December 26, 2016

Hi family,
my first change of the mission ends tomorrow! i'm pretty psyched, i'm halfway through my training now. on my way to becoming a big boy.

this week was interesting. Funny story, we contacted a lady named Sonya on Thursday. i don't think she was all the way there... or maybe she was just intoxicated. Either way, we got to conversating. I didn't understand a lot of it, so i was smiling  and nodding and saying "si" a lot, she was talking about my eyes for some reason. after we left my comp asked me if i knew what she had said. Apparently, she had been talking about how her dead Russian husband had the same color eyes as me and that she loved mine and.... wanted more of them haha. She asked if i was single and wanted to marry her!! i didnt know what she was saying, i was just nodding my head and saying "si" so i didnt appear to be stupid!! and i accepted! haha hopefully she won't remember next time we visit. she seemed pretty looney.

so christmas is Paraguay is completely wack. it doesnt exist, really. everyone celebrates on christmas eve, they call it noche buena, and at midnight they eat dinner and drink and drink and drink. so christmas is more like national hangover day than Christmas. and paraguayans dont give presents either. its just an excuse to drink and eat, to be honest. i thought the united states was bad haha

last saturday we had lunch with the familia Paradez. my plate was a bunch of meet so i dug in and it was sooo good. i asked Hermano Paradez what it was and he said something really fast. i told him it didnt matter cuz it tasted great. elder V then told me it was lengua de vaca. cow tongue. hahaha it was a little harder to chew after that

this week will be real good. we have changes tomorrow, which everyone treates here like a ritual or something haha theres definitely buzzing in the air. 

i hope you all had a great christmas and had fun spending time with friends and family. stay safe this week and have a happy new year

-Elder Glasgow

Ward Party BarBQuers

District Elders at the Paraguay Asuncion Temple Grounds

Christmas Call Home from Asuncion

Ramona and Lara

December 19, 2016

quick email for you all this week. So I'll start it off with some funny stories for you all. 

-On Tuesday we went to make brownies with our friend who's not all there. That place is too wild haha everyone there is out of their mind, literally. We made the brownies, shared a spiritual thought, ended with a prayer, and before we knew it all the brownies were gone. Didn't even get a single crumb. It was super depressing, to be honest.

-Later in the week we were in a really poor area of the city and we contacted a man  and were teaching him. When we finished the lesson, his 3 year old son walked up to him and put something into his hand. i don't think Elder Villacreses saw it but it was drug related. the guy hid it behind his back real quick haha sounds like we know what our next lesson needs to be on

-I participated in a choral program on saturday night. it was so bad haha Paraguayans have absolutely no ear for music. but i think the people enjoyed it because they couldn't tell how off tune it was either haha

other stuff that happened this week was i found out i'm allergic to mangos! we had mangos for dessert on thursday and my face has been enourmous and red and swelled up ever since haha which really is too bad because mangos are the only things any one ever eats around here. Dang.

and this saturday i went on a division w/ Elder Schmidt. he's a greenie too so it was super stressful because we both are terrible at spanish!  it didn't end up too bad though, we actually made some pretty good contacts and we also went to the mcdonalds in his super chuchi area and got kit kat mcflurry's so that was nice.

i realize more and more how much im growing up out here. last night i was feeling pretty sick so i went into our bathroom and stuck my finger down my throat and forced myself to vomit. i think a dessert i had for lunch made me sick. they drizzle condensed milk on fruit here for dessert. even thinking about it makes me want to hurl again. but anyway, before the mission i would probably have gone into your room to wake up you haha. now, it still sucks, but it's more just annoying than terrifying. i don't know if that's a part of becoming an adult or not. but if i keep talking about it i'll throw up again so i'll change the subject haha

thanks for the emails. cant wait to talk on sunday, love you. Merry Christmas

-Elder Glasgow

December 12, 2016

dear family,
another great week in paraguay. my companion reminded me this week that the chapel we attend sacrament meeting is the same chapel they dedicated the temple in and that gordon b hickley was there when it happened. i've sat in the same place gordon b hinckley sat. pretty cool haha

well i still can't speak spanish. people talk and talk and talk in our lessons and then just look at me like they need help and i just have to shrug and look at my companion... it stinks. but i get better every day. i'm definitely learning a lot, and i improve daily. 

this last week we met some interesting people. we taught a woman named antonia yesterday. she's 85 years old. and she has a glass eyeball. creepiest thing ever. she can't close that eye when she blinks so it's always staring at you, and it's an off shade so it doesn't match the other eye. creepy. we went and saw that schizophrenic lady again. she's super nice haha we're making brownies with her tomorrow!

on wednesday we're starting to teach english classes at the chapel in the night time. we run into a lot of people who want to learn english so starting now once a week, they'll feel like the stupid ones and i'll be the ones laughing at them for a change haha

not much else to talk about. we went to a restaraunt for lunch today called Paulista's. fanciest place i will ever be in. and it cost about 100,000 guaranies. thats like $20 american dollars. they have salad, pasta, and dessert buffets with personal chefs at each table, and waiters walk around with giant sticks of meat that they slice out for you. super chuchi haha i've never been so full. we're really lucky because it's in our zone so we don't have to ask for permission to go there for lunch on p days.

