It's So Cold So Feliz Navidad

Hola todas,

So basically my comp and her twin always celebrated christmas in july every year so we decorated for christmas at lunch with fam lopez hahaha!!! it was SUPER fun and it made her super happy. and it worked because it is still cold here, so it honestly feels like christmas!!!!

I had my first division this week as well. SUPER weird. We taught the restoration with.. SIX MISSIONARIES! i kid you not. i was so confused. the zone leaders came because technically this girl lives in their area, so we were passing her off to them, and then randomly the other elders in the ward were there for their noche de barrio but no one came to noche de barrio so they just sat with us. We all just sat there really uncomfortable for a solid while wondering how to teach this with six people and no one would take initiative lol and the poor teenage girl just looked overwhelmed. I just like quietly cleared my throat and was like, "usually there arent six of us." and then everyone laughed and we started teaching haha. it turned out alright, but it was pretty crazy.

i had my first zone conference as well!!! and the change is over at the end of this week. halfway through my training! SO CRAZY! but so fun. I love paraguay more and more every day.

my testimony has grown lately over small and simple things. We shared some of the small and simple things talk by dallin h oaks in our lunch appointments, and i realized yes, doing those small and simple things will improve our lives immensely, but also noticing the small and simple things God does FOR us. So awesome!!

Unfortunately Cristian didnt get baptized this week. We had some problems with his parents, and we dont want to cause any problems for him and his family, so we will likely have to leave him. Its sad, but Heavenly Father will take care of him and the day will come where he will receive the fullness of this gospel. I am super grateful for his ongoing smile and his example to his brother. There are some AMAZING people here!!

thank you all SO MUCH!!! i am so spoiled with the best friends and family. have the best week!!!

hmna thomas

Letter to Mom and Dad

thanks for all the photos !!! i got them printed today. hairspray looked like it was awesome. yes, you should have done a video. but i almost cried seeing that pic anyway, so maybe just a pic is better. jake never sends me pictures!!! dumb

also my favorite word i have learned here is "bulbo". it just means idiot. lol i use it way too often. but its pretty funny.

I CANT BELIEVE YOU SAW LAURA MICHELLE KELLEY!!!!! SHE IS LIKE MY IDOL!!! i am soooooo jealous. lol throwing it in like its no biggie. my knee is doing better btw!! no problems. i just bought new shoes today!!!!! my comp isnt as much of a shopper as us.... i could have gone all day and spent everything ever!!! hahahhaa but these two pairs of shoes are way cute.

one thing i have been kind of struggling with thats a little annoying is there used to be a different hermana thomas in this mission who was known for being pretty flirty and a little more than flirty with the elders.... so a lot of the not so great elders just give me really weird vibes and as soon as they see my name they like start acting weird. idk. i hate it. but she is gone and all those elders go home after this change or next, so it should be fine. just annoying that she tainted my name. i hope i never serve in areas she was in.
you should buy stevie back for your new car. ISLAND PARK! que divertido. lol pickleball is fun, i want to play here. me and my comp play soccer together once or twice a week. that 3 v 3 sounds pretty boss.

hairspray looked SO COOL!!!!!

i am doing really well. this week was a little rough, but i am doing better now. i sometimes just have breakdowns that come out of nowhere. i hate it. i can be perfectly happy and then something small happens that makes me lose it. but i hope that stops further into my mission. it is only like once every few weeks that that happens. it was all okay though and i am really happy again. i read something in adjusting to missionary life that helped lots too. it basically said "sometimes missionary life is kind of boring, and thats normal. not every day is a miracle." so now i am just adjusting more and doing better. still frustrated with the language, but it is coming. i understand better, i just have a hard time spitting out my words.


i am still super happy and time is FLYING!!! i love you

mal pal

An Apple a Day

Hey everyone,

Life is good here!!! I am just absolutely certain I am going to come home speaking no languages. I cant speak english, spanish, guarani, or portugese!!! But I am starting to be able to understand spanish pretty well and guarani and portugese a little bit. I hear mostly spanish but sometimes I will get really frustrated when i cant understand and then my trainer will say "oh, they are speaking guarani." lol. my trainer has also mastered the art of nodding along like she understands. sometimes I will lean over to her and ask "what did they say", and she will just say under her breath "no idea", and she will keep smiling and nodding. lol. but the people dont even notice! i just think its funny when they speak straight portugese or guarani at us and think we understand.

