Christmas Down South

 

I'll start with the good stuff. Tuesday afternoon I was eating dinner, and I got an email from my mom that said OPEN NOW. Normally you are only really allowed to open emails at night but since it said urgent I made an exception. My mom said she had gotten a call from our Stake President in NC and he said he had gotten an email from Salt Lake with a "Mission Change Form." My mom said she wondered, "Is this for real?" The next morning I got a call from President Dunn. He said he had just gotten some really exciting news, and I was the first person in his mission re-assigned to South America! He said  he is excited that he gets to send me "back" to my original mission. So I am going to Paraguay!  

President Dunn also said that after I had taken care of all of my Covid-19 precautions I would be leaving on December 18th! There is another Elder in this mission who is going with me so at least I won't be completely alone. It was a huge rush of emotions. I was excited, nervous, scared, confused, but mostly scared. My first day in the field my mission president told me that he had "absolutely no hope for South America." The thing is though that from what I've heard, Paraguay took on Coronavirus like a beast. They went into lockdown and stayed there and now they are ahead of everyone else. I have to take this super secret Covid-19 test too but I can't really disclose more information on that. In Zone Conference this week we found out that not only were Elder Madsen and I going to Paraguay, but there was another Elder in my Zone going back to Ghana. We were all like celebrities for about an hour. It's just crazy because I always thought if the Lord was preparing me to go Paraguay, I would be in a Spanish area. Instead, I am in Northwest Reno and speaking nothing but English. I try to study Spanish every day but I know it's gonna be a rude awakening when I get there. 

One of the best kept secrets in the Church is how hard it is to serve a mission. But I did the math. If you go when you are 18 and serve two years, you gave 10 percent of your life back to the Lord. It's like life tithing. The rest of this week was awesome though. I got to go to the temple with someone we are teaching and she said that she was going to make it her goal to go inside one day. A member told me the story of the Reno temple and it's actually pretty cool. A long time ago the Church only had temples in areas where a lot of members could go centrally. Also all the temples were big, unique, and beautiful. But then a statement was made by the first presidency that they were going to start making "smaller" temples in more areas. The stakes in Reno all got together and wrote a letter to Salt Lake begging for one, and Reno was one of the first "small" temples to be built. How awesome is that! It reminds me of home too because Reno, Colombia SC, and Asuncion, Paraguay temples are all based off the same design. Also, fun fact, the Asuncion, Paraguay Temple was erected and dedicated the month and year I was born, April 2002.  This whole me going down south for winter has been in the works for a while I guess. It's kind of cool seeing how this all played out. Especially considering the fact that I was 100% sure they were keeping me in Reno for the full 2 years. Nope!