Ita...

So this week was sweet. I'll jump right into it.

I went up to the office in Asuncion on Monday and hung out there for the night before I went to my new city. I saw some of my buddies that I haven't seen in a really long time. It was sweet to catch up with a bunch of them and see how they're doing. But then on Tuesday I headed to the bus station to get to my new area. But lemme tell ya absolutely nobody on planet Earth understands Paraguayan bus stations especially the people that work there. We asked everyone where we had to go to get on this bus and nobody knew. They all told us contradicting things that made absolutely no sense, but after almost missing our bus we found it and we were on our way to Itá. 

Itá is sweet. It's like an hour south of Asunción but is kinda secluded. It's a decent sized city but also has a whole bunch of fields and country side. Which is awesome because it's been a minute since I've been outside of the city. 

My companion is from Kentucky.  He's a nice guy and we get along really well. His dad is from Mexico so he has a Latin look.  Everyone calls him gringo falso (false gringo)  and me gringo puro (pure gringo) haha

We went down to another city during the week for a district council down in Paraguarí. We met up with the district down there and had a good time. We went to this place called the Fruteria where it's pay for kilo restaurant but the food is super good. Then we ate some acaí and hung out with the district. We came back to Itá and went back to work here. 

Here in Itá it's super cool. There are a whole bunch of members that are really cool, I just gotta try and remember all of their names haha. But in church we had like 100 people show up and I guess that's a pretty normal Sunday. So that's sweet by far the biggest attendance at church that I've seen my whole mission. So that was super cool. Also there are 3 members here who are getting ready to serve missions which is super cool. We spent some time talking to them and seeing how they're doing preparing for it and helping helping them with their papers. 

It's also cool because I share this Area with a companionship of hermanas. Which is pretty cool not gonna lie, we have double the missionaries to help out families, members, and friends that we have. We ask them questions when we don't know what to do with certain people and they ask us the same so it's sweet to be able to have more than just 2 opinions on how to best help the person we are teaching. 

There are like 5 people going to church right now that are not baptized, but need to get married in order to get baptized, but a lot of them need to also get divorced first. Here in Paraguay it's like crazy hard to get divorced because it costs a lot of money and the paperwork is a hassle. But we might have some weddings coming up were trying to help these guys plan a wedding which is kinda funny but cool at the same time. But there's a lot of good people here in Itá I'm super excited to be here. 

One we were walking super far and we got rejected by the lady that we walked out there for so that's OK. But on the walk back we saw this dude fixing his motocarro which is basically just a motorcycle in the front but the back is like a mini truck bed. And we asked him if he was all good and he said he was so we kept on walking. After that we see him drive by on the road and just keep on going. We take this bend in the road and we see him again but this time he is pushing his motocarro down the road. So we ran and caught up to him and started pushing. The dude had no idea we were there until we started pushing his moto. He looked back and we told him to hop on and steer as we push, we pushed him to a gas station because all he had to do was fill up gas. But we were talking to him he's a great guy and was super grateful for our help. 

I love the mission so much. There are so many experiences that I have like this that I would never have without being out here.

I love all of you 

Elder Schofield 

A really cool family that we met with

The Sisters that we share our area with. One is from Paraguay (the longer hair) and the other one is from Canada. 

Our District

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Some guys from the Zone

My new companion, Elder Vasquez.

These are from last week at the clinic where we had to get out COVID tests.  Pretty sketch.  

Out in the middle of nowhere. I love it.

View of my new apartment.  We had a nicer place, but we traded with the hermanas.  They were being harassed by some people in the area, so we traded with them. 

My first pair of shoes.  They are trashed.  These are the ones that I had re-soled, but my toe was starting to stick out of the front.  I am not on to pair number two. 

COVID testing from last week.