14 Marzo 2016

Hello to All:

What a great thrill we had to receive a voicemail from Alex Cranney that he received his mission call - to serve in Panama.  What a thrill, what an opportunity, and what a blessing for the people of Panama.  We are clearly disappointed that he is not coming to Paraguay, but our loss is their gain for the Panamanians.

We are healthy and eating well.  We are so grateful for our safe little house, our safe neighborhood, our good neighbors, a good car that we can trust, and for the direction of the Holy Ghost as we do our work. 

We had been working here in Horqueta with just two sister missionaries who had all of the city.  It was a large change from when we first arrived when we had 6 missionaries here in the City.  But we know that the Lord knows what is best and how many missionaries He needs to do the work.  In the last change that occurred this week, we now have two Elders here also.  They are Elder McNulty, from Las Vegas, and Elder Piriz who is from Uruguay.  We are excited to have a slightly larger team here.

We worked this week to help prepare our Branch for a branch financial audit.  In spite of our work, the audit did not go very well.  It is a real challenge to help the leadership of the church here understand the importance of documentation, proper approvals, control of cash, etc.  We had a good learning experience and we are already doing better than we did before the audit. 

We drove to Tacuati this week to work with the group leader, Pedro Garcia, on some training plans for the branch.  When we arrived at the church we discovered a rapidly deflating front left tire.  So we had to install the spare and have the tire repaired.  The road to Tacuati is not a good one and we hope that we have experienced all of the flat tires that we are going to have.  We had a good visit and are excited to travel more often to Tacuati to help train the members and leaders on how to progress and learn to run a group / branch of the church.

We also had a good meeting with the District Self Sufficiency committee and we are focusing on three areas:

1. Spiritual self sufficiency - focus on Prayer, Scripture study, Family Home Evening, Tithing, Fasting, and Fast offerings.
2. Mi Camino - the program for improving education and employment.
3. A small project to help families - we want to help them plant a garden and become more self sufficient.  Many say, “why should I have a garden when I can go to the store on the corner for everything I need”.  We need to become more self sufficient.

On Friday we drove to Pedro Juan Caballero, a city still in our mission but right on the border with Brasil.  We needed to have some work done on our Nissan truck and they are the closest place.  Pedro Juan is also known for a cooler climate due to their altitude, and for two large import shopping stores, “Shopping China” and “Shopping Planet”.   We got most of the work done that we needed and then went shopping.  WOW.   Shopping China has nearly everything one would need in life (minus groceries).  They have clothing, household goods, sporting goods, electronics, etc and most of their stuff is American and imported.  We had a good time but only purchased a few things as it was very expensive.  We saw some jars of pasta sauce, a common brand in the US, but they cost $8.50US per jar.  Nope.  We treated ourselves to Burger King and bought an ice cream cone at a premium ice cream shop.   We checked in the parking lot when we left and we were nearly the only car from Paraguay.  All the rest were from Brazil who come to take advantage of the exchange  rates.   We enjoyed our trip and the new and different scenery

Yesterday afternoon we had a Book of Mormon Marathon to help us all with our reading of the Book of Mormon.  We had a few activities, read and studied together, and watched the video “How Rare a Possession”.  It was very good.   Then we went with the Sister Missionaries to teach a lesson.   A very good day!

We love and appreciate you all. 

Jerry and Cheryl

Only a few fotos today:

1- The hermanas ordered French fried potatoes, and got a French fried bee at no additional cost.

2- Two very excited missionaries arriving at the church in Tacuati to work for a day.  They had already been on the road for nearly a week.  Elder Kincheloe and Elder Walters.

3-Selfies are very popular:  Elder Vela from Burley Idaho, Elder Smith from Utah (already went home), Elder Burger - a german whose family lives in Paraguay, and Elder Cranney.