha. Also apparently modesty isn't a thing here either.
Women will breast feed in front of us all the time which is the
weirdest thing ever!! There are a ton of churches here to. One of them
worships the Hispanic version of Robin Hood, he is a cowboy named
Gauchito gil. Its crazy!!! There is another church called San Del
Muerte (Saint of the Death). This church has a huge grim reaper pained on
the front of it and they worship Death. Its actually kind of scary.
People here for the most part though are Catholic. We had to get up in
Church this past week and introduce ourselves/ bear our testimony. It
was a good opportunity. The language is coming along but it is along
harder to understand people her than in the MTC that is for sure!! Oh
and there are always random horses just walking around the streets. I
must have seen 1001 stray dogs since I have been here. Everyone drinks
"mate" all the time and it smells like hay. Overall, this is a beautiful
place and I am excited for these next 6 weeks here!!! The members are
great and our goal is to help them go from a branch to a ward!! I hope
to hear from all of you soon!!
Love you all and pray for you daily,
Elder Ollerton
PS. The food here is unbelievable!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It is great to see another blog by a missionary in Paraguay! My son is also in the Posadas Missiona and is currently serving in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. He arrived in Paraguay three months ago. His blog is "Ben's mission to Argentina." It is fun to see your son having some of the same impressions as my son…drunk people on the road, lots of stray dogs, intense heat, and a not so nice apartment. Ben loves the people too and seems to be having a great experience so far. We are from Maryland and Ben is the only priest from his group of three priests in our ward to have chosen to serve a mission, so far anyway. I hope your son has a great experience, it sounds like he is off to a good start. I think attitude plays a big role and his seems positive. I hope you as parents are doing ok. Is this your first missionary? It is for us. I am still adjusting to Ben being gone, but am so happy he is on a mission.
ReplyDeleteAnna Roberts