October 6, 2009 -- Letter from Mom

Hello,
Thought I'd tell you a little about my life here. So every 6 weeks we have zone conferences and interviews.We hold 3 in Asuncion and 3 in other cities. We are kind of changing things so we are trying to have smaller zone conferences but it means there will be more of them. Any way the driving part of going to conferences is really quite nice. We drive through the country and many little towns along the way. I love to look at the people and houses. Many houses are simple brick with concrete floors and red tile roofs. People spend alot of time out in their front yards or on their porches. People are very social which is good and bad for missionary work. They love to talk with the missionaries but they don't always want to commit to moving forward with learning more about the gospel. There also are areas where there are little villages of shacks made of plywood. There are some places along the road that are like tent cities with the tents being made of black plastic and tree limbs. I don't know if those are workers who follow the crops or permanant but I do know whole families live there.
In the city on many busy corners there are street venders who sell fruit,candy, chipa (local bread) ,toys, andcell phones whatever.As soon as you stop kids and older people come and want to wash your car windows. The saddest is that many very young children are out at night selling things. Everytime I see young boys I think of what it would be like to have Jake and Josh out trying to sell stuff. It's a hard life for many. There are also women who stand in between the traffic holding babies hoping for money.
Then there's the side of life where there is Pizza Hut and Mercedes Bentz cars. I guess it's no different than anywhere else from that standpoint but I notice things more here because everything is new and different. There definitely are more poor than wealthy people here though.
Yesterday Mark and I went out to the quincho to exercise and we heard new bird sounds. It already truly sounds like a jungle and you expect to see Tarzan swing through the trees in the yard. Anyway we looked up and saw two parrots. Big 15 inch tall green, red and yellow beautiful parrots. It was so cool. They were back today too. We'll try and get a photo if we can sometime.
We got a visa to go to Brazil to see Iguasu Falls and we have to get it stamped before the 23rd of October so I think we're going to run over there this weekend when we're out visiting some branches. I'll tell you about it if we make it there. Our plans change daily so we never count on anything until it actually has happened. Well, I write more another time. Love you. Sandy