Cristian should be getting baptized this Saturday. he is SUCH a good kid. his little brother is so sad he isnt old enough to be baptized yet, but he keeps saying"in two years i will be ready." SO CUTE. i am so excited for cristian!!

I want to testify again that this gospel is true. Not every day is some miraculous event, but it is in the little things. I know God loves me and all the people here, He is there! and I fall short every day, as we all do, but I know God isnt angry with me, He knows I can be better but he also is so proud of the things I am doing right. He just loves us so much!!

Not a crazy eventful week. Me and my comp got caught in a rainstorm on our way to our lunch appt and then the lady wasnt there, so i shouted a quick "hurrah for israel!" and then we were on our way lol. you can see in the pics below we ate really well that day.

photo 1, our meal with all the food groups. empanadas, pancakes, and oreos. LOL
photo 2, i realized our meal wasnt super healthy but figured an apple would take away all the calories from it. thats how it works i think.
photo 3, lunch with our friends today!! hermana swingler and hermana amado

lol love you all, thx for your prayers!!

hmna thomas

From Frostbite to Heatstroke

Hola all,

Hey! sorry for the dramatic subject line. gotta get people to read these things somehow. mostly it just means it was pretty dang cold and now it is pretty dang hot and its gonna get cold again. some people say thats just like utah but trust me its a lil crazier lol.

I am really getting used to things here. I love being a missionary and I just feel incredibly spoiled. Just as my dad tends to spoil me at home, I feel like my heavenly father spoils me just as much here on the mission. I am crazy blessed.

We have a cute new investigator named Leidy. She is 20 years old and we connect super well. She is SO READY for this gospel. When we invited her to be baptized she almost squealed with excitment. Pretty incredible, she is a crazy good example to me.

We went and visited a cute menos activo lady who is slightly crazy. She is about 80 years old and doesnt get visitors so we are gonna make that a weekly thing now. She came to church on Sunday and laid her head on my shoulder for part of the meeting, so cute!!! She has so little but she feels like she has so much. Which she does, because she knows she has God and Jesus Christ and she is a crazy good example. That is what I admire about the people here. They appear to have nothing, but they never stop talking about how blessed they are. And they aren't just trying to stay positive, they truly feel like they have mountains of blessings. I hope I can become like that.

My favorite quote of the week is, "Life is hard, the gospel isnt. Some people get those two things confused." Sometimes we may blame the hardness of our lives on God or on the gospel, or all the things we "have" to do as missionaries or members of the church, but honestly, its just life that can be hard some times. And if we let him in, Jesus Christ will lead us with love through whatever storm we face.

That is all for this week, we are having fun as always and I honestly just am so excited for these next 17 months. They are gonna fly by, I can already feel the time getting away from me!!! Thank you all for your constant examples and kindness and support. I love you so much!!!

Hmna Thomas

Letter to DAD

Dad,
That is so so cool about the World Cup. We really get updates every two seconds ahhahaa. Just so you know, you would love church here. It is so short. It is supposed to start at 8:30 but always starts at 9 and ends at like 11:15 lol. It's super funny. Also, problems in the ward are getting resolved i guess. My comp said members didn't really talk to her and her old comp, but now they offer to help us all the time and talk to us a lot. She says it's because I have a nice smile and an inviting face, lol, but she just keeps saying how grateful she is I'm here and that this ward needs me. It makes me feel really good.

