Have I Told You Lately..?

That I love you guys!?

This week we finished it out with CHRISTMAS and SKYPE and FEASTING. I swear, I am never ever ever going to eat meat ever again when I'm in the states. We had pork and asado and fish and chicken and mandioca and like a bazillion different chipa guazus *cheepah wah zoo" ... aka paraguayan cornbread. Its nothing like american cornbread but it's tasty. 

We passed Navidad well enough. I drew a christmas tree on a piece of paper and then I woke up early and opened my presents. I got a lot of cool things, thanks mom! and I  hear there is more coming. :) 

On Tuesday we had a big lunch with all the missionaries and the mission president. Still fighting the whole camera thing, sorry about no pictures. But we took a foto with santa and we sang all the christmas hymns, so that was much needed. :) 

As far as missionary work this week has been the pits. Not only are we losing investigators but our asistence in the church is falling by 10 members every week. We don't know how to make it stop!! And its been raining every day too. But what do we do when stuff gets tough? WE WORK HARDER! I chant to myself to help. Everyone can use this tactic. You say "Si tu puedes, si tu puedes, you're Dwayne the Rock Johnson." and somehow you get energy. :D 

aaaaaaaaaaaaaand what else?! Oh man I love the Book of Mormon. Today I was studying in Preach My Gospel there was a scripture activity where it listed all the scriptures where the prophets of the book of mormon say why they wrote their books. Its all to bring people to Christ, and in hopes that it will help their brethren, the lamanites. But Mormon says that he writes to fulfil the prayers of the people that have already died. And thats so cool because we are literally fulfilling promises for ancient prophets here in paraguay by bringing the gospel to their brethren, the lamanites. BEAST. LOVE IT. 

Love all of you people. Happy 2016! Festijar but dont drink alcohol in any of its forms! :) 

Con carino, 

Hermana Scott

Christmas Call Highlights

Many Mangos to All, and to All a Good Night

December 21, 2015

Dear everyone,

My inbox this week looked like this :

Wedding

wedding

Christmas

wedding

Star Wars

Star Wars

Star Wars

Baby

Someone please write me a rap about it. But it sounds like things are good where you're all at, so :) God is awesome.

For my part, this week we had cambios! I'm with Hermana Diaz, todavia en Itaugau, and she is from Peru. She's also freaking beautiful and I hate it. hahahahha really though she does great work, her lessons are on point, and we're basically going to baptize this whole friggin country ...

... if we can get there...

NOBODY JUDGE but this week I slipped,... in the shower.... and busted up my leg. HA! It's so embarrassing! My new companion who speaks no english hears this giant crash and she's all, HERMANA? I was like, whoa what happened.. and she's like HERMANAA!! And starts opening the door and I'm like Whoa honey wait!! I'm without clothes and injured! So guess who limped most of this week? Also me. In the rain. And no one answered because they are all on viaje por stupid navidad.

The Lord has sent me some good adventures *see above paragraph-- so that I can have very sincere prayers and think more about how much I really rely on Him. In Paraguay if you ask someone "Who is Jesus Christ?" they will answer "He is everything to me. He is the Son of God." And that has become so true to me here in my mission. Jesus Christ is everything to me. He is my Savior, my King, my Brother, and my best friend. He is the only one who knows what its like to be me, and He loves me perfectly. And He loves all of you perfectly too.

I hope you all have a very happy holiday, and that you can take a minute to look at the snow, and the tree, and really remember that this baby was born to save humankind. We will never repay the debt, but Jesus is smiling when we serve Him the best we can.

With all the love I've got,

Hna Scott

Happy Holidays!

December 14, 2015

Happy Holidays dear family and friends,

Wow! This year was an exciting one!! 

Norda has been working hard all this year! We are eagerly awaiting her promotion for work this Tuesday. We don't know what the Lord has in mind but wherever we go, we know it is His will. :) 

After a few difficult days of sickness, Scott has officially finished her studies and she now gets to move on and really search for work in the field she's been practicing-- Senior missionary. She is excited for all the new roads ahead of her as she's finally finished training and gets a few more hours to spend working each day instead of cooped up in class. 

Things are getting serious between our daughter Book of Mormon and Miguel. We are waiting for another two weeks of church attendance before we will give him our daughters hand in baptism. He is a good guy, and a good match for our little girl. We are excited to see him progress and join our family. 

We often say we are teaching Book of Mormon, but we know that Book of Mormon is really teaching us! We feel blessed to be spending so much time together, learning of Gods word and progressing in His work. We miss all of you since our big move to Paraguay, but we feel your love in every aspect of our lives. We continually enjoy the blessings of membership in this great church, and we are so grateful to have the stability and peace the Gospel brings. 

Hoping all of you have also had a successful year. Wishing you a white Christmas!!! With love, 

The Schnoorda Family

The Testaments were filmed in Paraguay

Dear everyone,

Here is a pic from another missionary in the area.

Flooding schmoloding. Yeah, so it rained a little. So what there was like 3 feet of water in the streets. So what it thundered and lightninged for 4 hours straight. So what trees fell, houses flooded, and the majority of itaugau has been without water and electricity all week? The problem is that I woke up with WATER hitting my FACE. hahhaahahha like literally the rain was hitting me in the face! thats so dang uncomfortable! XD 

Nah really its been fine. There was some floods and damage and stuff but overall paraguay without electricity is not that different from paraguay with electricity and the storms inspired at least 2 people to reconsider baptism, so I'm calling it a blessing. :) 

We had four investigators in church this week, one of them being this kid (kid meaning hes like 18) named Miguel. To imagine Miguel, I want everyone to picture Moses from the Prince of Egypt (after the whole egypt take the jewelry off dramatically part) , and then add a bunch of arm tattoos. That's him! :) And he's dang excited about keeping commandments. 

The other day we talked about the word of wisdom and we said this, "nuestros cuerpos son templos, y porque piensa que somos templos? Aqui dice que somos creados en la imagen de Dios." [something about our bodies are temples and we were created in the image of God]?and he sat back and he looked at us and he slowly starts smiling and he's like "puuureeeteee." purete means cool in guarani. It was the funniest thing ever. Even now Hna Noorda and I are laughing about it whenever we mention it. 

Speaking of hna noorda, cambios [transfers] are coming next week. :( I like hermana noorda. We have a good time. I'll be sad when she gets transferred, but we'll see what happens. 

Love all of you, have a great week. Joshua 1:9!!! 

Hna Scott

 

 

Bonus Question and Answer from mother's email:

 

 How involved are you in the branch there? Have you given talks or taught classes? No, the ward here basically runs on its own.

You mentioned problems with your stove - what's the deal with that? uhhh the oven needs someone to light it  and so we set papers on fire and stick them in there to turn it on? hahahha like it has gas but has no spark-- we use a lot of matches

Do you have hot water? To tell you simply... no.

How is your Guarni coming? (don't answer in Guarni because it's not on Google translate) uhh I know words here and there, key phrases, things like that but honestly I don't understand basically anything of guarani. It is a language made for the past, does that make sense? Like its very hard to communicate ideas through guarani. And the entire vocabulary of the Church-- Jesus Christ, Atonement, repentance... doesn't exist in guarani. Except tupao, which means church.

Are you anxious about the transfers coming up? YES. Hermana Noorda is probably going to leave and I will cry!!! Its hard to live for 3 months 24/7 with someone and then just think, oh well, they are going to leave next week. like what?! soooo we'll see what happens.

Of all the extra bonus things we bought for you, which has come in the most helpful? the flashlights. I use flashlights every day. Don't ask me why or how, I just almost always end up using flashlights.