Elder Acor: 12/26/22

 

¡Merry (late) Christmas!

Cooper Acor <cooper.acor@missionary.org>

¡Hola mi familia y a mis amigos!

First things first Merry Christmas everyone! I hope everyone had a lot of fun yesterday and ate a ton and also opened a lot of presents! Christmas is very different here in Paraguay that is for certain. Especially when I am a missionary but we still found different ways to have fun.

Let's rewind a bit to the beginning of the week. I started off the week by doing divisions with Elder Lopez and it was super fun! He is from Peru so it was fun to hear about his country and all the different things that he thinks. I went to his area which is called Campo 9 and there are a ton of Germans there actually. Lots of good work and fun fact Elder Lopez is the first Elder I have done divisions with that doesn't speak any English and it actually was not bad at all. We then finished divisions on Wednesday and we had our end of year dinner which was super good and fun. We had awesome spiritual thoughts. We even had one of our friends come so that was a score!

Alright then Friday rolled around. We got a message from one of our members asking us if we could go to service at their house. As good missionaries we said yes and also they promised us lunch so that was a plus too. The one catch is that they live an hour away because we have to walk to their house. They also wanted us to come early. Alright all good we woke up early and walked to their house and started working. It was not too bad at first. The husband is a carpenter so he just has a ton of wood outside of his house and we helped move it. Then we got towards the end and the bottom of the pile. When I tell you that we were moving literal trees we moved trees. It was so incredibly heavy and just a lot of wood, but we survived and felt really satisfied after the work and were able to eat some good food after too.

Now to Christmas and Christmas Eve. Here and in most Latin American countries I believe celebrate Christmas Eve much more and it is called La Buena Noche translated The Good Night. It was good we went to the house of some members of the Vialba Family and had pretty much a BBQ. We also were able to stay out later that night too which was fun. Lots of fireworks were being set off because that is how they celebrate here. Then Christmas rolled around and...it pretty much was just a normal day. Everyone here in Paraguay just slept all day. We were able to go to church and it was good because we got two new friends to come to church for the first time. After that we went and spent time with some members and it was just very normal. I was able to call my family which was super good but it just is a bit different when I get to call them every week. Then we finished off Christmas day with some more members for dinner and that was about it. The festivities were definitely more dumbed down here than they are in the states.

I want to just try and share some spiritual insight that I have received this week that hopefully you guys can use too. Something here on the mission that I use all the time is studying. Us missionaries have two hours everyday set apart specifically for studies. What I have found is that when I have a question before I always receive an answer. What I want to invite you all to do is take some time to "Study". This does not have to mean sitting down reading a book or taking notes or things like that of the traditional nature. What I am saying is before maybe you make a decision or say something take a step back say a pray and "Study" what you are going to do and see if you start seeing better results.

Love you all so much! Thank you for all the messages I received this week. I hope you all have a good rest of your Christmas break and remember that God loves you!

Love Elder Acor