I am super proud of you dad I hope everything is going good with work and stuff. I know thats a big step for you. Mom mentioned a mission, that would be so cool for you guys. You guys are just amazing and I am glad we are both adjusting to big new things together! Change hurts, but it is where we grow. I have already figured that out here. Reading my journal from the mtc and even my first few days in the field has proved that. I have grown so so much already, and it's the hard times that have done it. My mission president told me something really comforting because i told him in our first interview that i was scared i just like it here because my comp is good, and he said he is fairly confident that the mtc will be my lowest point in the mission. not because i wont have hard times, but because i will be strong enough to deal with them. It's the same in life right! We are strong enough to deal with the hard stuff that comes our way. EL PROPOSITO DE LA VIDA! learn, grow, change, improve, all in hopes of becoming like Christ. When i get stressed here, i just think, what do i have to do right now?. Sometimes it's i have to get up, sometimes it's i have to smile through this lunch appointment, contact this house, etc., but after I do that one thing I feel really proud and I can keep going. I offer the same advice to you. in your assignments just take things one step at a time, try not to think too hard about the scary stuff up ahead. You know way more than me about dealing with life and stuff but i wanted to share that. I love you so much dad! Thanks for your example.

Thats awesome about your weight. i will be gaining those ten pounds by the end of these three months.hehe

Love you!

hmna mal pal

Hot Chocolate and Fireworks

Hola everyone,

Happy Fourth of July!!! When my comp reminded me the fourth of july was coming up last week, we both just got so sad! it was pretty funny and sad. When the day came, I think God knew we would need a little extra strength. We decided to have some fun and dress really fourth of july like, even though it was freezing cold and no one in paraguay knows anything about the fourth of july. Lol. But we saw so many tender mercies!!! You will see in my pictures that I got to have A HOT DOG!! on the fourth of july! just like summer nights at home. we also got our hands on these like smoke things, they werent fireworks because we arent allowed to have those and they didnt have sparklers, but these smoke things were super sick and familia lopez didnt know what was going on but we explained the holiday to them and stuff and they joined in on the fun and man it was just a blast. We were so so blessed and it made being away from home a little less difficult!!! so grateful for Gods tender mercies.
Including the MTC, i have been here for one month! crazy how much I feel like i have grown in just one month. Also crazy that it is one month down!!! I am super excited for what is ahead of me.
Also included in the pictures is a picture of one of our investigators Cristian, and his little brother angel!! and their PARROT! haha they are the coolest kids ever. Cristian is like a straight up newsie. we see him every day selling stuff on the street, and he takes such good care of his mom and he is so funny. he makes me teach him english all the time and makes fun of every mistake i make in Spanish. he has such a strong testimony at such a young age, he is really excited to be baptized in a couple weeks. that kid just emulates the light of Christ and what this gospel is all about. He also looks like my cousin derek!! you cant tell a ton in this picture but they have the same dimples and everything. I was pretty mindblown when I saw him for the first time.

Funny story, we were walking down a road around 7 or 8 and it was pretty dark and we were feeling a little sketchy, but we were really close to our appointment. This guy started walking down the road towards us and he seemed pretty drunk. My comp immediately had the idea to clap on the house we were next to at that moment before the dude got any closer, and IMMEDIATELY this 18 year old kid comes out of the house and we just start fumbling through a contact and talking about the church and stuff. The drunk guy walked past us and everything and didn't even look in our direction, but this kid like seemed genuninely interested in our message and we have a return cita for this week. Funny how God works sometimes!! haha!!

The people here are so so nice to me. They love my hair for some reason because its kind of an interesting color, so the women in the ward constantly touch my hair and tell me i look like a movie star and stuff. It's super funny. Makes me feel pretty good. Even though i can't speak Spanish they still think I'm awesome and give me hugs and stuff !!! It's a good thing they like me here because theres a good chance I will spend a third of my mission in this area, so i better make it good!!!

The biggest thing i saw this week was how much this is really Gods work. I got a cold and so did my comp and we weren't able to do as much as we would like with all these random meetings and interviews we had as well, but God still got his work done. So even when I fall short or the missionaries fall short, God still finds a way to get those things that need done, done!!! It's SO COOL!!! I am so blessed and happy and grateful. Love this work!!!

