Week 96: Ciudad del Este, Paraguay (final post)

Hey mom i was just wondering if we can make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and scalloped potatoes on Wednesday,... and fruit smoothies/milkshakes.

thanks!!

Ben's mom here…

(The photos above are of Ben's 20th birthday dinner-cow head and tongue.)

I don't think Ben had much time to write today, so it was short and to the point.  :)

It is hard to believe Ben's mission is coming to an end tomorrow.  We have been posting his emails for over 100 weeks; the time has gone quickly (although at first to his mother it didn't.)  Thanks to all of you for reading his posts and for thinking about Elder Roberts.  I know he has appreciated, as have we, all the thoughts, prayers, and support.  We are anxious to see him on Wednesday, and it looks like we'll be enjoying a few of his favorite foods on Wednesday.  

The Roberts Family

Week 95: Ciudad del Este, Paraguay

Well, this week was pretty great. I did divisiones twice and we were running all over the place, but i got to eat lunch with this super rich guy who is a member and is a doctor and studied at Harvard.  Now he lives here in Ciudad del Este, and I`m pretty sure this week we are going to eat with him again and have cow head. Should be pretty fun. 

Anyway, we had a few days that were kind of iffy. I`ve realized that this is a kinda tough area, half of the people only speak Guarni and it's too dangerous to be there at night past about 6:00.  There are a lot of people that aren`t very open to the message, haha, but we are trying to work off references more and working with members. We went to teach this guy named Hector who has been talking for about 2 months to the missionaries and is really cool, he understands everything.  His friend was also over and we had a super good lesson with him.  We explained the restoration and he understood perfectly and then asked if we could read part of the Book of Mormon with him, so we read 3 Nephi chapter 11, the whole chapter, and he really enjoyed it.  We are planning on meeting with him later on. But it was really good.

Things are going pretty well though, and last night we got to cross over through Brazil to Argentina, so we were in Brazil for about 20 minutes driving to get to the Argentine bridge.  We stayed the night at the elders pension there in Igauzu, and this morning got to go see the water falls. They were really really crazy. Super huge, and just really extensive-like you just keep walking around and there are more waterfalls everywhere. It's a huge park and there are tons of people that go, but it was really crazy how big they are. I'm kind of upset because i can't send pictures off this computer.  I'm going to try another, but it was great. We got back kind of late though due to some problems of just us not knowing how to get back exactly, but we took a bus and then walked a little bit then took another bus and walked some more and finally got home. But it was super fun, and nice to see everyone else from my group again. 

But it's pretty crazy that this is basically my last pday and that next week I'll be in Posadas on Monday getting ready to go home. It's kind of hard to believe, and i don't think its really hit me yet, but hopefully it doesn't hit me till Monday. I`ll try to write some more on Monday and send some pictures. 

Thanks for everything,

love, Elder Roberts

Week 94: Ciudad del Este, Paraguay

This week was pretty good, some ups and downs like every week. The leader conference we had was really good, we actually all went up in a van to the cross of Santa Ana in a little conference room there which was  weird, but it was cool to have the meeting in a different place. We changed a few things with the key indicators and now we report on how many progressing investigators we have and how many new investigators we have every week. I think it will help push all of the us to find more people and get more people ready for baptism. 

That is crazy though that school is over, and that Ethan is leaving on his mission. Time goes by pretty fast. Next Monday I'll be heading to Igauzu, which should be pretty awesome. I'm excited, I just hope it doesn't rain.

 

So we didn't get back from Posadas till Tuesday night and it rained really hard on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday... haha so that was kind of tough, but it was still good.  We found a cool family that lives next to a family we were teaching and they were like, "Well we always see you guys walk by and we always wondered why you never came to our house," haha. So we are teaching them tonight.  And the recent converts and less actives we are working with are doing really well. Not a whole lot of people came to church because it was raining super hard.  When we got there it was just us, the quorum president, branch president, and stake secretary for the priesthood class.  But 36 people showed up in the end. 

Anyway life is pretty good, the mission is going well, it's weird that I only have 2 weeks left, but I'm going to try my best to take advantage of them. 

Thanks for the letter and i hope everyone has a great week!!

Love, Elder Roberts

Week 93: Ciudad del Este, Paraguay

Hello!

