Hey Guys!
We’ve been having a good time here in Ita Paso! We are able to fill our schedules each day with things to do, and we are just having a blast working every day here. This week we had the opportunity to go to another town in our area called Carmen del Parana. So this town is easily the most unique town I’ve been to in Paraguay. For starters, the majority of the town’s population isn’t Paraguayans, it’s Eastern Europeans. It’s essentially an immigrant town, a place where people from Ukraine, Russia, and other countries come to retire. We spent a few hours contacting there and we contacted more Europeans than we did actual Paraguayans. Another interesting thing about Carmen del Parana is that it is rich. Every house we seemed to contact had all the modern amenities we have back in the states, if not more. We decided to contact the biggest house/mansion in town first, and this guy came out, talked to us for a bit, and then quickly ran back inside. And for the next several hours, it was the same story with all the other houses we contacted. It was actually kind of humbling, and made me appreciate Ita Paso more. Sure Ita Paso doesn’t have a beach, or a supermarket, or huge houses, but hey they like to listen to us and welcome us in. Ita Paso seems to be the place where all the cool stories are at.
Speaking of cool stories, we had a special experience/miracle that happened this week. The evening of last P-Day, we went and picked up our laundry from the member who washes our laundry. When we walked up, one of the district counselors was there. He actually is from Uruguay but he served in Paraguay/Argentina Posadas for his mission and decided to move to Encarnacion. He had served in Ita Paso and asked us if we could visit some people he had met in Ita Paso, and we agreed. We clapped at this house where he had baptized some boys but not the rest of the family. No answer. Esta bien. We visited some other people and we thought that was it. Fast forward to the next day, we walked out to the place where we were the night before to visit some other people we knew. On the trip, in the midst of this lonesome road, we saw up in the distance what appeared to be a circle of people. As we grew closer we realized that it was a circle of people around a dog. The dog was on the ground sort of having a seizure as well as difficulty breathing. The people around the dog were trying their best to help him, giving him water, feeling his heart, giving him CPR, (in reality he kind of just punched it’s stomach) nothing seemed to work. They finally picked him up sort of like a dead chicken and put him off to the side of the road, where he sat there not moving with his eyes rolled up into his head. We gave the oldest guy in the group a pass-along card with our number on it and told him to call us if the dog survived. He said he would.
So after that, we just kept on walking, feeling a bit sad because of this dog. We eventually heard some footsteps running up behind us, and we saw this kid, and he started to talk to us. We knew something was different about this kid because the first thing he called us was ‘Elder’. We asked him if he had talked to missionaries before and he said, “yeah, one of the missionaries like you baptized my two brothers.” Elder Dorotheo and I looked at each other because we realized who this kid was. He was the brother of the two kids that the district counselor baptized when he was a missionary in Ita Paso. We asked him why he didn’t answer us last night, and he said they were already asleep. He was heading home and his mother and him were about to travel somewhere. We walked back with him to his house and we were able to have a conversation with him and his mother. His mother was happy for us to start teaching him again and told us that when his brothers were baptized he cried for weeks because he wanted to be baptized as well but he was too young, only 7. Now he is 11 and wants to go to church with his mom and be baptized again! Elder Dorotheo and I realized that if we hadn’t stopped at that dog for several minutes, we would not have met that kid and his mother and maybe we would never have talked to them again.
We thought that was a pretty cool experience, maybe a little sad that the dog had to hit the bucket but oh well. We were walking back to Ita Paso proper a few hours later when we got a message on our phone. It was the dude back in the dog circle, and he told us that the dog had revived. He sent a video of the dog playing with a bunch of other dogs right next to the spot where it looked like it was dead. Elder Dorotheo and I could not believe it. We don’t know if the dog hit the bucket for a minute for the sake of us meeting that kid, but we like to think it did. It’s a good reminder that miracles exist in the world, we just need to have the faith to see them. The Lord has said,
For behold, I am God; and I am a God of miracles; and I will show unto the world that I am the same yesterday, today, and forever; and I work not among the children of men save it be according to their faith.
I know that if we work to increase our faith we will see miracles in our lives, whether they are big or small.
I hope you all have a good week!
Elder Watson
