Ralphs, Jay

Op!  Love you guys! It has been a week of Miracles!! The quick, not so quick rundown:  --> Tuesday, me and Elder Stringam spent the whole morning getting papers ready for the wedding on Friday. This included a ¨I know a guy type of situation¨ (which we think got us permission to get some offical documents signed without the required authentiction. However, don´t ask me because I don´t know a lick of Legal gibberish in Spanish.), and us going to and waiting in the wrong office for nearly an hour for a guy to go grab his phone. Miraculously though, we got all the papers safely delivered to the judge and all the plans for the Wedding set. And believe me it was two quite exahusted Elders that pulled up to District Counsel at 10am that morning. --> Thursday, we had a lesson with the Gonzalez family whose wedding and baptisms we had planned for that weekend. There, we found out about Heribiertos son Nestor, who at the time was currently on charges for attempted murder of his g...

And to think it has only been 4 days since my last email. --> To start off I had the craziest/most powerful lesson of my mission this last week. Essentially, we were at one of our friends Mirta's house and we have had 2 or 3 lessons and we get there and she tells us she has a desire to be baptized. And we are like wow that's awesome Mirtpa we would love to help you with that. Then she's like oh but don't I have to be married. And we were like well dang, why are you guys not married yet? And then she told us it was because one my would be husband does'nt want to, and my two sons would never be ok with him being their dad. And then I was like "alright can we talk with the sons?" And next thing you know all 4 of them are sitting together. And I go alright, one by one, are you ok if Mirta marries Santiago... and what it got down to (all this in one lesson btw) was Mirta would marry Santiago if Juan stopped taking drugs. And Juan would stop taking drugs if M...

Haupei! Well it's been a hectic week.  Wednesday we had transfers and after 6 hours I got to Ciudad Del Este in my new area in Presidente Franco. My son's a stud. He's from Idaho Falls, ran cross and makes green smoothies. What else can I ask for? And boy have we had a wild couple of days. Thursday, we started off by going to the civil regestration and getting a marriage paper because we have two friends that we are now planning a wedding for!! Heriberto is such a wonderful man we had two lessons with him and like we came to his house and I we were talking and I asked him if he wanted to be married and now him, his wife and two kids are on date for next week! So now we're coordinating with a judge and planning a wedding. Sunday, I met the ward, gave a testimony, and played a hymn in church. The ward was so kind to our 5 friends who came to church with us and they were so nice to me a new Missionary, with an even newer greenie as his comp.  Monday, we drove to Ciudad Del...

Haupei! As missionaries you have one of two reactions when you get a spontaneous Thursday Night call from the Mission President... either dang what'd I do or dang what'd my Comp do,  the last thing in the world I expected was when my comp passed the phone to me, and President said: "Elder  Ralphs , your going to train this next transfer, and if you mess this up I'm shipping you to the North Mission." Hopefully he was kidding... surely I'll stay in Piribebuy though, right?  Nope. Looks like I am going on a Cross-Country road trip to Ciudad del Este to finish the training of Elder Stringham. Whattt. Boom. Plot Twist.  In other news, me and Elder Winder had quite a bonding experience sitting at the "fetching" (as our 60 year old member friend Ino would say) bus stop and afterwards had an epic divisions in Piribebuy with perhaps a hint of Micheal Bublè Christmas Music at the end. (Sue me I'm pumped for Christmas). One of our friends Alvaro Alcaraz ta...