Hola Everyone!!

Well lets start out with this. I have the crappest keyboard I have ever touch in my life right now and it is horrible to try to type on so I don´t know that this is going to be to long of a letter.

So this week we worked hard. We tried really hard to meet all of our goals and to find new investigators and to help people on their path to Christ. On the other hand it was difficult because I think almost everyone of our investigators didn´t keep any of their commitments which is hard and we are going to try to figure something else out to do different this week so that we can better help our investigators meet their commitments. So I´ll start out with the not so happy and then move into the miracles of the week.

The Family Paniagua I think I talked a little bit about them last week and how they have so much potentiontal and we are really working hard to help them on their journey. Well this week has been really really rough with them. We love them to death and because of that we haven´t dropped them yet even though we probably should have by now. The ones that aren´t baptized just won´t keep any of their commitments and the 18 year old boy, Pablo who we thought had the most potential told us this week that he has no interest in finding out about our religion which was quite hard to hear. We are going to teach him one last lesson and see what he has to say afterward and if he still has no want then we will just have to let him go. The mother, Ramona, has just been rude like yesterday she was not saying very nice things about me because she really liked the hermana that was here before me and she was upset they transfered her. Well I could understanda nd her daughters were like ¨mom you need to stop that isn´t very nice¨ and she was like ¨she can´t understand anything that is going on anyways¨. But we are really frustrated with her and have just basically given up on her. Celso, the dad, is still showing a little bit of promise. He sat us down this week and said he is sick of doing bad things and wants to change so we are going to try to help him do that.

The next not so happy thing was yesterday. Sunday was a really rough day for us. We had 9 investigators commited to coming to church and 3 less active families and so we were really excited about church and about all the experiences these people were going to have. So we made a plan for each person individually and let the person know what was going to happen Sunday morning. Then we were originally going to get 4 cars to drive around town and pick people up but then we didn´t have time so we just got two cars. Well I went in one car after 5 of our most promising investigaotors and Hermana Knapp went in the other car to get two families of less active and the other 4 investigators. Well all of mine I stood and clapped and claped and clapped outside their doors and called them and called them and called them and none of them would answer and so we just headed back to the chapel. When we got their hermana Knapp was there with just one investigator and everyone else just hadn´t come and it was really really sad. The investigator is one of our miracles and I¨ll talk about her in a minute. But she ended up leaving half way through sacrament meetingbecause she just couldn´t stay awake any more because she had owrked all night long at a hotel the night before. So we were really grateful she at least came for a little bit.

now for the miracles.

#1: Maria Gloria: This lady is amazing. Hermana Knapp and Hermana Little had contacted her like two weeks before I got here and because she is super educated and works hard iwht her girls and everything they really wantead to teach her. Well since I¨ve been here we have stopped by her house almost everyday and she is never there or she is helping her little girls practice the violin or do homework and never had time to talk to us. Well FINALLY this week she was there and we could talk with her. She is an absolute miracle in our lives!!! She was for sure prepared by the lord. Before she wouldn´t let us in becuase she wasn´t intersted but lately her daughter has been asking a lot about the chapel they pass everyday as their are pulling out of their neighborhood and why there are so many churchs and why people believe different things and such. Maria Gloria said that because of these questions she has been trying hard to figure things out. So she let us in. We explained everything that we usually explain which is the bare minimum because most of the people down here don´t understand much past that. Well she then asked how we know that we have the true church. What makes our church different, what makes us think that our church is lead by God and such things. Well that was perfect we showed Amos 3:7 and then talked about prophets and Joseph Smith. We then shared the first vision and afterwards we asked her how she was feeling and she said that she felt wonderful and a sense of peace that she had never felt before. She said that was happened to Joseph Smith was marvelous and amazing!! Then we talked to her a little about the Book of Mormon. And once again, how did he have the power to translate this, who is Mormon, How does it work with the bible, What does it teach. All the perfect questions and we explained the restoration of the priesthood and the authority of God and then talked about the Book of Mormon and all the prophets there. She then left to get us some water and we decided to give her a chapter to read. We aksed if we could see her book of Mormon to mark some chapters and she said, why are you going to mark some chapters? I just want to read the whole thing. How about you guys give me two weeks to read it and then come back and we can talk about it, I want to learn all the prinicples and all the things it teachings before we talk about it just so I can better understand. We were like yeah you can read the whole thing!! Then we sent up an appointment for this Tuesday just to see how everything is going and answer any questions she may have and such. She was an absolute miracle in ourl ivesa nd we are quite excited to have her has an investigator!!!

