Just Call Me Leo...

October 19, 2021

How's it going everyone this week passed by super fast I feel like I literally just wrote one of these emails.

This past week we had one of the biggest and hardest rain storms I have ever seen in my life, within minutes the entire streets were flooded, the massive storm drains couldn't keep up with it. People's houses fell down, roofs torn off, everything completely soaked. It was insanely luckily we were inside when it all started but a lot of people here were not so lucky. We went out the next day looking for people we could help recover from it.

We found a couple of people and did what we could but the people we found didn't have anything too major happen to their houses. We only heard stories and received a couple videos from some people that really got wrecked but we couldn't find their houses in order to help them.

We did a whole bunch of contacting on Facebook this week. It seems to work a lot better here than contacting in the street. But you also find some interesting people on Facebook haha. Let's just say there was a couple guys (not girls) that wanted to take me to dinner but were very upset when I told them my companion is always with me haha. And that I couldn't go alone.

This week we also went out to a place called Coronel Oviedo about an hour bus ride away in order to do divisions with some Elders out there. Elder Watson and Elder Valenzuela. Both really cool guys. I went out with Elder Watson a guy from south Jordan Utah. And let me tell you he is hilarious, one of the funniest guys I've ever met. We had a good time cruising around Oviedo. I helped them clean their baptismal font because they were going going have a baptism the following day. And met with a bunch of people out there. We ate dinner with one family and their daughters were whispering to each other and then they just burst out, "you look like Leonardo Dicaprio". I just busted up laughing because I really do not see it and this is like the 4th time random paraguayan girls tell me I look like Leonardo. I mean I'm not complaining he's a good looking dude haha.

Everyone here in Paraguay has the same chairs. They're a metal frame and then this plastic cord wrapped around them where you would actually sit. Some of them are very uncomfortable. But there are some that also recline and these bad boys are so dang comfortable you have no clue. We found a deal on a couple of them so we couldn't say no we had to buy them and I cannot complain they are some of the most comfortable chairs I've ever used.

Aside from that we also had the opportunity to some service this week. There is a member family here that lives on a decently sized plot of land and part of it was this really old garden thing that was surrounded by an old broken down fence. They wanted us to dismantle the fence and pile up all the wood from it so that they could re-use it for something else. And then pile up all the junk wood and old tree branches into a giant pile in the middle that eventually they will burn. A lot of the fence was wired together with some pretty hefty fencing wire but the rest literally just fell apart because of how wet/rotted it was. What we thought was going to be a little project that wouldn't take much time gradually grew and grew into a couple hours. Digging out old fence posts, dealing with a whole bunch of barbed wire, trying not to get wrecked by the biggest ants I've seen in my life. All in all it was such a great time. I really miss doing this kind of work.

But while doing it I really lucked out. We were pretty good at making sure that all the old fence slatts where piled up because they all had old rusty nails sticking out of them. But I wasn't looking and I stepped down and boom, rusty nail into my shoe. Literal miracle because this nail passed right in-between two of my toes and didn't even leave any sort of mark. It was crazy.

I was kind of sad this week because we met with our buddy Luan who told us he wanted to be baptized a couple weeks back. But he hasn't been coming to church. He's a great guy just with a really hard situation. He's from Brazil and came to Paraguay with literally nothing. This very humble family here In Paraguay took him in and is giving him a place to be during the day. He can't sleep in their house though because they literally do not have room. So he sleeps out somewhere outside in a park I think on this mattress that how found. But some drunk people came by and peed all over his mattress, and then stole all of his clothes so now all he has is literally the clothes on his body. It's so hard sometimes to see and to not have the ability or capacity to really help this guy. But he loves the gospel and loves the Book of Mormon. He makes money buy baking and selling bread, but to enough money to support himself.

We came to teach him this past week and he was just really down, a scripture came to mind that I just read earlier in the week. Ether 12:4 about hope. I know that right now the world is pretty ugly but eventually one day it will be a perfect world. And honestly at times that is only thing that brings me peace. And I hope that it brings peace to my buddy Luan as well.

I love you all have a great week

Elder Schofield