Machette, pig and Pique

 

Ok so first of all, you will always send letters through the mission office. I send them back the same way.

If you would so desire, I would love a little ipod or mp3 with church efy and just nonromantic happy uplifting songs on it! Include the plug in cord. I think a flash drive works in some speakers too, which I guess I would need a little speaker too. Include Christmas Shoes the song if possible. Oh and Christmas music is always acceptable, any time of year! Yeah I found my flash drive and it has one song on it, Man in the Mirror! It´s a great song but after 3 times you get sick of it! Haha but this is only my Christmas list, no worries if you cant!

Yeah my area is one of the furthest south areas of the mission. 1 hour from Asuncion. It has stores and big roads and supermarkets and it also has dirt roads with people who get shipped clothes to wear. Its a big variety.

So lemme tell you about my morning on Tuesday. I had just gotten over a 3 day sickness that just slowed me down a little, (don´t worry, I just had to buy clean water instead of drink water from peoples houses) and I woke up with a little pain in my heel. I looked at it, and it was pique! For those of you who don´t know, pique is like a tick, it goes in your skin and it lays eggs in there and its not too hard to get rid of if you catch it. So I went to the Hermana whos house we live in and she took one of my sewing needles and just picked it out. It didn't really hurt. Then she got this alcohol stuff and poured it on to kill whatever was left. That hurt a little. Then she got some ash from the fire and rubbed it on it. Idk what it did, I am sure it helped. It really wasn´t that bad at all.

Anyways, so after all this I decide that I wanna make an omelette! We had just gotten the gas for our stove. So I put the pan on top of the glass of the stove and started going, super excited, when halfway through I hear a loud crack and then BOOM! Glass shatters straight outward in a million pieces!! Hot glass too! I guess the glass was just a cover! Stupid invention. But no worries. No one was hurt in the making of this omelette. Anyways, that poor Hermana comes in and helps us clean it up... She must think I am an accident prone, deaf, mute, clutz. She finally figured me out! Yeah... I didn´t get my omelette that morning, but never fear, I made one the next day!

Oh if you could, could I get, along with other pics of family and stuff, a pic of the Bountiful temple? I would love that.j

So to answer a question, I have not yet seen the sunrise or sunset here! Its all flat here, which means we can't see over any buildings at all. That and I don´t think they have daylight savings figured out, cuz the sun rises at like 5 30 and comes down at like 7. Weird.

So you should all, especially the teenage ones of my audience, listen to the song, The Reason by Hoobastank. Think about the Atonement when you do. It is crazy how incredible it is!

So everyone knows Simpson here too. Everyone always jokes with me! I have become quite a popular name I think. The tall, skinny, unlingual Gringo who has the funny last name! Thats me!

Mom, thanks for those Plan of Salvation picture cutouts! I use them every time! I did have to write the Spanish translation over the English words, but hey, it´s great!

So one thing that is sorta odd here is that we don´t eat dinner. Lunch is the big meal that we eat with members, but we never eat until we get home at 9 30. I get so hungry.

These people are trying to make me fat. They are always like, do you want more? after my 4th serving, and I am like, no I would love to but I am full! ANd they say, oh you are so skinny, eat some more! So I do. But I am not fat yet!

So we contacted this guy on the bus who couldnt speak or hear. We wrote stuff down on a back page in the Book of Mormon and he nodded that he would read it and stuff! Then the next morning I was reading in Isaiah 29 18 and it says something like, and the deaf shall hear the words of the book. Super cool!!!

It has been pretty smoky here lately because all trash here is just burned in their backyards. No trash cans or anything. Super weird.

It sorta fun in lessons, because often we will have a dog, cat, chicken, rooster, pig, frog wander through the middle of us. Its funny! Just different, I thought yall would like that.

So this Sunday was super great, we got Jazmin and Simeona, 2 investigators, to come to church and a bunch of our less active friends that we have visited came too! It´s a big focus right now with the less actives.

I love seeing the light in the eyes of the people who accept our message and the Holy Ghost enters into their lives. You can see it in their eyes, in the smile and almost suprise in their faces. It´s incredible.

Also I love the first prayers of people. So sincere. So genuine. Without all the muck of our mormon prayer culture. So cool.

I will end with a joke Elder Herrera told me.

A boy was doing a science experiment on how high fleas could jump with how many legs they had.

He got a flea with 6 legs and said, Jump! It jumped 3 feet.

He got a flea with 5 legs and said, Jump! It jumped 2 and a half feet.

He got fleas with 4, 3, 2, 1, legs and said Jump! They jumped 2 feet, 18 in, 12 in, and 10 in, respectively.

Finally he got a flea with no legs and said, Jump! It didn´t jump. Jump! he said again! Jump jump jump!

Finally he concluded that the last flea was deaf.

HAHA! I thought it was funny. Maybe it wasn´t. Probably not.

Well, remember who you all are, love you all, tune in next week for more of, The Life of Elder Simpson!

If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make the change!

Elder Jake Simpson

 Me and my trusty machete! Not for spiders sadly, for yardwork (If we ever had any) I haven´t used it yet...

 Pique!! I don´t know how I got it, I promise I wear shoes everywhere!

 Yeah so this is my bathroom. Looks great huh! No worries, I do have hot water. But there is a pull string for the toilet! That´s how they all are down here. I feel so empowered when I do it!

 Me and my companion and a less active member working on his roof! I guess right before I came there was a crazy hailstorm. This guy and his wife came to Church on Sunday though!

 Us with a few member kids and their pig! I thought you would like this. Oddly enough the next time we visited them we had bacon... Just kidding!