¡que hermosa es el templo!

Rando!

I like the new name. Much more manly than Randall. That's great to hear you went through the temple. ¡que hermosa es el templo! I believe we should be going to the temple this month, its been almost a year since we went last march. What cool stuff have you found out about Italy? Send me a picture of their temple por favor. I think I will get another scripture case and put the Paraguay temple on it, and on the other side the picture of el día del pentecostes where 2000 people were baptized, its going to look amazing. Caitlyn you should start practicing drawing on leather, if someone knew how to make great leather scripture cases and moved to Utah, they would make bank. the guy that does it here draws on the leather using a tattoo pen and sells them for 30 bucks each, just an idea.

Derek and Jessie are leaving on the mission at the same time? Que puréte. I´d love to meet up with you at the MTC Randy, but its a long flight from Paraguay. I am excited to hear from you every week once you get in the MTC. It's a crazy place but you just have to love. Once in a lifetime experience.
And thanks for the BYU update, I am leaning towards going to Provo so I'm glad they will accept me. Before the mission I wanted to study business and get super rich, for some reason being in Paraguay has made me realize that I need to do something that I enjoy... so I've decided being a football coach sounds pretty fun :) I'm hoping to pull of a miracle and walk on the football team or be involved one way or another so I can get some more experience. Then I´ll study to be a PE teacher or something so I get hired by a high school.

Anyways. Back in the work of the Lord, here's whats going on..FAMILIA ESTRADA is going to get baptized this week!!!!! Over the last 2 months they have been to church 4 times now, they always love going on Sundays. Ignasio´s work has been a challenge, he enters at 8pm, leaves at 7am, goes to church at 830-1130, then sleeps like a baby. Their conversion hasn't been your ordinary process. We can only teach them on Saturday nights, but sometimes things happen and our only appointment with them falls. We went over 2 weeks without contact at one point, but they read every day so they don't need us really. This Saturday was a crucial lesson, it turned out super bien. They are excited to get married and baptized. We announced it at church so we should have quite the turnout. And our new ward mission leader is gung ho with his calling so it should be well organized. One member is letting her borrow a white dress and shoes.
In the zone we are doing fantastic, so far in march 6 have been baptized, 5 are scheduled for this week and 7 for the next week. If all goes as planned we will meet our goal of 18.

La familia Marmalejo were super prepared for their baptism on the 30th, but we just found out that Gladis needs a divorce to get married. Divorces are suuuuper expensive and take months to do. It's a shame, we were so excited to baptize 2 families 2 weeks in a row.

We did a service project at a military hospital. It was good, not very well organized, they didn't have enough stuff for us to do. But we all went out to eat lomitos afterwards, que rico.

I have been going by the name elder lafáshe, as it is read in Spanish instead of elder la fe recently. But I feel weird saying my name a different form, so I will go back to the English way of saying it.
Dad, thanks for the t-shirts, they are perfect. how was talking to a Paraguayo?

oh time to go. mucho love,

¡¡¡ÉXITO!!!

ELDER LAFAYE

here's my letter to the presidente for those who want to read Spanish.

Presidente,

Estamos muy animados por la zona 2. ya tenemos 6 conversos, 5 se van a bautizar este semana y 7 para el 30. asi vamos a lograr la meta de 18. elder dockstader es un capo, es muy bueno en animar a su distrito.
hice divisiones con elder rupp de porta pabla y elder tileman de villa policial. elder rupp tiene mucho animo y quiere aprender todo. le hablé mucho en cómo llevarse bien con su compañero. he tenido un compañero que no me cayó muy bien en el principio, pero los dos estábamos muy enfocado en tener éxito y bautizar. este deseo que tuvimos de bautizar nos ayudó mucho a ser amigos, fortalecer uno al otro y aprender mucho juntos. le dí algunos sugerencias que puede hacer para evitar la contención también. espero que su compañerismo se fortalecerá y siguen bautizando cada semana.
elder tileman es increíble, sabe las cosas. cómo encontrar, cómo enseñar, utilizar su tiempo eficazmente, trabajar con los miembros, estudiar personalmente y con el compañero. me impresionó mucho su capaz de manejar la obra, yo sé que él fue llamado de servir en villa policial. el barrio allí necesita mucho organización, y no hay nadie mejor en eso que él. la única cosa con que pude ayudarle es tener más animo. me gustó mucho la reunion el martes, desafiámos a todos a tener alguién planeado en cada semana cuando se van para rendir cuentas. así sí o sí vamos a bautizar cada semana.

le quiero mucho!

elder lafaye

tambien, este familia de 5 que usted conoció en el bautismo hace algunas semanas se van a bautizar este sabado a las 7:30, está muy invitado!

Such a blessing living close to the temple

familia mía!

Thanks for the letter Robby, I love hearing how you're doing. Sounds like your tearing it up at Marana! Keep it up at school, always enroll in the honors classes. That was my mistake freshman and sophomore year. I later realized that the bigger difference is not the harder homework or the harder tests, but rather the different class mates. In the honors classes you can avoid getting stuck around the macaneros and cabasuros (knuckle heads and troublemakers) and instead sit around people that are tranquilo and smarter than the average Joe.

Well Bianca and Pascual (brother and sister of recent convert Esteban) were baptized yesterday! Esteban baptized them, he is too funny. He brought them down by the neck and dunked super fast, then he turned to us and flexed for a quick second, that's Esteban for ya. We held the baptism on Sunday so their mom could go, but she ended up not going, very lame. The mom was upset last time because apparently Esteban didn't tell her when his baptism was. But now she is a bit of a hippocrit. But the three kids are doing great, living the commandments and loving life. They are good examples for their parents. The mom and step dad need to go to church, stop drinking and smoking, but they haven't put forth the effort so far. They love having us over, so we are just going to keep being patient and they will come around. The 3 kids, my comp and I helped Esteban's mom do the laundry on Saturday so that there would be nothing in the way to attend church. It was kind of exciting, my first time washing clothes by hand.

Oh exciting news for Esteban! he went to the temple to do baptisms for the dead! Fernando would have gone to, but he needs the priesthood first, next week they will go again. Such a blessing living close to the temple.

We did a home makeover in Esteban's room. I took a bunch of pictures from the liahona and taped them to his wall. I will show you a pic later, the theme for this year for the youth is stand in holy places, so I want his house to be a holy place. I also gave him my liahona from 2008 that talked all about temples, the pictures in there are incredible. I think the Washington DC is one of my favorites.

I'm glad you enjoyed the video, the bench bar is filled with cement. no idea how much it weighs but I don't think I could do any more than one the clean and jerk. We also put 2 chairs together and I benched 25 reps. I will have at least 3 more months here, we will see how high we can take that number.

bueno, got to go
love to all,
elder lafaye
ps familia estrada came to church for the 3rd time! still preparing for their marriage and baptism on the 23

What do I do with a whole chicken?