Week 13

Hey family!

This week was neat. Again. Never enough time. Buckle up.

STARTING WITH INVESTIGATORS!!!

Mario. Will be baptized this week. He was going to be baptized last week, but the day before his baptism, he smoked ONE cigar. ONE CIGAR!!!! That was all that kept him from entering in at the gate. We were super bummed. But listen, he´s the greatest guy ever. He´s sixty ish years old, and doesn´t speak or understand spanish super well. We have to teach SUPER simply, and even then he´ll get mixed up a lot. But he just really wants to do what´s right. When we started teaching him, he said, ¨I´ve found the way of God, and this is the path that I will follow for the rest of my life.¨ Incredible faith. Haha, everytime we come, he pulls out the nicest of his broken chairs and boxes for us to sit on, and his member friend, eva, makes us juice. (I think that´s how i got the runs when I got here...... But it´s the nicest thing ever, and we drink happily!) Every once in a while, he´ll pull out his guitar and play and sing in guarani. I always thought that it was the same song, but I´ve come to realize that it´s actually just the same chords. Different lyrics. Haha. Imagine it. Super skinny. Shirtless most of the time, with short shorts on. He´s just a happy man of the land.

This week, on Elder Swenson´s birthday, coolest day of the mission so far. The restoration and the Book of Mormon, really neat experience. That Night. it started to hail. Big gumball sized hail drops. Car alarms were going off because they were getting hit. It was crazy. And then came the rain. I couldn´t beleive it. It was 9 10 and we had 20 minutes to get to Olivia´s apartment and back to ours. We had a book of mormon in Portuguese, her native language, and we needed to get it to her that night. Why? Because she couldn´t wait. We had in our hands the most important book ever written, and NOTHING was going to stop us from getting it to her. She´s making huge strides, and loves what we teach her, but she´s having a battle with deciding to quit smoking. There´s power in the book of mormon, and there´s greater power when it´s in your native language. She needed that book. So, shoes in hand, pants rolled up, we ran. The water was past our ankles, and pouring like a fast running river down the street. The rain was coming down in sheets, and soaked us completely through within seconds. We got to Olivia´s apartment, and the power had gone out. We politely made our way through the crowd of people at the apartment entrance, getting a few funny glances, and arrived at the elevator. Well, the elevator doesn´t work when the power´s out. So Elder Swenson and I looked at eachother, laughed a little, flipped on the little light that we have on our cell phone, and booked it up the 10th floor where she lives. We arrived, out of breath, and happy.

That´s the beauty of it. I´m happy here. I really am. For some reason, it´s different. Usually when you arrive somewhere, at your house, or wherever, and you´re exhausted.... you´re not happy. You know? But there´s the greatest sense of tired happy here in Centro. President Nunez, the branch president, talked about taking care of your sheep in Sacrament meeting yesterday. There´s a joy that´s hard to describe when finish a day of doing all that you possibly can to care for your sheep. I think I´m finally learning Charity. I really do love Mario, and Olivia, and Berner. If I can learn to see everyone on the street, and feel that same love for them... I don´t know. I think that I´ll be closer to doing this work how the Lord would do it if He were in Asuncion.

I love you all. Take care.

Elder Stewart.

Mom. It´s me and Elder Swenson living together. I love it. I think the other pic was from a district meeting.

Yes. It´s kind of like AZ here... kind of. THere´s palm trees!