Next we have Mary. We were teaching one of our investigaotrs Laura and Mary just came over because she saw a goup of people gathered, this was actually a cool lesson because people just kep coming and joining in. But then we set up an appointment with her Saturday and we had a really good lesson with her. She lives in Yukyty which it a little super super super poor village we have in our area. After the first lesson on Joseph Smith she shared with us that her husband left a month and a half ago to work somewhere else in the country and she hasn´t heard from him and she is sick and she doesn´t have any money and she has her two kids that she is really worried about and how she needs something like this church in her life to help her and to make her happy because she really does feel that what we taught her really did happen. She is so humble and her kids are the cutest things in the world!!! She alreadfy has a strong testimony and tries really hard. Sunday Morning she came home slept for 45 minutes and got up and bathed her kids and got them ready for church and she came for as long as she could stay awake. We have a lesson with her later this week so hopefully things go well!!

Next we have our less active families they are amazing. We have the Familia Gauna and teh Familia Petruchelli who are just amazing. They have both commited to coming back to church and to owrk toward being sealed as a family in the temple. WE had a lesson with both of them yesterday and they were amazing strong lessons!! I really think they are going to change. And Hermana Gauna made us lunch and we had raost beef, mashed potatoes and salad and I felt like I was at home it was just great!!

Well the language is ok. I´m understanding more andm ore every day and my verb conjugations are getting bette. I¨m acutally understanding when to use them and such., I can definitly feel the Lord´s help in this. Everyone always asks us how we learned SPanish so fast and we just tell them it´s a gift from the Lord, because it truly is!!

Love
Hermana Hubbard

¡Hola! Everyone

I"m in Paraguay and I just love it here!! The church is true and the work is moving forward!! It´s just amazing.

Well traveling down here was hard. It was long and I didn't get much sleep. But it was fun to try to listen to all the Spanish and try to get a little bit of it. I keep expecting it to be like over in Israel where people were speaking in a different language but the minute they realized that you spoke English they would speak in English. But after a week I've realized that people just don´t speak English down here!! It is slightly crazy and way awesome. Well we flew from SLC to Dallas which was a pretty chill fast flight. Then from Dallas to Buenos Aires which was a long flight through the night. There was a little girl that kept passing out so I offered to help but I really couldn't do anything because I had all of my nursing stuff with me but they said my carry on was too big so they took it away from me so I actually didn't have any of it so I was just not a help at all but it is okay. It was entertaining and a great thing to distract me from the fact that I was super tired. I really like the fact that I am small because then I can sleep on a plane quite well when I´m not between two elders that I can´t touch or they freaked out so, I didn't get much sleep, but it was a good experience. So half of my district from the CCM (MTC) left the night before the Paraguay people because they were going to Argentina but we ran into them in the Buenos Aires airport which I was super happy, I loved it oh so much!!! I miss my district they are all so awesome!!

So the country is just awesome. The first two days I was here it was quite hot like in low 80s with humidity so it was warm and we sweated a lot. All the people were saying that it is super weird for this time of year to be that warm. Well then we woke up and it was freezing. I mean it´s only like 55 degrees which isn't bad, but with the humidity and all tile floors and windows that don´t hold out the cold it is quite cold. The country is tropical, kind of, there are a lot of jungle trees but I've heard that a lot of the jungle has been chopped down and the trees we see now are just the ruminants of it. But basically it´s like any other south American country. It reminds me of Peru but cleaner (well in some parts) I love it here, that is all I have to say!!!

So daily life is pretty awesome. We work really hard and run a lot between appointments, we like to chat until we realize we have to be to another appointment across the area in 5 minutes and so we will run!! It´s fun but at the same time hard because the roads are all made out of a type of sand rock type rock that is just laid there it´s not really paved down or anything so it is really hard to walk on let along run on. I´m amazed I haven´t broken an ankle yet. But we wake up every morning and go running for our exercise in a little park about a block away and then we come home do our daily study sessions and then it´s off to work and at 9 we run into the house hurry and plan and then drop into bed dead tired and talk about life and it is really awesome.

So my area is called Ita Enramada it is part of Asuncion but is quite beautiful. I´m on the part of the city that borders Argentina and we can see Argentina all the time from our area. Our area is a good mixture of people. I think it is quite interesting. So part of the area is what we call . . . chuchi (or fancy or rich) and then the other part is like the poor of the poor so we have a really good mixture and it´s fun to be able to switch from teaching on a dirt floor sitting on buckets right outside someone´s outhouse to teaching in a super nice house that makes me feel like I´m in America. It is really quite awesome. We have a lot of investigators from both areas so it is fun!!

