Ralphs, Jay

With that my first week as a Missionary in Paraguay is done! It has been quite a week!  To start, Paraguay has the most absurd landscape of all time! They have palm trees, afircan savanna trees and then randomly your every day american forest type of trees. Altogether, the landscape is diverse and lush and green!  This week we had alot of work to do! Since we are so new in the area and it was really our first week in the White Wash we did a ton of contacting! And wow the Miracles that we saw! We had 6 people after our first contact that agreed to be baptized! 6 people who have a sincere and humble desire to come unto Christ! Each of them is unique and have there own stories and trials but my love for them and my desire to bring them in the fold is unlike any thing I have ever felt.  Now with those 6 people, there were alot of people who rejected us. Wouldn´t let us come in, or straight up ignored us. The rejection is hard and the walking and language is freakin difficult!...

Haupei!! Wow what a couple of Days it has been, since I wrote home just this Wednesday I will do my best to keep this email short but my oh my have things been moving since then. We left Thursday Night at 9pm for Paraguay. It was´nt an awful flight since I had an open middle seat next to me and I was a window.. so I sprawled out and got some sleep.  We landed in the Morning in Paraguay and were meeted by President and the Secretary of the Mission. They made sure everything went smoothly getting into the country and we were driving and at the Mission office by 9a Friday. We all took naps at some bedrooms they had upstairs at the Mission Office and then we came down at 11:30 ish for our orientation. We also got to meet our comps for the first time and holy cow is Elder Webb (or Pa Teo as I call him (since he is my father/trainer out her on the mish)) is an absolute legend even after only living with him for two days I have grown to love and appreciate the man. He really has this genu...

What a final week it has been! We were planning on leaving Tuesday but thanks to a late transfer or a plane thing or whatever we got on final P-Day at the CCM. This week has been all out Spanish and Doctrinal sprint. The spirit has been strong and our district is so unfied. It will be really hard and already has been hard to say goodbye to Elder Vainoka, who left at 3 am Tuesday Morning. It was awesome because we all woke up for him and did the Hakka he taught us as a goodbye. It was a special moment.. 3 am 5 americans, a south afircan and a tongan just casually doing the Hakka at 3 in the morning! (Someone videoed it and I put it in the Google Photos)  Bishop Caussé the Presiding Bishop of the Church came thus week!! He did a devotional with us on Monday afternoon. It was an absolutely fire devotional and the atmosphere of the small packed room, with somewhere between 50 to100 missonaries and mission leaders, was so powerful. His message was about tasting the fruit and accessing t...

Hapupei! What a week. With what limited time that I have now, I hope to share some thoughts and really awesome experiences that I have had this week in hopes that all of you will be inspired to come unto Christ. Because golly what a week!  To begin... this week we were suprised and estatic to welcome a new memeber to our district. What proved to be even more of a blessing and a joy for me was that Elder Mogashoah from South Afirca is now in a trio with me and Elder Castro. Sorta out of nowhere I know but he has been a wonderful addition to our companionship and his testimony of the gospel is magnificant! Although, I will say if you thought keeping track of one other person all the time was hard try two. Anyways though he's had a lot of really fascinating life experiences then us and is 21 and he's already taught me alot about  faith in the Priesthood and Jesus Christ.   This week, we also had to say goodbye to the latino friends of ours who left for the field Monday,...

HOLA A TODOS! This is it by next week mas or menos I will be in the Mission Field, probably on some farm deep in Paraguay! To think my MTC experience is already coming to a close is tragic! I will def miss the consistent meals and this wonderful spirtual enviroment. I absolutely adore this MTC! I love the peace that comes from there being at times like 50 or so missionaries in total at this MTC. I have had so many awesome spirtual experiences and have had seen miracles here. I will forever remember this place.  This week we started our full full full Spanish Immersion... basically we had to sign a contract saying that we would only speak spanish, and the punishment is that if someone gets caught speaking English, everyone BUT him or her has to do a 30 second plank and everyone else has to look on shamefully, mourning there terrible decision and watch everyone else suffer. It has been quite funny haha. The problem is we all sorta LOVE talking to each other in English haha no english...