Week 7!!! (Week 7 in Paraguay!!!)

Familia Y Amigas,

So this week was awesome! Hermano  y Hermana Flor were baptized on Saturday!!!!! It was probably the coolest thing ever! This family is literally amazing. Hermano Flor is one of the strongest people I know. He literally turned his life around. He takes this backpack to work every day, and before we started talking to him it was full of beer, and now he takes his Book of Mormon, True to the Faith, and the pamphlets we've been giving him. They pray together as a family, and when we stopped by their house after church today, they were reading the Book of Mormon together! It's amazing, the changes we've seen, and we are so blessed. Hermana Cheney was reading in Alma 26 the other day, and it is literally talking about our lives right now! We are having a lot of success in this area, and it's not because we're doing anything special, it's because we are relying on the Lord a lot, and PRAYING A LOT!!!! I can tell you all right now that the power of prayer is REAL! Heavenly Father wants to help all of you, and all you have to do is get on your knees and ask for it!  

Anyways, back on the Familia Flor. Now that the parents are baptized, we are working a lot with the older sons. I dunno if I've mentioned this or not, but they have 9 kids! and 5 of them have been baptized. They just have three older boys that haven't. Their names are Ruben, Juan, y Luis. The problem we're having with them is they don't exactly want us to teach them, because were American Sisters I think! (haha) But they all come to church and are reading and praying with their fam... anyways we are working on it, and I really think we can finish with this family before our next changes! The cool thing is, if we baptize the older boys, I CAN GO TO THE TEMPLE WITH THEM ALL IN A YEAR TO SEE THEM GET SEALED!!!!! Anyways I just love missionary work! (haha) It's the greatest thing ever....

Also, Hermana Cheney's birthday was on Saturday too! What could be better than a marriage and baptism for your birthday, right? I actually organized some cool things for her, too. The other sisters in our district wanted to help, so I gave them the spare keys to our apartment, and they heart attacked Hermana Cheney while we were getting ready for our baptism! (haha) It was so cool. There's this AWESOME ice cream place close to our house, and they surprised us with ICE CREAM!!! They left the spoons on the table, and then I opened the freezer to find ICE CREAM!!! I FREAKED out...jumping up and down, nearly crying of joy, and it wasn't even my birthday... (haha) It's always a good day in the mish when you can eat ice cream... I also cooked breakfast, and we had a party for lunch at a members house. It was awesome! I planned it all without Hermana Cheney knowing anything! And let me tell you, that's a feat in the mission when you're with someone for 24 hrs a day!

Anyways that's about it... This week was awesome! Thank you all for the support and letters! I love hearing from all of you! Have an awesome week!

Love,

Hermana Amby Austin

Week 6!!!!! (Week 6 in Paraguay!!!)

Familia Y Amigas,

WOW WOW WOW!!! (haha) What a week! This week has literally been AMAZING!!! First of all, we had two baptisms! Marly and Gustavo. They are siblings and are both really close to my age! Marly is 18, and she is the best! It's literally a miracle that they got baptized together, because Marly actually lives outside of our area. We had to jump through a whole lot of hoops to get her cleared to be baptized with her brother. The clearance had to go through the Mission President. There are other reasons why she had to get baptized here, but the point is, we said a lot of prayers, and Heavenly Father answered them!  

Answers to prayers were kind of the theme of this past week. We had a lot of experiences with answers to prayers this week, and I'm going to share a few of them. That one was the first. The second one is kind of silly. (haha) We had to go to the Mission Home this week to take my TRAINING TEST! Funny story. All of you think that I'm not in school, well joke's on you! (haha) I had to take my training test this week...anyways, we were leaving our apartment and we were LATE!!! It's an hour ride by bus to the mission home, and the thing about Paraguay is sometimes you can wait for a bus for 20 or 30 minutes. We said our prayers before we left, hurriedly, and in the prayer I specifically asked that we would catch our bus quickly. So, we left and were walking to the bus stop, and Hermana Cheney saw our bus at the stoplight in front of us...LITERALLY RAN TO THE BUS AND WALKED RIGHT ON IT!!!! (haha) When we sat down, Hermana Cheney leaned over and said... "Well your prayer worked..." (haha) It was the coolest experience ever!

Speaking of buses, funny story... We were on the bus another time this week and had to get off, so I walked to the front of the bus like we always do, and waited for the bus driver to stop... We were in the left lane and there was another bus in the right lane, stopped, so he slowed down a lot right next to this bus to wait... I was confused so I started to take a few steps closer to the door. He was yelling at us in rapid Spanish "Espere espere espere!!!" I thought he was telling us to get off, so I jumped, off of the bus, in moving traffic! (hahahah) Hermana Cheney just about died! It was the greatest thing ever! Apparently "espere" means WAIT! We had a good laugh about that one...

Back to the prayer miracles... I also lost my plaque this week in the calles (streets) of Paraguay at like 8:45 pm... Let me tell you nothing makes you more nervous as a missionary than to lose your plaque! It's like losing a drivers license or something! And, we were supposed to be home at 9. Needless to say, we didn't exactly have time to look for my plaque, but we walked around for a few minutes and tried to find it anyways. Finally Hermana Cheney decided we should say a prayer, and I kid you not, 30 seconds later we found it, MILAGROS!!!! (MIRACLE!!!) (haha) Heavenly Father listens and answers ALL of our Prayers. 

And last, but not least, the greatest prayer milagro (miracle) of all!!! ARE YOU READY? HERMANO (BROTHER) FLOR MADE IT THROUGH THE ENTIRE WEEKEND WITHOUT DRINKING!!!!!!!!!!! Whooooooooooh! He is a completely different person! After conference on Saturday, we went to visit them real fast, and we were so nervous. Saturdays are his bad days. Before he started listening to us he would drink like 25 cans of beer a day. We were praying SO HARD FOR HIM THIS WEEK. I kid you not, I have never prayed so hard for something in my life. Anyways, we were so nervous to visit them but we rounded the corner to their house and knocked, and when we saw him he was completely sober! He's told us he's only going to drink leche (milk) from now on! HOW AWESOME! They are going to get married and baptized this Saturday! I am so happy and so excited! He's changed his life so much, and his family's so much happier! Let me just tell you, the Atonement is for everyone! Anyone can change their life! Thank you all for your prayers for him this week, I know they helped! Keep praying for him to keep it up this week, and the weeks to come!  

Anyways, there's a lot more that happened this week, but I don't have time to tell you all of the stuff... I love you all! Have a good week!  

Love, 

Hermana Amby Austin

PS Aliza Ann!!! I ran into Sarah Tomco last week in Asuncion! (haha) She says hello! Also, I think she'll be home soon, right? Either way it was way awesome to see someone from home!