Bartering King

Dear family,

This week was a good one.  My companion got sick with some sort of cold and sore throat so we weren't able to work too much. On top of that, we had to finalize everything for the new apartment.  We got the news that the sisters are going to stay in the really nice apartment with all of the new things, but I kind of saw that one coming.  It was a long-shot for us anyway.  Dang it.  They better not be goobers. We did a lot of bartering with the owners of the apartment and we got the price down a few hundred Guaranis.  This morning I also bartered for a soccer ball.  We played soccer this morning and the ball exploded... so the Zone Leaders gave me money to buy a new one.  I went to the mercado and found some for like 45 mil and I then went to like 3 other places scouting prices.  We had to settle with a pretty bad ball, and the guy selling it tried really hard to take advantage of us.  He said his ball was like 100 mil and I started laughing becasue we saw the same exact ball down the road for 45 mil.  I got him down to 35.  I have been crowned bartering king. 

This week was the parade for the anniversary of Concepcion.  It is the biggest thing that happens here so there was not anyone in their houses or in the streets.  Everybody went to the venida (main street) to watch the parade.  It was televised, too, i think.  There are some pics on dropbox I put up.  To say the least it was a pretty pitiful parade.  It was just a huge line of students banging on drums.  No candy, no beads, nada.  I was disappointed.  There was, however, some guy carrying an American flag. We all put our hands over our hearts and sang the star spangled anthem. It caught a lot of attention.  hahahaha

Elder Smith and I are really working hard to find new investigators willing to keep commitments.  We came up with a new strategy.  We treat every body no matter who like an "8 cow investigator".  We noticed that a lot of people here, especially the poorer class, really dont get too many compliments or love and so we have decided to make an extra effort to pay them a lot more compliments.  A good example would be one of our investigators, Aurora.  She is pretty poor and her family is made up of really inactive members who dont want to keep any commitments.  They also treat her like she doesnt know very much.  When she prays out loud her mom cuts in and tells her what to pray for.  When we ask questions she usually gives us the "I dont know - why dont you tell me" response because she is used to people treating her like she doesn't know things.  So we have decided to give her compliments on how smart she is and how well she is doing for even the tiny stuff.  A lot of times I think people will be the label you put on them and be the person you treat them as.  Especially if you treat them as someone who has much more worth than the person they saw themselves as before.  We havent seen results yet, because we started doing that the last lesson, but we will see this coming week how it goes.

We did an experiment to see the quality of our water compared with pure bottled water. 

Not good, my man... not good.  Elder Smith and I are going to buy the 20 liter jugs from now on.  We haven't gotten sick yet from the water we've been drinking, but after the experiment we both are a little nervous.
 


I hope everything is going well with you guys.  When does Scott come home?  It has to be soon. 


Love,

Elder Neifert