Remembering

This past week my companion and I were eating some chicken and rice, as one does in this country. I had finished my plate so I decided to do what is considered customary in this country--chuck the bones at the dog. I don't think any household here really has a pet dog but there's just a dog that sort of hangs around each house. I threw one bone right at their dog who was preoccupied with scratching, so the bone bounced off of his neck and landed right in front of a chicken. The chicken took it, ran off, and started eating it. Apparently, the cannibal chickens are the most rico.

Our area covers the downtown part of Encarnacion or as some people call it Encarnayork, but it has a sliver of some outside areas as well. It's about a 30-40 min bus ride to get there but it's always worth it. Unfortunately, the collectivos drivers are fed up with only charging 3.5 mil per person instead of 4 mil because fewer people are taking collectivos to work because fewer people are working. Because of this there is a strike, and so it's hard to find a collectivo to Cambyreta which is where all the cannibal chickens are. Still, we promised some members to drop by so we made a LOOOONG walk to the boons. It's worth every step though. The people there are just so nice and accepting. Even if they have nothing and they are not really interested they will want you to sit down and drink some tererre for a while. Even though we can't drink tererre it's always a blessing to sit down and talk with someone you can barley understand.

The first week this transfer went by super slow as it usually does with a new transfer. Also, I am leading an area which means I sort of have to be cruise ship captain for the companionship. Which is one thing I remember being hard for me in Reno when I led Hunterlake. I was the one that knew the ins and outs of the area and I knew where to go and what to do. I wanted to have the general say in what we were doing up until week 4. I hadn't let myself trust anyone else to plan or to lead a lesson yet because I thought I had to do it on my own. But as soon as I let my other companions take the wheel, the work got a lot easier. I didn't realize that until now. I didn't realize that's what happened. It also ties in to a character flaw I have started to see in myself where I am too competitive. Not just when it comes to other teams, but even my own. I want to be the star of the show but I so clearly lack in the talent for it. Kneeling down one night and only praying for the humility to be wrong was something I never thought to do.

But then again, I've been doing a lot of different things lately.

My companion, Elder Cartwright, is an amazing missionary. However, he has not had the most amazing start to his mission. He was reassigned to Boise, Idaho for just over a transfer before coming here. Not only did he speak Spanish there, but he also learned sign language as well. His trainer and first two companions here in Paraguay were really hard on him. They constantly called him out for not knowing the area or not knowing Spanish. I remember my Stake President saying in my setting apart that I would be blessed with good companions. 

A prophecy well-worded.

Although my companion has slightly more time than me in this mission, I have more time in the mission field overall than he does. Technically that means I am a senior companion, my first "young missionary leadership position" according to the blue handbook. He just hit 6 months last week. We should probably burn some ties because that is what you do on the mission but ties are pretty valuable.

Every now and then throughout the day I have a flashback to my old life. Maybe a sound or a feeling or the way somebody said something triggers these flashbacks and I often think back on the person I was. All the mistakes I made, the few things I got right. The things that made me angry and happy. I used to think I would never change on my mission, or maybe just a little spiritually, but I literally feel myself growing. The skin around my fingers stretches and hurts when I spread my fingers. My legs feel longer and I feel as if I am looking down more and looking up less. Until my 6'6 zone leader comes around. 

I heard that Hunterlake went back down to 2 missionaries again and now they are Sisters. I also heard that most of the people I used to teach are now uninterested. The end of an era. But with this I also heard a story from an Elder who used to be in my zone. They were teaching a woman, who was Chinese, and she could understand English but hardly speak it. She was trying to say a word or explain something but the only thing she could say was "god" and "song". They didn't really understand at first but what she meant to say was Gospel. She had a limited vocabulary but it is still very sacred that the two words that she chose from her mind to describe the idea of "gospel" were song and God. A member told me a long time ago that when you preach His Word among the children of men, it will have a very familiar ring in their ears. Almost as if we knew it before we came here. Almost like it it is already in us. 

Almost