Beff Shop

I just don't get it.  Last week was a little rough, but there was no reason for it to be rough.  I just wasn't feeling satisfied in the work.  This week however was incredible, but I can think of plenty of reasons why it should have been terrible.  I guess that's just how it goes sometimes.

Tuesday was a crazy crazy day.  I'll start from the beginning...

We had a district meeting about a 20 min bus ride away, but we forgot.  The busses don't actually have a schedule.  The morning bus comes anytime between 9:00 and 9:45, so you just gotta be ready I guess.  We weren't ready though.  At 9:30 we remembered our meeting, and rushed out the door, and consequently missed the bus.  We called a taxi, but unfortunately it was 4x more expensive.  We arrived late, and immediately Elder Smith rushed to the bathroom with the very commonly received problem of diarrhea.

Our plan for the day was to get off the bus early on the ride home and visit a small town on the very edge of our area.  There's a lot of land in our area so that would mean about a 1:45 min walk back to our house.  We decided that despite Elder Smith's diarrhea, we would press on.  We grabbed empanadas for lunch (buying the much more expensive ones from the respectable store, instead of the cheaper roadside ones, because we didn't want to get sick), and then ran to catch our bus that had already passed us.  With the unexpectedly high cost of the taxi, and then the empanadas and bus ride to the edge of our area, I was out of money.

We got off the bus, it drove away, and it started to hit me immediately.  Something was wrong with those empanadas.  I wanted to vomit, I felt diarrhea coming on too.  And that was the start of a 6 hour long battle of preaching the gospel and not dying.  Literally every second was a fight not to let something come out.  But, God was with me and my comp through all our struggles.  I can't even tell yall how many miracles we saw that day.  We taught so many cool people, taught so many great lessons, and found so many people that would usually be hard to find.  Everyone we talked to was prepared by God for us.

Finally we made it back home, luckily we still had 30 min of "lunch time" where we could rest.  I spent 15 min in the bathroom, and then my comp spent 15 min in the bathroom, and then we headed out again.

The rest of the week was pretty normal.  I'm definitely feeling a lot better than last week.

One more thing... lawn mowers.  I learned that the rich people here do actually own lawn mowers, instead of cutting the grass with a machete like most people.  But these lawn mowers don't use gas.  Instead, they plug in like a vacuum.  I'm not sure whose idea that was.  When a vacuum runs over the cord, generally nothing happens, but when a lawn mower runs over the cord... you get a huge electrical hazard.  So there you have it.  Paraguay is weird.  There was a stray dog and loud barbie music playing during the sacrament.  Weird. But I love it.

Love yall,

Élder Blacker

Beautiful nature scenes, the spikes that always get stuck on my shoes and pants, a bug, and BEFF SHOP (It was supposed to be "Beef shop", but they messed up lol)