Love you all so so much, thanks for all your support!!

Hmna Thomas

PS...The weather here is crazy cold, so fireworks and hot chocolate it is ! The cold sucks, but I hear the heat is worse... so i am counting my blessings. Also included the pic of me dead on the bed so ya'll can see i don't just take fun pictures all the time, lol! My trainer had walked in to ask me if i was ready to go to another cita after a really long cold day of contacting and walking and she found me like that and her first thought was to snap a pic. lol. She is just like me i guess!!

Letter to MOM- #2

OKAY THIS IS GOING TO TAKE FOREVER TO WRITE BUT IT IS WORTH IT BECAUSE YOU ARE MY MOM AND I LOVE YOU.

First off, camera. long story. The screen didn't work. So i bought a new one in the MTC, then i got back from the store AND MY OLD CAMERA STARTED WORKING. i was so mad slash happy because that one is higher quality. So i had to return the other camera and it was SUCH A PAIN. They ended up giving me pesos instead of money back on my card but i turned the pesos into Paraguayan money in the airport. So it worked out. but..... now the screen on the other camera isn't working again. I can attempt to buy a camera here, but its pretty easy to share with Hermana Dewitt so if you want to send me one you can. Sorry, i don't know what happened with the whole screen thing. It just turns white randomly and wont work for days and then it will work again and then it wont work again. super weird.

HERMANO LOPEZ ADDED YOU! I actually sent you a message from his phone on messenger on fb. Did you not get it!? He will probably message you once a week about just letting you know i am good. He is the grandpa zayas of Paraguay. He's a little crazy, he always says he has gifts and can like tell the future which weirds me out, but he's harmless according to everyone else and has been taking care of the missionaries for over 30 years. His wife does our laundry, but we wash our own garments. I wouldn't mind if she washed my garments but my comp doesn't like it because the elders go over there a lot and she just hangs out all the clothes to dry outside and my comp feels weird about it. But yeah you will hear from him a bit and you can reply if you want. He will make me read it but its okay i feel like its fairly harmless haha.

Meals, oh mom i am so blessed. Familia lopez feeds us lunch twice a week and other members feed us every day except p day, and there is an empanada place right by us and lomitos super close. My comp is not healthy, so i have been pushing to buy fruits and stuff so that we can have an occasionally healthy thing. I am good at drinking water and I'm trying to encourage her to be good at it as well. She has just gotten lazy. I do drink the water here, it's just impossible not to. I am careful about what water and from where, but it's better to just drink it and get used to it now. I haven't felt at all sick yet but every missionary goes through a day or two of shivivi, diarhea haha, as well as throwing up. I am sure it will come soon.

My comp. mom she is AMAZING. I know I told you i struggled with my comp in the mtc, but I thought like i could handle someone like her in the field. i didn't imagine coming here and loving her so much. She grew up playing soccer, she is half argentine, which makes it so i now speak with a sh sound when i pronounce the double L hahahaha, she is very obedient, but very relaxed. I pictured I would either have a comp who is obedient to the point that it's exhausting and difficult and the hardest thing ever, or a comp I would have to drag out of bed and convince to work. She is the PERFECT balance. She follows all the rules, but works with calmness and happiness. It's amazing. I am so so blessed. She is the coolest ever.

The ward is way bigger than in Puerto Rico. It's a normal ward. They are all very nice. I can't understand them, but they are very nice. i will be playing the piano in sacrament for suresies.

The apartment is awesome. pics below. toilet works well and I have HOT WATER! so spoiled.

Hermana evans is JUST LIKE YOU! in our health talk she talked for like 2 or 3 minutes about having clear pee hahahahaha. it was so funny. i was really struggling my first day because everyone told me the field was harder than the MTC and it was already so hard in the MTC and I was so scared because the MTC was so hard, but mom it is SO MUCH BETTER HERE!! I am happy and I can smile and laugh and work and meet amazing people. I can't speak well but it will come. I can't understand but I smile a lot and the kids make it better. I love it. The president and his wife are amazing, not strict, but in a good way. We can listen to EFY music, we can do fun things on P day, we can wear cute clothes. I feel very safe and happy and man mom, this is COOL.

