Skype Call from Kaitlin

From Kaitlin's Mom: We were able to talk to Kaitlin on Christmas Day. The video I tried to make of our conversation failed, but I did get most of the audio. Here are some highlights:

   

• We met her companion Her. Brunel and the elders she is serving with
• She requested a "talent show", specifically Ruth's debate presentation and Jared to play the ukulele. 
• She was super happy and said they had had a very good day.  They had eaten with a Brazilian member and she got to visit with some old companions. 
• This year she focused on making it a great Christmas for her companion. She surprised her today with gifts and a chocolate pancakes. 
• She visited the doctor Christmas morning to get her abscess repacked.  The hospital is clean and her doctor is really nice.  She said he is the most renowned doctor in the city.
• Very few people in Paraguay can play the piano and the congregations have a hard time singing in tune and they sing super slow.  Kaitlin filled in for the normal conductor a few weeks ago and tried to speed the congregation up with her singing and conducting but they all just looked at her funny and continued singing at their own pace. 

• She gets along well with her companion.  This is only the second companion she's had her whole mission that is younger than her.  
• Another missionary gave her an agenda as a gift that was covered with pictures of couples getting married in the Oquirrh Mountain temple.  The mission president's wife was there when Kaitlin opened the gift, and it accidentally fell to the floor,  The president's wife picked it up and saw what it was and asked Kaitlin "What is this?"  and Kaitlin answered sheepishly "my agenda."   Kaitlin said that there is a rumor going around her mission that she is going to get married a week after she gets home. 
• She quoted Matthew 6:34 to us in spanish, and she said it has helped her focus on each individual day and not worry too much about the future,
• She is reading the Book of Mormon in Portuguese, everyone at church speaks Guarani, she speaks Spanish all day while proselyting, and her companion is from southern California, so finding the right words can be difficult.  She spoke some Guarani for us.  She hopes to learn to speak French and  Chinese in the future. 
• Oi!  means "hi" in Portuguese and is a very common greeting there. 
• Mbaé'chepa?  is "how are you" in  Guarani.

• She is afraid of coming home to the cold. Currently in Paraguay it's very hot, though she is at a higher elevation there so it is cooler there than in other places in the country. She was hoping to do some swimming and hiking when she got home but forgot that it's winter. 
• The worst thing she's eaten there is cow ears.  Imagine the worst texture imaginable for meat: a little too soft with a furry texture.  The only thing that competed with that was once she had polenta with fish sauce.  When she gets home she wants casserole and frostys and fries at Wendy's. She misses green vegetables. 
• When she gets home she is most excited to tell us about all the little weird things she's experienced on her mission. She wants us all to tell her that she's so "boss" for having endured all these weird and hard things. 
• Alfredo, who was just baptized, was so happy.  He just decided after two years of taking lessons to be baptized. She wishes that everyone in Paraguay would just decide to be baptized.
• Kaitlin wants to give two homecoming talks. One of the number one she's learned from Paraguay is that it doesn't matter at all what you look like.  The only person it matter to is you if you give it importance.  The other topic she'd like to talk about is how God is always there for you and doesn't leave you by yourself.
• She's read the book of mormon in spanish five times while on her mission.
• She shared a scripture: Matthew 11:2-5  of this scripture she said: "[Jesus] said look at what I've done and prove who I am to yourself.   I love this because I am the blind.  I am the deaf. I am the lame. I am the dead that was resurrected.  I am these people. [Jesus] healed people, but he's talking about me, you know?  He's talking about all of us, how we were all healed through Jesus Christ. It's so cool that Jesus is the ultimate judge, and the ultimate healer, and the ultimate teacher; he did everything for us. And we are so imperfect, and so stupid, and so blind, and so deaf, and so lame, He tells us to do things and we can't do them. But He says that he's healed all of it; he's healed all of our weaknesses. Not only our physical weaknesses but our spiritual weaknesses, and our emotional weaknesses. He's healed us all already, and it's just dependent on us if we are going to [take advantage of] it or not.  Why are we so stupid? Why can't we just do what He says? (garbled audio section - a few sentences here missed)  ....So just think about that.  When we talk about the miracle of Jesus Christ - we are the miracle of Jesus Christ. It wasn't other people. It's us. We've been healed."

It Will Heal

Oh my gossshhhh family soooo much crap happened this weeeeeeekkkk and Im so lazy I just want to tell you all at the same time. So FIRST we were going to have a baptism of Yolanda on wednesday..... welll long story short she cancelled 2 hours before the baptism and did not get baptized... there were a couple of problems there but they are not worth writing here.. We were pretty sad. And we had a full font. So what do we do? We have a ward baptism of a kid who is 9 years old! wooohoo! so 50 people came for the baptism of this little 9 year old kid and it was stressful but great!

THEN on thursday my boil that Ive had for 15 days-- did I mention that? It was like the size of an egg and sits nice and pretty below my armpit on my upper rib cage. Well it burst finally and so they sent me to the hospital to get it ¨cleaned properly¨ well yeah cleaned properly transfers to the doctor cuts it open with scissors and squeezes all your blood out. It was literally awful hahahah Hermana Brunelle watched it all and held my hand but I just laid on the table and cried like a child. The doctors were SO wonderful and it was the cleanest hospital Ive seen here so it was actually okay. I started dripping blood a few hours later so we had to go get the gauze changed a few times. They packed it with gauze and I got that changed this morning and I think I have to go back just one more time. Whew.

