Stories From the Mission Field (this is directly from Hermana's email on April 25)

Yesterday marked the end of "Semana Santa," a very notable week here in Paraguay. EVERYTHING shuts down, which I wasn't anticipating, especially Friday, Saturday, and Sunday...even the supermarkets were closed.  Tons of people travelled to the country to visit family, and most of the week, our area was like a ghost town.  It made it a little difficult to teach as many lessons as we wanted to teach and contact all of our investigators a sufficient number of times this week because many of them vacationed elsewhere the entire week.  But it was an adventure all the same.  You know what though?  The Lord always, always demonstrates His love and His awareness of me, even when I'm being kind of dumb.  For instance, this week I was a little...I don't know...not quite frustrated, but almost frustrated, just because we didn't teach as much as usual.  When we were reporting our numbers to the district leader (Elder Piriz from Uruguay) last night, I was thinking "dangit! We need to do better! We should have had more lessons this week!"  And then he told us, "Guess what, Hermanas?  Your companionship has taught the most lessons in the whole mission for the past two weeks!"  And then I felt really dumb for having complained.  The Lord has helped us so, so much.  We want to teach, and He has provided ample opportunities to do so.  I promised Him that I wouldn't complain once this week.  There's only ever reason to be happy and full of faith, knowing that such a wise and loving Father is in charge.  We are going to finish April out with a bang...I'm so excited for this upcoming week. (p.s. Can you believe that I've been in the mission field for almost 5 months? Holy cow! It's flying by too fast!)

Oh my heavens...I have to tell you a funny story.  But I'm afraid you'll all change your minds about me being a good missionary.  Earlier this week, we passed by an investigator's home.  His name is Carlos Coronel, and he's always just a gentleman to us.  He's had a hard life--he doesn't know either of his parents and he just kind of grew up in the streets--but he has really tried to make something of his life, and especially in this past little while has tried to make the Lord more a part of his life.  He was definitely prepared to receive the gospel.  However, he has a bit of a problem with alcohol.  When we passed by early this week, he seemed unusually happy to see us.  He opened the door and told us probably 7 times how happy he was to see us, then he excused himself to go put on a shirt (it is gross, but most men don't wear shirts when they're at home, so it's not unusual to be greeted by a shirtless man. Just so you know).  Hna. Plummer and I kind of looked at eachother with a "he is acting strange.." look, then he reappeared with his shirt on inside out.  I realized in that moment that he was drunk.  He looked so funny with this polo shirt inside out, and then telling us how happy he was and how great life was, and then he started spouting off doctrine about the Fall (he'd been reading in 2 Nephi), which was super unexpected.  Anyway, I'm not doing a good job of painting a picture of the situation here, but it was super comical.  And...I lost it.  I got the giggles so bad.  My companion told him we'd drop by another day, and he asked if he could say a prayer before we left, and before we even answered he started praying in a very Evangelical style, and I started laughing again, right in the middle of the prayer.  Oh, my.  I felt SO bad afterwards, but I'm serious, the whole scene was one of the funniest I've witnessed in awhile.