This week went pretty well. It was sunny all week and didn't rain once, which was a miracle haha.  So that was nice, but we had some bad luck just with appointments falling through and stuff like that, but Sunday went really well.  There was a less active family of 4 that we are working with that went to church, and then this other kid who is 19 that we are helping out a little bit who wants to go on a mission, he came as well.  Then our investigator who is hopefully getting baptized in two weeks came as well, and is doing really well, but she says she wants her sister to come and be here for her baptism. I think she is pretty set on making the decision, it's just when. So we shall she what happens this week. 

The zone is doing really well though, they`re almost all new.   Eight missionaries are in their training, but they are all doing well and having a good time and having baptisms, so we have been doing baptismal interviews this week and divisions;  it's been pretty good. 

There is a family that we eat lunch with every Thursday and they are from Asuncion.  Their whole family are members, except one sister and her husband and daughter who live right around the corner.  Since I've been here we have been on and off talking to them and had one lesson, but they are pretty inconsistent and never want to commit to a day or time to sit down and talk.  But yesterday we went out to visit a few neighbors of the member and none of them were home, so we went and visited this sister and her husband who aren't members and we had a really good lesson.  The guy starting crying and told us how he regretted not listening to God, or not listening to the message of the gospel before hand, and that he felt like he missed out on a lot of the blessing he could have had if he would have listened earlier.  He told us he wanted to go to church, so that was cool

Then our lesson we had planned for at 8pm fell through, so we were like dang.  Sunday night here everyone goes to bed at about 7:30, we wondered what to do so we just decided to walk around and see if anyone was awake.  The first house we clapped the guy let us in, brought us chairs, and told us he had been to church before and that he liked it and wanted to learn more-so that was cool.  It just humbled us and taught us that even at night in the dark there are still people out there ready to listen. 

Everything is going well though, I'm here in Encarnacion today.  We have a leadership conference in Posadas later today and tomorrow and I'm actually writing in a free public library... which i didn't know existed in Paraguay. 

But everything is going well, thanks for the letter and for everything and have a great week!!

love, Elder Roberts

Week 92: Ciudad del Este, Paraguay

hahaha Liam got his license... I'm scared to drive with him. Actually I'm scared to drive because I've been driving in Argentina and i probably picked up some bad habits from driving here. But anyway, sounds like everyone is excited that school is almost out.  But yeah its been a little rainy and it gets dark really really early. We try to set appointments up for the night time every day because if not it's pretty tough talking to people. 

Anyway this week was good, i did divisiones again with one of the new missionaries and we have divisiones planned for tomorrow with Elder Magdaleno and the elder he is training to do a baptismal interview.  We will probably be doing divisiones every week until the end.  Lots of new missionaries and stuff to do and learn. But we had stake conference and a conference with Elder Vinas who is a seventy and it was great.  The conference we had with him as missionaries was really good, he talked a lot about the atonement and helping people understand how the atonement is necessary in their lives and explained that only people who are truly humble will be able to accept the message because they will realize that they can't do everything alone.

The Sunday night session of stake conference, which we got permission to go too, was fantastic though, i really really enjoyed it, and Elder Viñas was a great speaker. The Sunday morning session was good as well but the whole church got filled up to the max and then they set up a huge pavilion on the soccer court outside with about 150 chairs and that all got filled up as well. I stood up the whole time, so i couldn't really pay attention really well, but our investigator that went really enjoyed it. She is planning on getting baptized the 13th, but we shall see this week about the final preparations. 

Anyway, Elder Viñas talked about the sacrament and how when we take the sacrament we don't automatically get rid of our sins, but that it is a start of the remission of our sins and that we need to go every single week to partake of the sacrament to be able to complete the repentance process.  He kind of dropped cane, or was really to the point with everyone about going to church, even if it is raining or we are tired.  It was super good, i really enjoyed it.

We are also working with a few less active people that are progressing and are doing well, one kid who wants to go o a mission apparently. I gave him a shirt and tie and he came to conference with us so that was cool.

But other than that i am just trying to stay focused and work till the end. Today we wet to Itapu, the big dam here, ,which was pretty cool.

Thanks for everything!

love, elder roberts