The Virgin's Birthday

This week was an interesting one. It was the birthday of the virgin of Caucupe yesterday!  Right now we are living on the back half of a big house.  In the front lives an extremely catholic family.  We came home from church to study and found a ginormous blow up bouncy house/slide in front of our house with about 80 people standing or sitting around, so forgetting it was the virgin day, I thought it must be someones birthday!  So I shook some hands and we went into the house to study.  Then the children laughing and yelling stopped. The music stopped. And we started hearing a preacher preaching from a microphone about how lovely and important the virgin is and was.  And then it hit me... we were trapped.  For about 3 hours they stood outside our house and worshiped the virgin statue situated by our front door.  We didn't know what to do!  So we studied about how to respond to someone who wants to pray to the virgin. 

Also we found an awesome guy that works with leather.  Crocodile and capybara (large rodent) and anaconda skins.  So if you guys want some anaconda shoes or a crocodile vest, I can hook you guys up.  I asked him about the vest and he said it would take at least 7 crocodiles.  But really, he does have cool belts and wallets for about 15 bucks if you would like. 

We are still exploring around and finding more and more people to teach.  It was tough this week because all of our catholic investigators got roped in by the virgin's birthday and forgot about us... but well go back in a week or two. 

We had some great lessons with in-actives and I am sure we will see them at church next Sunday.  Elder Haworth is doing well and his Spanish is getting better!  He is a fun companion. 

To answer the question,  "what do we eat?"  We a lot of times have to cook for ourselves because we don't have active members in the area.  Paraguayan food is a lot of rice, noodles, cooking oil and meat.

I think we will be skyping on Christmas eve, but the computer place is only open on Christmas eve until 12 in the afternoon.  So it will be early in the morning for you guys.  But I will look around this week and ask to figure out computer times and locations and stuff and write next week! 

Love,
Elder Neifert