I´m doing just great here in good ol Paraguay. It is increasingly getting hotter and hotter here and wow! does it just annihilate my body and my brain. I feel like a guy who just came from the desert to live in a humid place. Oh wait that is me!!! hehehe not. No, but really its so hot and my trainer just keeps saying that it is going to get hotter and hotter. Oh Baby Bring it On. Things have been going well here for all of us. We have been having some really good success in finding people lately. For the last two weeks we have found 27 new people. Oh ya. We got one of our investigators to have a baptismal fecha and its for the 8th of October. It has to be so far away because he has to get married with his wife and she has NONE of her paperwork done. Its ok because we have been working with him in setting goals and getting everything all set. He is way cool because he has such a good aura around him. He is naturally a good person. He doesn´t smoke, drink, look at porn, and he is continuing to get a higher education. Its way sweet to share scriptures with him and get him to talk about his life and how it has helped him grow.
My Spanish is coming along. heheheh or you could say so. I am progressing. I have already begun to learn some Guarani which is a total blast to learn. Its crazy because when you use it with the people they freak out and are like ¨wow, a white man can speak guarani. what magic is this.¨ Its beeen a great time to get to learn this language and I have so much to learn its good because I can never truly get bored of how to speak, because there are so many different ways to say things.
One thing that has been so hard for me lately is that we don´t have anyone who is really ready to be baptized. Just like Elder Ramsay Anderson has said in his last emails that just because we aren´t getting baptizms doesn't mean we aren´t working hard. We walk all day from appointment to appointment and sometimes we show up and they are drunk or they aren´t home, or they pretend they aren´t home to not answer the door, or some other lame excuse to not meet with us but its ok. We trudge on to our next appointment. Sometimes we come home and we haven´t met and taught anyone and I feel like a horrible missionary. I feel like what I´m doing doesn´t make a difference, but then I have to look back and see where I have come from. I have grown more spiritually and mentally in the last few months then I have in my entire life. I have come to know my Savior as my best friend. After all these trials and problems that we are coming to see they are nothing in comparison to what the Savior felt in his sacrifece for us. We had a talk in the MTC and it talked about how great will be our joy as missionaries if we bring save it be 1 soul unto Christ. but then he told us that the joy will be even greater when we have made that one soul that we have brought to God our own soul.
I have only to begun to appreciate what these people are beginning to teach me. We see so often here as we are walking, problems that are only seen in some of the most horrible areas in the USA. Already down here I have grown to appreciate so many things that I have taken for granted back home. I know that I have only begun to become the man that I am supposed to become after my mission. The success of my mission will not only be the number of people I have brought to come closer to Christ but it will also be the style of life that I choose to live for myself when I return. We all as missionaires give all for the Lord and for the people. Those who haven´t learned to lose themselves in the work will only come back and repeat where they were before their missions. But those who come back; and with a renewed conviction to become a better person then they were before their missions, will be the people that will continue to serve the Lord their entire lives in serving and loving others.
I thank you all for your support and for your love while I am serving. I only hope to make you and the Lord proud during my time here in Paraguay.
Yo amo a mi familia, para siempre.
`-Elder Beatty
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