Now for my companion . . . . SHE IS AWESOME!!!!!! Her name is Hermana Knapp and she is from Manhattan KANSAS. She is about my height, has curly brown hair. She is super fun, oh and she went to BYU-Idaho and we are pretty sure we have seen each other because she has worked at the writing center for the past 3 years and I've been tutored there, and I have tutored Anatomy and Physiology there. So it is fun. She has been in Paraguay for 5 months and speaks the language amazingly. She is a way hard worker and we have to be going going goin for both of us to be happy. She makes me run every morning which is an adventure for her. Oh funny story of the week. We were running like two days ago in the morning and we were trying to make it across the street before the bus that was coming would get mad at us for getting so close to us and I stepped on the curbs with quite not enough of my foot running as fast as I can and fell HARD. So hard that my knees, my ankles, my arm, and my CHIN all were scraped amazing well. It hurt really bad but I didn´t have time to think about it because if I stayed there for very long the bus was going to kill me so I had to jump up and we just kept running to the apartment with blood flowing quite rapidly from my one knee. It was quite amusing my companion and I laugh about it almost every day. But anyways my companion awesome. All of our investigators love her and all of them have just joined in and taken care of me.

Our apartment is what you would call Chuchi. Hermana Knapp was telling me we had a super chuchi apartment and we were driving from the mission home to it and I expected you know American like style but you guys would definitely not call it Chuchi. It´s two bedrooms (one of the bedrooms the light doesn´t work and so we don´t use it. One bathroom, a huge living room and good sized kitchen and a storage room and a laundry room with a sink and wash board for our laundry (but don't worry one of our ward members does our laundry) but it isn´t very chuchi I mean it´s nice and we have warm water which is happy but it isn´t as chuchi as I though it was going to be. I´m emailing pictures to don´t worry.

The food here is let´s say . . .. greasy . . . they fry everything!! And I mean everything!!! But I´m still losing weight just because of all the working and running and walking. It´s really bland because they don´t use any kind of sauces and they barely use salt so it´s interesting. They love their bread. They have this stuff called Sopa which is like corn bread with onions in it. I hated it at first but it is growing on me. It´s really hard because they give us HUGE portions and if you don´t eat it all they are super super super super offended. I´ve walked out of a lot of houses ready to throw up I was so full. My stomach is stretching though and I just don´t eat anything except at the people´s houses.

Our investigators, for the most part, are awesome, We had one pull the whole we saw them in the yard and they ran inside when they saw us and sent her husband out to tell us she wasn´t home. It´s just not her time to hear the gospel even though she showed a lot of promise. But we do have a few amazing ones and we work a lot with the menosactivos and they are awesome as well.

Miguel. Miguel is 19 years old and is the most amazing kid in the world!!! Holy Cow he reads the book of Mormon and really wants to find out if this church is true. We taught him my first day and my companion tried to have me speak, and I'm not very good so she had to translate everything I said into Spanish that actually made sense. But the spirit was strong in that lesson. Sadly we missed the next lesson. We were at a lesson on the opposite side of our area and the lady just talked and talked and talked and so we were late by like 30 minutes even though we ran as fast as we could to his house and he had left to work by then. But we teach him tomorrow so we are excited.

Rocio. Rocio is 31 years old and has a little one year old boy that happened from a one night stand. She feels like she made a huge mistake in her life and even though she loves her son it´s really hard. She really wants to change and has the best spirit known to man. We had a great lesson with her yesterday and we were all crying because she can speak English so I can actually participate and such. It is quite awesome.

Familia Paniagua. They have 3 kids and then the parents. Elisha was baptized like 6 weeks ago and is doing so well in the church I swear she knows the scriptures better than me. Then I had my first baptism Saturday which was Erika Paniagua who is 11 and is amazing girl. She also knows the scriptures amazingly!! Then their brother Pablo is 18 and we got him to church yesterday which was great. He promised us Saturday that he would come and when we got to their house Sunday morning he was still asleep. My companion is really good friends with this family because she has been teaching them for like 4 months or something like that and so she marched up the stairs and knocked on his door, woke him up, and he came to church were he had a great experience and got to see Erika confirmed. It was quite awesome. Their whole family is amazing. They live in basically a giant garage that they have build rooms on like stilts that goes about the garage where they work and it is quite scary walking up and down there I felt like I was going to die and the whole thing was going to fall over. They feed us all the time and we teach them and slowly the family is getting baptized. Next is Pablo and we are hoping in a couple of weeks.

Familia Gauna. They are menos activos and they are amazing. The reason they don't go to church anymore is they have a 7 year old son that is severely autistic and so it is hard to deal with him. It was hard just to teach them a lesson. But they have a strong testimony of the gospel and they have now committed to switch off every other week coming to church so we are excited about that.

We have a lot of other investigators and menos activos we are working with but those ones are the ones that I feel like their family and I just love them to death.

Well I love the gospel, I love the people, and I love it all. All friends sorry you can´t write me on my email you have to write me through dear elder which actually gets here in like 2 weeks so just keep writing me!!!

Love you all

Hermana Hubbard