And so apart from that on Saturday we had a baptism for real this time! It was Alfredos baptism and he was SO happy. He just grinned the whole time. It was awesome. The Spirit was so strong. His whole family came out to support him and he was just wonderful. It was literally one of the most beautiful baptisms that Ive had. He only speaks guarani and I dont know how he was feeling but he was smiling and that counts.

His family came again to church on sunday for his confirmation. All in all it worked out quite well. We had the christmas conference and we made little blankets for children in the mission and we ate pizza and christmas icecream-- it was nice. And we have a live nativity that I am planning and directing on wednesday and we´ll talk on Sunday so WHOOOHOOO im excited!

This week when I was in a lot of pain and just decaida, the holy ghost was so kind. I just had a thought, ¨It will all heal.¨ And Ive been thinking on that, with Christmas and all. It will all heal. All of it. Emotional pain, physical pain, whatever kind of pain that we have, it will all heal. It will all finish someday. Thats the peace we have in the gospel of Christ. I loved what it says in Lucas 4: 18,19 about the reasons why Jesus Christ came to earth. I love that Christ says, this prophecy is fulfilled in your ears! Its been done! Christ came, He saved us, and all thats left for us is to repent and love Him with all our hearts.

I love Him so much. I know that through Him, it will all heal.

I LOVE BEING MORMON
And merry Christmas this week, family. I said I`ll be on at 5 our time so thats 12 your time, but I am going after everyone else so I`ll probably be on like 1 your time or even later.... sorry. just wait for meee hahahah I love you all so much thanks for writing a lot

Random Photos

So like this week miracles happened and also great tragedies, but mostly miracles!!!

First miracle! I was so lonely and so I prayed that God would send me a friend and the hermana leaders called us for divisions! WOOHOO! I got to hang out with Hermana Santos from Texas. Shes really cool. We testified hardcore to some lady who tried to bible bash us, it was awesome.

Second thing is that we might be having four baptisms this week! Yolanda is getting baptized on wednesday, Alfredo on Saturday, and then two other little kids whos mom is not an active member. It kind of happened all of the sudden! Yolanda suddenly declared she wanted to be baptized this week and we were like, ok great! And then Alfredo who is an eternal investigator decided this week that hs not afraid of being baptized anymore and wants to get baptized on Saturday. Well cool! We´ll take that! So now we are scrambling a bit but thats great! Also we have the zone christmas conference on saturday so basically the whole week we are just going to be in the church haha. We are excited but also stressed hahahah baptisms are crazy.

And soooo thats basically it. Weve found some awesome people and we´ve also had a lot of really crushing lessons where people flat out rejected us after about a month of investigating but whatever! the lord knows what he does.

Ive been reading in the book of Ether and I am just amazed by how much faith Jared and his family had to just get in some boat and hope that God would take them to the promised land. Im trying to figure out how to get that kind of faith. I think it comes by obedience.

ALSO COOL THING I FORGOT we met this cute little paraguayan lady who spoke only guarani and I remembered enough guarani to teach her a scripture it was SO COOL it was the gift of tongues for real!! But then she threw us out but it doesnt matter!!!! :D

So thanks for everything I love you have a good week.

The stairs to my apartment

Some plants I liked

us eating chikue brazilian icecream

us eating regular paraguayan icecream

You Are Not Yet as Job

This week was cool. We worked with some cool new people, even last night we found a new family and their neighbor who all accepted to get baptized. Our investigators are reading the book of mormon A LOT more than they have been, theyve been praying to know the book of Mormon is true and now its all in Gods hands. I have felt a LOT of prayers this week, and I have felt a lot of comfort knowin that there are a lot of people out there who are thinking about me.

And this week we´ve had a lot of little tender mercies. Somebody gave us dessert unexpectedly, the HOT WATER FINALLY GOT FIXED oh my gosh family this morning I took my first hot shower in two weeks!!! It was the bessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst I think I was in there for like half an hour. We had mission correlation, a bunch of stuff.

We are working really hard with our investigator Arnaldo. Hes been studying the church for years, and he believes the doctrines are true but he doesnt want to be baptized. There are a few problems there, but we are trying to focus on reading and praying because thats really all we can do. But hes been a really good friend for me here because we can go into deep doctrine and stuff. Reminds me of home hahah

The funniest moment this week was when I was shampooing my hair and I had a sinking realization that the water was out. Soooo had shampooey hair all that day. hahah then hermana brunelle fell in the mud and I slammed my finger in somebodys old chair and it bled a lot..... we cried. It was such a hard day but now that Im thinking about it soooooooooooo funny like it should be tv show or something hahahaahha

so anyhow thats me this week. Pluggin along. Lots of investigators, I have faith. hahah I was reading the scriptures that same crappy day and I felt like I should read Job. I found a lot of comfort in the book of Job. I feel like.. a kinship with him. He had boils, I have boils.... boils bond people. But it worked out for Job. He got 42 chapters in the bible. Thats a sweet deal.

I love all of you guys. Thanks for the prayers. I feel them, I really do. Sorry about no pictures. This computer is SLOWER than SLOW but anyways I love you. Next week.

:D
Hermana Scott