December 13, 2009

December 13, 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

We hope you are all enjoying your December. We are watching the days fly by and thinking about how strange it is to have such hot weather at Christmas time. I’ve already mentioned that there is a lack of musical ability so singing in church is a bit different here. Another thing that we miss is singing the Christmas hymns the whole month of December. The only ones we’ve sung so far were in our zone conferences. Oh well. I’m glad we brought our Christmas CD’s.

This week Mark spent finishing up interviews from the last round of zone conferences. He interviewed here in Asuncion Monday through Wednesday and then Thursday we drove 2 ½ hours to Caauazu for interviews and then an hour back to Coronel Oviedo to finish the rest of the them. I really do enjoy the time with Mark in the car driving. It’s nice to visit with the missionaries also. There still are less medical issues since Elder Peterson was here giving medical advice . That’s been nice. He answered a lot of concerns and questions that the missionaries had about health. The country continues to be beautiful and flowery. Pink ,purple, orange and yellow are the colors of flowers we see now.

This is the week before change week so Mark has been busy getting all the missionaries placed in their new areas. We receive 13 new missionaries Tuesday and say good bye to 14 on Thursday. It’s such a process to get each missionary placed in the right companionship . Many missionaries tell me they know they have the perfect companion . They’ll tell me of struggles they are having and how their companion is helping them so much. Revelation is really a part of the process of putting the companionships together.

Wednesday while Mark was interviewing I had a fun day with Hermana Wade, the mission president’s wife from Paraguay Asuncion North Mission. She picked me up at the office first we went to a convent that sells pesebres (nativities) that are carved by the Indians in the chaco. Next we went down town to a row of little shops that sell artisan items. Next we went out to lunch . It was so nice to get away from everything and just visit. Gina and her husband are in their last year here so she has much knowledge and understanding to give me. We call each other when we have questions or to share information . I usually do the calling! We usually cry a bit too. Anyway we were talking about missing our children at home. They have two boys here with them and the other 3 are in Utah and one is on a mission in Uruguay. As we were talking she just said how the reason we miss them so much is because of our strong love for them and how blessed we are that we love them so much. Then we began talking about how if we feel this strongly about our families, what must Heavenly Father’s love for us be like? It helps me want to do all I can to return to Him someday with all of my family. Anyway it was a good day and I’m grateful Gina has been here to help me see the blessings that we have as we learn how to deal with being away from our families.

Friday we had staff meeting with the office elders , took a missionary to the airport and picked up Elder Spitale ,an area authority who came for a district conference, at the airport later that night. He stayed here with us that night and we were out the door at 8 am Saturday morning to drive 5 hours to Pilar for the conference. I spent the day at the hotel while they had leadership meeting and other meetings. Sunday morning we had the adult session and general session of conference. We headed down the road as soon as conference was over just in time to get Elder Spitale back to the airport. This trip we saw an owl and met another policeman. He stopped us and said we were speeding. He said if we paid him it would cost less and if he wrote a ticket it would cost more. We never see speed limits and we have been warned not to hand money to policemen. Mark said we were just missionaries and the money would come from the church. He said if you have to give us a ticket to go ahead and write it. Then he let us go without a ticket. Go figure. I think they just hope you’ll hand him the money and not argue. Oh well. We did drive a bit slower through that area as we left town !

Well , this is a busy week coming up and then maybe we can have a bit of time to breath or something nice like that. We love you all and miss you a lot. Love, Mark and Sandy