Hola familia!
How´s everyone doing with their halloween preparations? I´m thinking this year I´m going around as Elder Beus. I´m going to wear his plaque and his tie and be him, it´ll be a great time. I really have no idea if they´ll celebrate it a little better here in Asunción than in Luque. It´s called día de las brujas (witches day) or they just say halloween (which I suppose they probably assume it´s spelled jalouín).We were thinking about going to this place called God´s Pan (that means God´s bread) with the asistentes for lunch but we´ll see how that turns out. It has been doing a lot of heat down here but I love it. Everyone is always sitting outside and since it´s so hot they don´t have enough energy to run and hide from you when you come up so you can get into a lot more lessons. The bugs are everywhere but I learned a long time ago to always carry around bug spray with me so when I start to see them I lather up. It always makes me feel like I´m camping. The other day we were sharing a lesson and this giant mosquito just plopped itself down on my scriptures. I´m not even kidding it was at least the size of a 50 cent piece! It was so massive but it didn´t get me don´t worry. Our teaching pool is doing well. We received some super awesome referencias from some recent converts this week which was super cool. Also since we´ve been working so much with the less actives it turns out a lot of them have children that never ended up getting baptized but our now more than old enough to be baptized. It´s a great way to reactivate the family by helping them help their children prepare for baptism. We´ve been seeing tons of success working with the less-actives. yesterday we had 19 of them return from our side and about the same from the other elders´ side too (including their children and babies)! It´s really been a huge blessing seeing so many of them return because the branch is getting super excited about it so they´re working even better with us now because they´re seeing real growth and success. I feel like our job as missionaries has been made so much easier because we pretty much just have to go and teach them and they all pretty much want to hear it. The Lord has been doing a lot of work here in Trinidad because the hearts of many have been pretty softened and humbled and they are feeling the need to come back to church to make things better and all we have to do is help them realize that´s what they need. I´m really excited to find out what Elder Christofferson has to say about all that to help us when he comes on the 13th! As far as interesting people that I´ve found there have been some strange ones but mostly just normal paraguayans. They are really cool people that are so generous and really over all friendly. They definitely have some big time quirks about them but so do I so we get along pretty well. For example the cyber we´re using right now the lady just brought us out sopa paraguaya (it´s kinda like corn bread but different, I´ll have to make it for you guys some day) and a giant glass of sprite each to me and my companion. They are super good sharers which I definately think was something that I had to learn how to do better from them. They are always greeting you with a friendly yell of something in guaraní and they always seem to be pretty happy even though they don´t really have much of anything. I imagine in some ways their lives are pretty stressful because they completely rely on their health, the weather, and everybody else for money (the majority of the people either sell stuff, recycle plastic bottles from the street, or work construction) and if they don´t have work one day there is a great chance they don´t eat, but they don´t worry about that too much. They´re kinda just in the moment kinda people. I don´t think that always being like that to the degree that most of them are is right, but I definitely think they have something with not stressing so many things all of the time. Tranquilo no más. I can´t really remember anything super specific last week that happened so I´ll just try to make something super sweet happen this week and let you guys know how that went. I love you all and Feliz día de brujas.
Con amor,
Elder Zachary J. Hulsey
I hope this photo comes through. It´s of me and this other elder in my zone named Elder Gunther and this kid named Ruben. We met him at the operation smile thing and he was hilarious.
