Elder Jonathan Turley: February 23, 2015

Hey Family --

How are y'all doing? So I am writing super early because we have a lot of missionaries who have to write and you know, it is my time to write. :)

So we did not have a lot of spiritual things happen this week, but we had a lot of crazy things happen.

Monday ... We went out and did our p-day stuff -- so basically nothing. Haha. That night we had a family home evening with the Hermano Fransisco Martinez and his family and that was super cool because his sisters said that they really want to work in the church, and that is rare so it's cool that they want to.

Tuesday ... I "dropped fat Cain" (missionary language for spoke strongly) on a Mennonite because I read with him about what the true church of Christ should be like and then I read with him about prophets. After we read these things, he told me that in his church prophets don't exist and I told him that is because his church isn't the true church of Christ. I basically told him he was living in apostacy, and he didn't really like that. :)

Then we visited "M" and again I had to "drop fat Cain" because she was speaking badly about all of the members. I basically told her that she needed to stop gossiping about and talking badly about the other members and told her that she won't get in to heaven if she keeps doing this. We have tried to tell her this before, but she doesn't listen to us and so we have had to "speak more strongly" with her.

I don't really like "dropping Cain" on the members, that is definitely not my personality. Unfortunately, it has to be done a lot out here in the Chaco and I am probably going to have to do it a lot this next change as I am guessing my companion is going back to Asuncion and I will be getting a new companion and will need to lead the way and show him how things work out here.

Wednesday ... We visited a couple of families and then traveled to Abundacia to be there for the zone meeting on Thursday.

Thursday ... We woke up at 2 a.m. to go pick up the A.P.'s (Elder Gummersall and Elder Calderon), but they weren't there and so we went back to the apartment and went to sleep until 4:00 a.m. Right as we were getting ready to leave to pick them up again, it started to rain, and rain, and rain. The roads turned in to pure mud and it felt impossible to walk and we had two kilometers to go. It was super cold and super difficult, but I knew I needed to keep going because along with the A.P.s, I had four packages waiting for me. :) So we picked up the A.P.'s (and my packages), and then walked back to the apartment -- another two kilometers in the mud and rain and cold ... oh and we were just in t-shirts. When we got back to the apartment, we all went to sleep for a couple of hours. Funny thing, we had zone meeting in our flip flops because our shoes were too muddy and too wet to wear. Haha! :) Zone Meeting was really great and it was really nice to see Elder Gummersall again.

Friday ... We had just a normal day doing normal visits and things.

Saturday ... We went back to Abundancia for a meeting with all of the ward counsels, and since I am the Secretary of our Branch I had to be there. The meeting was really good, but we had to leave early because it started to rain and we were in a little Toyota that wouldn't do very well in the mud. So it starts to rain super hard, and the Hermana driving the car started to yell about how she couldn't see anything, but she kept driving really fast ... so here we are in the middle of a storm, the driver can't see anything, and she is hauling down the road ... not a good combination. Everyone else in the car kept telling the Hermana to "slow down" and she kept saying "No it's good," and she just kept hauling. Luckily that little car had two missionaries, the Branch President, The Relief Society President, and the Sunday School President ... and we were protected. :)

Sunday ... We get to church, and two families who were inactive had come and so that was super cool. We always get to church early so that we can help clean the church and get everything ready, so we did all that and everything was going great.

So we have the Sacrament ... and then we had the sustaining of a new Relief Society President ... and then the fight started. One of the Hermanas got mad because the new Relief Society President was Paraguayan and not Neviclay, and so she stood up in the meeting and yelled at Elder Burger and myself because we are white and we only call white people to callings. She said we were racist and that the church wasn't going to function because the white people were trying to steal all of the power from the brown people. It got really, really bad and it was just horrible.

After church we calmed all the people down, and then Elder Burger and I did our studies and left to go to Paraiso for the church meetings there. For some reason our driver took a different path to Paraiso and after we had been driving for about an hour, the car's steering broke and the car veered off the road and we veered into a muddy ditch ... and got stuck ... for three hours. We tried really hard to push the car out of the ditch, but it was so deep it was obvious we weren't going to be able to do it and we weren't going anywhere until a tractor came and pulled us out.

So, we asked our guide how close we were to Paraiso and he told us we were about a mile away and so Elder Burger and I started to walk because we wanted to get to Paraiso for the meetings and we didn't know how long it would be before a tractor showed up. Well, we walked, and walked, and walked, and two hours later, we still hadn't arrived in Paraiso and so we turned around and walked back to the car. Right as we arrived, the tractor showed up and pulled the car out and then we were on our way -- and it's a really good thing we went back to the car because we were really 15 miles away from the entrance to Paraiso ... our driver had flat out lied to us.

So, we get to the entrance of the city and right before we got in, we got stuck again. This time it was a 30 minute wait for the tractor, and we ended up actually getting in to the city at 10:00 p.m., we had left Neuland at 3:00 p.m. We were obviously too late to go to the meetings, so the driver got the steering fixed and then we left Paraiso to return to Neuland. Luckily on the way home, the roads weren't quite as muddy, but there was one bad part where there were five trucks and three semis that were stuck, and we didn't think we were going to be able to go any farther until the morning, but fortunately there were a bunch of drunk people who were really nice and who were able to push us through. After a very long day, we arrived back in Neuland at 1:00 a.m. -- it was quite a long and crazy trip for no purpose. Haha. :)

So, yeah, this week wasn't a really spiritual week, but we definitely had a lot of crazy things happen that only happen out in the Chaco. Haha. :) Even though we had a crazy week, I am doing good. I have a lot of work to do out here in the Chaco, but you know what, I am sure that I can do it. :)

Well, I sure love y'all and I hope y'all have a wonderful week. :)

Elder Turley

Scenes from the Chaco