November 4th

Family~
This week was a wild one!
I’ve been sick again I don’t know if I still have the Dengay a little but I’ve been amazingly tired my comp was saying maybe you have mono and I just laughed and acted like I didn’t know what that is because it’s for sure probably what I got! haha sucks but it’s alright!
This week we have been teaching this lady she’s already to be baptized just needs to get married her husband is in prison and here in Paraguay its free to get married in prison so she’s going to do that next week SHE SAYS anyways! so that will be cool!
This morning was a little weird we have a gate at our house and we got locked in someone put a lock on it so we had to jump the neighbors fence and we don’t live in a friendly neighborhood
Oh a crazy thing happened last night ha so this kid Javiar was crying because something fell on his finger! and his dad didn’t know why he was crying so told him to stop crying and he didn’t so he punched him! a little 3 year old! and he stopped crying! I looked at his finger and he cut off the whole tip of his finger! Weirdest thing ever! It’s my favorite family the Chavez family we visit them every Sunday there the poorest family but there the best they have been members for about 5 months. We usually eat tortillas or we eat rolls nothing huge they make us watermelon juice allot because watermellon’s are the cheapest thing you can buy here! its 3 mill! and 4 mill is about a dollar.
They are the family I always send pictures with the little kids there is Ceasar he is like 10,Stacy she loves me she always comes and gives me huge hugs and reminds me of paisley because she is super lovey dovey and always wants me to hold her shes 6 and then Javiar jr he had there house fall on him a couple months ago! and then last night his finger chopped off he is the man! he is like 3!
Mattea.. Thanks for writing me, I know it’s hard to know what to write sometimes but I love reading your emails. I showed some boys in our wad your picture. They think you are really cute! So if you get kids that want to be your friend on Facebook.. don’t worry too much (They can’t even speak English! LOL)
This week was a good one its hot its hard! I miss everyone like crazy but I know I can do this

October 29th

Hey what’s up family ?
I love you , I miss you!
I went into Asuncion this week. It was the crazy longest drive ever!...its about an 8 hour bus ride there and the way there we were on a crappy bus so we stopped a freakin ton!
> This week we didn’t get to work much because Monday and Tuesday we have meetings and Friday and Saturday we were gone.
> But this Sunday they called me in the morning to give a talk!
>It’s shortest talk I’ve ever given I talked for about 5 minutes my Spanish isn’t very good and they didn’t give me any time to prepare.
Elder Bednar was way cool. I got very last row. Our bus showed up at our hotel 15 minutes before he started so we barley made it there were 400 other missionaries there also.

We got in Asuncion and we got to sleep in a hotel with a shower and it was so nice the shower actually worked first time I’ve felt clean since the mtc! It was amazing ha
> We got to eat some good food and go to a grocery store that had American food it was pretty cool.
> When we were in Asuncion we had to take the buses everywhere and ask Weston or Sam about the buses there nuts ! I was standing up and they took off as I was paying and I flew ..my wallet flew out of my hands and I almost took out like 5 people! all the missionaries were laughing ha but was my first time haha
> was funny tho!
Here are a couple pictures of my week

little Javier
Stacy
Then its’ me and Micheal
Then little Javier and his cousin


> I need some pictures of the family and of everything and candy! sunflower seeds and the sour patch made my day I love them so much! And red peppers,,,yes!!!
And garment bottoms- I have been doing my own laundry because our clothes come back dirtier and stink so i do laundry in the sink now.
Love you all!
Stay Classey!
Elder Osborne