we have a baptism date on the 27th of december, if our investigator comes to church the next two weeks. i hope she does. her name is lara and she's 9. she really wants to be baptized but her mom is sooo lazy haha. we'll help her out this week.

we taught a lady the other day with a 5 yr old daughter who was super hyper. worse than avery or wake haha she was wack. no one was paying attention to her when we were teaching and she threw a tantrum. she walked up to the front door of the house, squatted down and pooped on the floor. hahaha her mom was soooo angry ha

i'll be skyping on christmas from the bishops house. i think we're 4 hours ahead here. and we have church from 9 to 12. and it takes forever to walk everywhere here so i told mom anywhere from 2 to 6. i only have an hour. i think i'll be fine. it'll be weird but it'll be good too.

oh yeah, mom was gonna send a package this week i think. if you don't want anything to be stolen tape it like crazy and put some pictures of the virgin mary on it for good measure. the latinos shouldn't touch it if they see it like that ha

we invited this kid gabriel to be baptized with a date on his first lesson last week. he's 19 and he's really cool. but we havent been able to find him since. and there are these less active kids Lilly and Kevin. they really don't care for the church that much anymore. they were baptized about a year ago but stopped coming to church after a few months. when we met them this week i felt like they were important. that we need them to come back. especially Lilly. theyre both 15. we'll see what happens. if i could speak spanish i would have rebuked them right there. ha

thanks for all the emails love you all! talk to you next week. god bless

-elder glasgow

December 5, 2016

dearfamily,
its not actually my 3rd week in this area but its the 3rd week of the changes so im gonna go with it. this week was great! there's a real challenge here with getting any baptisms. every person here above 25 years old is either too poor to marry the person they're living with, and in so can't be allowed to be baptised, or they once were married but seperated but dont have money for divorce so they're living with their boy or girlfriend whilst being married. when that happens they calle their significant other their "concubino" haha like concubine. isnt that terrible? so its really hard to get people to commit to baptism because its out of their control becasue everyone is so poor. when i learned this it really got me down. i wondered what the point was to even be here teaching. but the next day, we found 3 different boys, all about 18 years old, contacted them on the streets, taught a single lesson, and committed them all to baptism. which all 3 accepted. it was really amazing. i felt it was just God's way of telling me i do have a purpose out here. 

this area im in is called Moroni A. our ward is called moroni and its split into two areas because its huuuge. our area is the most chuchi area in the whole mission. chuchi means fancy in guarani. we have a Mcdonalds here, a burger king, and dominos pizza (where we ate today), and a pizza hut. we're pretty spoiled haha. oh yeah, did mcdonalds just come out with a new mcflurry?? theres a bunch of signs here for kit kat mcflurry's! they look so good. we're gonna pick some up tomorrow.

they have a food item here called a Lomito. you can buy two kinds, one thats like a burrito, one thats like a hamburger. they're amazing. they're on par with chipotle, for reals. its like a steak hamburger with eggs and tomatoes and i dont know what else but it might be the best food i've ever tasted.

everyone in asuncion wears crocs. i guess its either the only thing they sell or its the easist thing to wear here. if i come back wanting to wear crocs, someone better slap me. haha

we teach a little girl named Lara. she's 9. she lives with her mom and little brother, Dani. i love going over there because Danny is a little devil. like a Paraguayan Dennis the Menace. hes crazy. and everytime he does anything wrong his mom yells at him "asi no!" which pretty means stop doing that. its like the only thing she every tells him haha

well, the mission field is great. im probably the most spoiled missionary here. i live in a nice area but one that has poor people who will still listen to us, i have a latino companion that speaks perfect spanish to learn from but also speaks english. and my apartment has a budet. those fancy toilets that spray water instead of needing to wipe with paper towels. im pretty spoiled haha

nobody here speaks solely guarani, but most are fluent and all throw in random words into their español all the time. i've learned a couple of phrases so far. i want to study it after i get fluent in spanish so i can bear my testimony in my homecoming talk. apparently its a pretty difficult language.

my companion is great. he knows a lot of english, and even more english slang haha becasue he learned english by watching comedy movies and listening to american music haha he's awesome. he's so righteous. he has the spirit of God in him. i've seen the gifts of the spirit in him countless times. i really look up to him.

summer is so hot here. haha but yeah, people celebrate christmas. everyone does. no one has trees, they just put tinsel on their fences or buy santa claus signs for their doors or what not. all the shopping centers go all out like in the states. i dont know if its very religious here. but on the 8th theres a pilgramige kind of thing for one of the catholic virgins? dont know much about it but everyone celebrates it. the ward's even having a luncheon that day. not that we're celebrating catholicism haha i think its so the members have something to do while the city is pretty much empty. everyone travels to some huge cathedral in downtown asuncion that day where the statue of the virgin is. most poeple here are catholic. like all of them are haha

love you all, thanks for writing

-Elder Glasgow