The only safety issue is the men here. But this area is okay. My comp got pulled out of an area because of men who kind of followed them, so we are very careful and come home around 7 to study because its dark, and we come home even earlier on the weekends. We are very safe and there are Elders just around the corner if we ever feel unsafe or anything. We never see them but they are our district leaders, so if we ever have a safety issue they can be there in a flash. super cool and safe mom. I am so happy.

I LOVE YOU!!!! TELL EVERYONE I SAY HI!!!!! everyone says you grow to appreciate your family more in the mission. boy oh boy is that true. i miss Andrea, my friends, Jake, but if I had one phone call or Facetime I would call you and dad right up and tell you everything. There is non one i want to talk to more than you !!!!!!!! I LOVE YOU MOM!!!!

Hermana Mal Pal

Paraguayan Mashed Potatoes

Hola everyone!

It is TRUE I am here in Paraguay. And oh my goodness I LOVE IT!! and I am not just saying that. This has been one of the funnest weeks of my life. My companion is Hermana Dewitt, and she is from Mesa Arizona. SO I CAN SPEAK ENGLISH!!!! Speaking english feels amazing sometimes is such a nice break. She is also my twin. We both played soccer all growing up, and we got to play this morning because our president gave our zone pres permission to let us all play! it was SO FUN and I havent completely lost all my skills yet. she is the best !!! i am so grateful she is my trainer.

I havent actually taught many lessons yet, a lot of our appointments and investigators just really struggled and fell through this week. My comp felt super super bad about it, she kept saying this doesnt normally happen and she felt like a bad mom, thats what they call trainers here, but I told her even though I want to teach and get going in that aspect, I am just so happy that I actually like it here and I am having fun, and the teaching part can come more in the next couple weeks.

There is a family in the ward here called familia Lopez. They take such good care of the missionaries, so i am very well taken care of here. They are mas o menos crazy, but in a good way. The mom reminds me of the grandma from Moana hahaha. They feed us twice a week and do our laundry. Its honestly amazing.

My trip here was super normal and I slept almost all of both flights. Heavenly father has blessed me, and my mom because I know she worries about my sleep haha, to sleep like nobodys business here in Paraguay. Its usually such a good thing but not so much during church, hehe.

The president and his wife are amazing and take such good care of us. Hermana Evans [the mission president's wife] is just like my mom in so many ways and it's so comforting. They picked me up from the airport and just looked like two angels walking through the airport as I was trying to figure out where to go. They are incredible.

The language is coming slowly. I know it will come slower since i have an American comp, but it's worth it for me to be able to speak English to her. hahaha. It's already improved a lot, i understand very little, but it will come.

It's not hot here yet but it's coming.... i am so scared!!

We walk most places or ride colectivos, crazy buses just like the ones in Harry Potter. hahahah!! The decorations are even similar. Paraguayan men are pretty gross, and they really like Americans, so we get cat called pretty regularly. We have to work on not laughing, but it's pretty funny sometimes.

The people are amazing. The kids are my favorite. There's a family who has a 7 year old named Eric and he already loves me. He talks my ear off even tho I can't understand a thing he says. I don't think he cares if i understand he just wants someone to listen to him haha, he sat by me in church on Sunday and he's a good little pal. He's the one who looks low key creepy in the picture of me and the boys at the table.
Anyway i am VERY HAPPY and so excited for this new adventure!! Also to explain my subject line, i told my comp i wasn't too picky but for some reason i hate mashed potatoes. First meal in the mission was a big plate of mashed potatoes!!! Hahahaha so random. She said it was her first time having them here in Paraguay. Super funny. and yes family, i ATE IT ALL. impressive right!!?

Love you all!!

Hermana Thomas