Beet Juice...

How's it going everyone? This week was pretty neat no doubt. I hit 6 months on my mission this week which is ridiculous. The time really has just flown by but I guess here's to another year and a half haha.

This week we started having more member meals which is so nice not having to cook or buy food haha. But at this one members house she made this juice and it sounds weird but it was soooo good. She threw beats and carrots and oranges in there and blended it all up and gave it to us. I don't about you guys but I love beats they are so good so I drank so much of this juice it was amazing I actually felt slightly healthy after drinking it. Which is a huge accomplishment because after eating here for a while mostly I just feel like I'm sweating oil because of how much oil we eat. No matter where we go or who we est with I swear it's all fried lol.

This week my comp and I did an English fast. Basically we just didn't speak English for a whole day in order to improve our Spanish. It was pretty cool not gonna lie and actually helped a lot. By the end of the day I was thinking way more clearly in Spanish and the language kinda just flowed super smoothly. Which is super fun because it's like my personality is actually there when I'm speaking.

We had some cool experiences with a couple of our amigos this week. First off the branch here is doing a self reliance class on how to start your own business and we go usually because a couple of our amigos are going so we hangout with them and help them through this course as well as low key teach it as we go. So that's been really interesting. But this week 3 of our amigos went and it's super cool because they are more active and participate in more things than most of the members so that's been really cool to see. Also another one of our amigas named Raquel has had some questions lately and the last time we went it was mostly about the 3 Kingdoms of glory in heaven and how we know that that is true. We told her some stuff and bore our testimony about it but really we told her the only way she was going to find out for herself would be to pray and ask if it was true. So we went back and talked to her this week and asked if she still had questions, she said that she didn't and that she had an answer but she wouldn't tell us how she knew she just said, "I have my answer and I know it's true." So that was super cool to hear because she's 100 % believing it now.

We also had splits this week with our zone leaders so that was super cool. We got so much stuff done and they helped a lot because we've just been super busy almost to the point that we could low key use another companionship down here. But it's all good. We've just been absolutely grinding everyday finding people and meeting with as many as we can each day.

The other day we were walking and we saw this guy so we went over to talk to him and he was like "follow me" it was already dark by this time. But I felt perfectly comfortable following this dude down this really dark little path. But eventually it opened up to his home and he told us that he needed help with something. He brought us around back and there was this big pile of trash and plastic. And he told us he needed help burning it. A lot of Paraguayans here burn their trash especially when they live outside of the city. So we said alright no doubt and helped this dude start a massive trash fire. We then contacted him and will be back again to talk to him. The pictures don't do a justice to the fire haha.

And I case you guys were worried that we were going to start a forest fire don't sweat because the next day we literally had the hardest rainstorm I've had here so far. We woke up one day and looked at the weather and it said it was going to rain. Which was weird because it was absolutely blue skies. But we took our rain jackets anyway. And thankfully we did. Because as we were walking this massive clouds rolled I and just decided to release the entire pacific ocean on us. It was low key legendary. Everything from the waist down was soaking wet it did not matter but the coolest part was the lightning. It was right over head and the loudest thunder I think I've ever heard. I loved it. All these Paraguayans were all big sad because it was raining and then they thought it was really weird to see this white dude walking down the street absolutely having the time of his life. I did not even care a little bit that I was soaked. It was so sweet.

Yesterday was super fun it was probably one of the biggest walking days I've had. We walked so far it was ridiculous but also super fun. We found this inactive family that lives far away and are working with them to come back to church. They said they really respected that we would walk all the way out here just to find them and for that would come to church. So that was sweet. Then later that day we were walking passed this house where there was a whole squad of people watching a soccer game. Paraguay is playing games right now trying to qualify for the world cup so everyone was watching this game. But we passed by this house and I had to ask who was winning the game but instead of answering they just invited us in. There was like 20 people all huddled in this backyard watching the TV. All 20 of them were either suoer drunk or on their way to getting there. But I couldn't complain because they were hilarious. And this lady just started bringing out plates of food for us to eat so that was awesome. But this dog got really excited for some reason and started running around and ended up taking out the table that the TV was on it was so funny everyone just started yelling, I caught some of it on video but it was such a funny night.

My Spanish is definitely improving and I 100% know that it is because I'm training. It has been super cool to witness the hand of the Lord in my life helping me with my Spanish. Because His work is so important that he's not gonna let me ruin it with bad Spanish so I know that's where the help is coming from. Training has definitely been interesting but I really like it, it's been really fun to witness and be a part of.

I love all you guys, write if you can and send pictures of your lives I'd love to see them.

Elder Schofield