From: Elder Joshua Freeman
Subject: Thanksgiving week
Date: 1 December 2003 8:05:43 AM EST

ÁHola!

How are you all doing? How were your Thanksgivings? I was doing well, but then this computer messed me over when I was almost done with the weekend, so once again, this one will be pretty general and shorter.

On Tuesday, it rained, and Presidente and Hermana Gavarret showed up at Zone Meeting to talk with us. And they brought us sweet rolls, so that was nice. After we got home from that, we went out to Jorge and Ramona's (the Brazilian guy and his wife) and invited them to Stake Conference on Sunday, and they said that they would come if we would come to their church on Saturday (they're 7ˇ Day Adventists), so we said it's a deal. After that, we talked to a couple more investigators. Then we were close to the Paraguay River, so we went down and looked at it. It's the country border, so right on the other side is Argentina. That was kind of neat. After that, we went to ReubŽn's and taught them the 4ˇ charla.

On Wednesday, we mostly met people in the morning. In the afternoon, we helped a couple of members of the ELders Quorum clean up the church yard. It's a big yard, and the weeds were about 2 feet tall in a lot of places. But that was fun. Then we visited some people, and then went back to the church for Noche de Rama. It was raining, so there weren't hardly any people there, but oh well.

On Thursday morning, we visited a member lady and Claudelino (he committed to be baptized last week). In the afternoon, we had to go to centro (downtown Asunci—n) for interviews with Pte. Gavarret. We got to eat lunch at McDonald's. I never liked it before, but it's amazing what 4 1/2 months in Paraguay can do for you. The interviews went well, and after that, we came home. We visited Mirian, who committed to be baptized last week, and she told us that she had been talking with her mom, and they both got baptized like 30 years ago! Thanks for the noticias. So I guess instead of teaching her, we'll start reactivating. We visited a few more people, then came home and had dinner with the other Elders, rotisserie (however you spell that) chicken, mashed potatoes, and stuffing. It was pretty good.

On Friday, we had to take our laundry with us all morning while we visited people because we had lunch at our laundry lady's house. In the afternoon, we visited some people and got in a couple of first charlas. Then we went by ReubŽn's, and he wasn't home, and he lives close to the river, so we went down and watched the sunset (pretty sweet) and then went back and talked to them.

On Saturday morning, we went with Jorge and Ramona to their church. It wasn't too bad. They have some parts of it all right, but they're confused on some others. And they don't have any authority. That's referring to the 7ˇ Day Adventists, not just Jorge and Ramona. But the people were nice anyway. After that, we taught a first charla to another reference, and found out he's already a member. That's twice in one week!! Anyway, in the afternoon, we visited a whole lot of people all over the place, and would have gone to the Saturday night session of Conference, but had no one to go with.

On Sunday, we got in a 1ˇ charla before going and picking up Ramona (Jorge had to work) and Claudelino to go to Stake Conference in „emby. It was good. I had to lead the music for the first song because the Hermana doing it was late. The Conference was good, and I got to see some other missionaries not in our Zone that I know from before. After that, we visited some people, and went to ReubŽn's. We're going to marry them this Friday and baptize them next Saturday. So that will be cool.

Well, I'm about out of time. But thank you all for everything you do, and I'll talk to you next week.

I Love You Guys!!!


Love,
Josh