May 16, 2010

Hello to everyone. We hope everyone is doing well and enjoying life. We miss you all and love to hear what is going on with everyone once in a while. Our week began with our office staff meeting. Afterwards Mark had a meeting with the assistants and I went to look at apartments with two of the office elders. We have a senior missionary couple coming to the mission in July and we are trying to help them get their housing figured out. We are hoping to find an apartment close to the office so they can get around without a car. Taxis are fairly reasonably priced and then they wouldn’t have to buy a car if we find an apartment close enough to the office. We saw a couple that were pretty good possibilities. We hope they are still available when it’s a little closer to their arrival time. We are excited to have the help in the office. They will receive training for office duties at the MTC so we have some adjusting to do in the office. It will be nice though to allow some of the young missionaries to get back out teaching full time. Elder Stringfellow served a mission in Argentina so he already knows Spanish and we hear Sister Stringfellow is studying hard so that will be great. The mission hasn’t had any senior missionaries here since February of 2009.

Monday night we had a nice Family Home Evening at the home of the Canetes along with the Graus. President Grau and Canete are Mark’s councilors in the mission presidency. They both have wonderful families and it was a sweet experience. Hermana Canete was having some surgery so all the men stood in the circle while her husband gave her a blessing after the lesson. The Canetes have three grown sons and a daughter. There was such a feeling of strength as the blessing was given. We have been blessed with the wonderful opportunity to get to know these families while we have been here. They serve well in the presidency and do so much to help the mission and stakes and districts here.

The rest of the week Mark spent in interviews pretty much every day through Friday. On those days I usually go to the office and visit with the missionaries a bit also. I also got lots of reading and studying done. I’m still working my way through the Book of Mormon in Spanish. The Book of Mormon in Spanish is 642 pages compared with 532 pages in Englis . That gives you an idea about the difference of speaking and writing in English and Spanish…more words. Anyway I’m enjoying the time I have to study during interview days.

Saturday Mark had a coordinating council with Elder Avila an area seventy from Argentina and the stake presidents in the mission. Sunday we attended our own ward here in Herrera. The ward is growing since we have a new bishop and there have been a few converts to join the numbers. Our office elders had made sweet cards with caramels attached to them for all the mothers in the ward because it is Mother’s Day today here in Paraguay. They are a good group of elders here in the office.

Mark has done an inventory of the things we have been able to accomplish with the Lord’s help in the last 10 months here. It really was a good idea because at times we only see the things we aren’t getting done or the things we would like to do. By making the list it helped us to see that we are accomplishing some good things. It was nice to be encouraged by that and energized to keep going and accomplish more. We are learning so much from this experience! We hope you all have a good week. We love you and miss you. Love, Mark and Sandy