Elder Acor: 5/1/23

 

Always Forward

Cooper Acor <cooper.acor@missionary.org>

¡Hola mi familia y a mis amigos!

This week was honestly an amazing week. I loved being a missionary this week. I saw myself grow so much. I pushed myself to different distances, literally and metaphorically. I got to learn a lot from the leaders in the mission and try new things throughout the week so let's just get right into this week and what happened!

Tuesday I was able to do some awesome divisions with my zone leader elder Allen! He is awesome! He is from Utah too and he has a ton of time in the mission so I was able to learn so much from him. I went to his area to see how all of his friends were doing and to just learn a bit more. We stopped and talked to a ton of different people but we never managed to sit down. We were on our feet for about six hours. Then we had to walk about an hour to a family's house where all the kids are super interested. We taught an amazing lesson and we even put all four of the kids on date and that was an amazing experience. Then we walked back to elder Allen's apartment which was another hour walk. We ended up walking nine and half miles that day.

Next day was a very chill day of work. At night though we got to have our English class that we have started up and it has been a blast. This week we made chocolate chip cookies and taught all the ingredient names in English and taught the process in English. First time making chocolate chip cookies here in the mission and they were so good. I will definitely be making them again.

Thursday is definitely one of our busiest days because we work in an area with a lot of people to visit. We visited with one young dude whose name is Geronimo and he is an inactive member but he can speak English and he is autistic so he is crazy smart too. So we always have fun conversations with him. Then we got to visit with Claudio again. It has gotten harder because he was drinking again and he was drunk so we are trying to be patient and help him out with this problem. Then at night we had other elders stay the night with us because they had to be here for Fridays zone conference.

Friday we had our zone conference with everyone in the zone from Encarnación and it was a blast. I love it when president Faúndez teaches us how we can improve and what we can do to be better missionaries. Saturday was a very chill day but we got to try out some of the things we had learned from president and we had many lessons where I felt like I was teaching so strongly with the spirit and I am trying so many different ways to teach to have people interested. I also got a package from my family for my birthday, which was a bit ago! It was awesome to get things from the states and I got a ton of new ties so that is super exciting.

Then Sunday we went to church. Sadly we did not have any of our friends come but it is fine sometimes that happens. I know that I did everything I could to invite people to church. We then had lunch with the normal family. We had lunch and we ate asado which is just BBQ and it was really good. Then we had to be in our houses super early because yesterday was the presidential election here in Paraguay. For our safety we had to be in early. We organized, cleaned, told stories, and studied because we had nothing else to do. Also this week pretty much every day we walk by the same road and there is a poor dog who has a broken leg that has just lost all of its muscle and it is super sad, but he is known as stanky leg dog. 

Well that was my crazy week! I feel like I can give some other updates on things like how my greenie is doing! He honestly is doing awesome. He is picking up Spanish. He is talking more and more in lessons and gaining more confidence in the language. He is definitely talking more than I could at that time. Next week we have transfers and I am hoping I can stay here and finish his training. Also my responsibilities as district leader have honestly been super chill and I have enjoyed it a lot being able to teach the other elders and help lead them to be better missionaries. Also I stole this week's subject from Giannis Antetokounmpo. He said there are no failures in sports, only times to grow. I love this with a life mentality. Take all the mistakes we make and improve from them and we will be amazing.

Well that is all for this week! This email was longer because I had much more time to write it! Hope everyone has such an amazing week this week! Make sure you say your prayers everyday and read the scriptures everyday. With that we can receive so many blessings.

¡Adios!

Love, Elder Acor