Happy Easter and a miracle wedding

Hola mi Mama y otros que están leyendo! This week was a great one, but very stressful at the same time, but I will explain what happened. Luckily, it has cooled off here a bit and the time has changed to an hour earlier so I think we are 3 hours ahead of AZ now. We had a good end of the week, with the wedding and baptism, and we also had an investigator come to church! It wasn`t Celzo, but he did attend the wedding and he said he enjoyed the church. 

So what happened on Saturday is that we went in the morning to fill up the baptismal font and that went fine, we cleaned it and it was all ready for the baptism that night. Then we left to go and teach for a few hours before we had to come back and set up everything else. So we arrived about 2 hours before everything started and it was awesome, all the decorations were set up and it looked great, the baptismal font was all ready, we just had to wait for everyone to show up. So the judge shows up and the Aguayo family and basically about all the members of the branch too. We handed the copies of the IDs to the judge and about 5 min later she calls us over to tell us that they can`t get married, because there is some rule that nobody knew about that you have to wait 10 months after you are divorced to get re-married, and Brother Aguayo (Mario) had only waited 8 months. So she started getting ready to leave and we were freaking out, there was about 80 people there, a ton of food, family members that had come in from other parts, all the decorations, and it would have been all for nothing.

So while we were thinking of what we could do a member of the branch called a judge that is her friend and asked him about the rule and that if he could marry them. He said that he could and that the rule only applied in situations where the couple that was divorced was still living together and they weren`t, so she came running out to tell us that another judge was coming and I felt so relieved and thankful. So we put on the movie Meet the Mormons while we waited and the judge showed up abot 30 min later, the got married and baptized! And the next day they were confirmed members, after 3 years of waiting!

I learned a lot that night about not losing faith, I think I said about 1000 prayers and my companion did too. A lot about patience and not losing hope when we think the worst is happening and there is no way out. I know that these are things I could only have learned on the mission, and I am very grateful for the blessings I have received so far. We have transfers again tomorrow, so we`ll see if I leave my area again or if the Lord needs me to stay a little bit longer. I just know I need to not be mad at what happens but to obey with happiness and willingness.

To answer some of your questions, there are usually about 80-100 people that attend church on Sunday in our branch, and we didn`t really do much for Easter. We went and showed the video that the church released, but the Paraguayans don`t celebrate with the eggs or bunnies or candy like we do, they have a week here called the semana santa (holy week) its a catholic holiday, and they make a lot of traditional food and eat it as a family. 

Thanks for the emails and stuff you sent me in the mail, I hope you have a good week and can`t wait to hear rom you soon! Oh yeah, did you find the picture of grandpa when he was on his mission? Thanks!

Royhahu,

Elder Spiro

FHE and brownies!

The wedding that almost didn't happen!