Lots of Service and studying about the Sabbath

Dear Mother, Father, Sisters, Brother,

I am trying very hard to focus on the mission right now...but i am also super happy and thank you for doing all of that application work for me! 

Good luck on your talk mom! I know you will do an awesome job!  

This week went by super fast!  We did A LOT OF SERVICE!

Our house flooded due to a big rain storm and we were up all night Tuesday squeegee-ing it out.  The same night the ditch that takes away the bathroom water got buried beneath about 4 feet of dirt.  So in the morning, we helped the owner of our house dig a big 4 ft deep ditch by about 8 ft long and 2 feet wide.  All of the neighbors came out to watch us dig. ( Like they had never seen a white man dig before....probably haven't)  I hope I did the Caucasian race proud.  

Here is the ditch we dug. 

We found a cool frog.

We later were asked by a very old poor woman if we would help her gather sticks so she could make fire to cook for the week.   Little did we know as we accepted that she did not want any ordinary sticks.  I asked her as we hiked 2 miles through the rainforest past many fallen branches and sticks, "Hey what about these sticks..they look worthy of gathering" and she would look at me like I was dumb and say, "No, they are not the sticks that will cook well".

The sticks she liked were the dead ones that were still hanging up in the tree that had been drying for weeks.  So she, using her machete, chopped down a skinny, but tall tree and made a pole.  Then finding another branch with a hook shape at the end, lashed it to the pole.  Using that 12 foot hook we pulled down dead branches from the tallest trees, sometimes with me on Elder Richardson's shoulders and him jumping so we could hook these most prized and sought after cooking wood.  We then made stick bundles which weighed about 70 pounds each and carried them all back to her house on our backs.  She carried one as well - equally as heavy as ours.  It was cool.  Paragauyan women are tough jungle wilderness surviving females.  

The chapel flooded as well, under about 2 inches of water so we spent 3 hours squeegee-ing on Friday too. 

This week I also figured out some great scriptures to explain why the sabbath day has been changed from Saturday to Sunday. 

  I liked using Hechos (Acts) 20:7, because it very clearly states that after the resurrection, the apostles partook of the sacrament (obviously a sabbath activity) on the FIRST day of the week, Sunday.  John 20:1 speaks of Mary going to the tomb on the FIRST DAY (sunday), and finding it empty.  Then jump to verse 19, and its says that on the SAME DAY is when Christ showed himself to his apostles, and then jump to verse 26, Christ appeared 8 days later (hoy en ocho), which means that the next time he appeared was indeed the next Sunday.  which is also when they partook of the sacrament.  In revelations, it says that Christ is the Lord of the day of the Sabbath.  Common sense shows that clearly, the day of his resurrection, when they partook of the sacrament, and then continued the practice on SUNDAYS (Acts 20:7), that clearly became his day.