October 22nd

Hey Family! I love you!
This week I didn't get to take to many pictures because it rained almost every day. It's been a pretty crazy week. The power wasn't on most of the time. also our shower stopped working so that kinda sucks.
Me and my comp have gotten a lot of less actives to come back to church and to get temple recommends and now we have 7 kids that are going to serve missions from our ward so we are mostly reactivating people we have 400 in our ward and 53 were in church Sunday and 18 are under the age of 14 so it's hard! We have a lot of investigators we have about 6 different lessons a day we teach on average just not on Monday and Tuesday because our meetings. Our ward struggles because we just have a ward that doesn't help like they are suppose to and some of the people think there helping but they are actually offending so it is a struggle. Our mission President has told us that we cannot baptize the people unless our president thinks they will stay active. He say's it's not about numbers! Just because it's not a baptizing mission doesn't mean it's not a successful mission!
We had a discussion at a members house this week we had our first lesson with this guy and we taught everything and he asked us what he could do now and i said will you pray and during his prayer without us asking he prayed what church is true right there without us asking was pretty cool.then the next lesson we asked him if he read and he said yes so i asked him to read for us and he actually can't read so that is kinda a bummer haha but hopefully it works out!
In December we have 3 girls that we taught moving here too get baptized. I truly hope it works out for them.
But we had some pretty cool things happen we have been visiting Phillepe allot he always wanted to serve a mission and he got something in his spine so now he cannot see and he is kind of handicapped so they will not let him serve so he is very disappointed. In our ward right now, there are 7 kids getting there mission papers and he would have been 8. There is allot of excitement because of the new rule for YM to go at age 18 . I have no idea how their families will be able to help pay for them because they are so poor. They are sending a ton of missionaries to South America right now because they want to make it like the US where everyone has heard the word!
This week we go to Asuncion for President Bednar's fireside. I'm really looking forward to it! I guess were going to Asuncion South so I will see my buddies from the CCM. It will be sweet to be able to see everybody. We leave on Friday morning and we stay with some other elders down there so this weekend will be nuts! Our whole zone and all the far zones have to go down and sleep in Asuncion because they want us to be well rested for Elder Bednar's address. There isn't enough places for everyone to sleep ha so things will be wild. We will stay until Saturday night. It should be really fun! We were teasing some of the members because Lady Gaga is here and will be performing Friday- So we told them that all the missionaries get to go see her (LOL) We really aren't though.
So this week will just fly by because we have meetings all week until then.
.Today I got the package with the bracelets :) Thank you so much ! It's so sweet thank you so much they are awesome! all the elders in my district so 6 of us are wearing them and Thursday is ward night so we will see all the little kids and give them out to some of our members there.. so cool thank you so much! I got a letter from Sharla ~I love you Shar your the best! Thank you so much and the picture from paisley :) she is so beautiful!
My companion...he is sick a lot he gets food poison more than anyone I've ever seen ha. but he is a good guy.
I haven't played basketball. I played the first 2 weeks I was out here and now my comp won't let me and I wouldn't do it because it swells up i don't understand why it bugs me more than it did before the mission because i did more running before the mission than i do here. It really doesn't make sense. I just don't want to have my knee get too bad where I have to be an office elder the whole mission because that's what I might be looking at.. hopefully not though.. I'm not too worried.
Mom~ I hope you get the package that I sent, I would feel really bad if it didn't get there it had 2 jerseys and letters (and one of the jerseys was from the kid in Argentina! It ment allot to me that he gave it to me. It was at a very low point in my mission and he really helped me change my perspective.
I just need to learn Spanish and then i will be set because teaching is easy i can teach in Spanish its simple.. but i can't have a conversation it sucks! I can almost understand everything but what really sucks is even at church they speak just Guarani ha ha...
So.. A few pictures that I'm sending..
This one of my companion he is a mud mess! Those kids that I told you about that they bug my comp bad this week they stole his glasses and ran away and he was chasing them and slipped and fell in a huge puddle and everyone was laughing ha so we had to go home because he was so pissed hahahaha was a good time! The other picture is of me with mud all over because I was laughing at my companion..He hugged me and got it all over me! LOL
The other picture is just the fields we always see horses everywhere with no pens horses and cows its sweet!
Amico is the best horse! these are horses that just roam around here they don't get very big because they start them pulling wagons right when there tiny ha.

I thought this was harlarious! A mother pig feeding her babies right in the middle of the road!...Only in Paraguay!

Well, I have got to go, We got a lesson tonight on the way home from the cever. Sorry for complaining about my knee. I love you please keep me in your prayers not for my knee but for my language ahh that's the hardest thing I love you!

We met with president Madriaga this week 10/15

Family~
What's up?
Well its wicked hot here ! I'm getting pretty tan it's pretty sweet!
I'm excited for hunting when I get home and camping too... I feel like I'm camping right now! No one has cars everyone cooks over fires lots of people sleep outside or their houses are garbage. There are animals running loose everywhere no paved roads ..It's really something!
This week has gone by way fast and I am finally learning Spanish! ha not fast.. but I am speaking! We had our meetings with President Madriaga and he told me to stop stressing the Spanish because I just need to the voice of the spirit and the Spanish will come. well hope that works out cause I need Spanish too ha ha!

So, all the members were laughing at me on Sunday, Me and my companion went up to bare our testimonies and my comp stood on the stool and said I just wanted to be as tall as my comp so I stood on it after him and everyone laughed at us but it was a real riot! ha ha

Well this week we got some weird news we had a sweet family and we thought were going to be having some baptisms. We have been teaching them all for about a month and I was showing them some pictures of me with one of the families that we know here and they said she just got out of prison she was selling drugs out of her house so we have been in a big drug house last couple weeks so need to figure out what that's about haha ! We work with the members every day because without help from our ward we wouldn't have a strong ward. It's pretty cool we started working with the youth we have had 3 kids that just decided to go on missions! So that is pretty cool I know it's not baptisms but it's something even better!

I sent you a sweet package hope it gets there soon mail has been getting here really fast I hear they say it has only been taking 2 weeks to get here from the states pretty cool.but then it takes me another 2 weeks to get that because they have to drive it out here or we go into Asuncion so I will get it next week they call and tell us what we have though so its sweet knowing my family loves me and sends me things ha I love you guys so much! thanks ha

We have a new investigator this week just need to get him to stop smoking. His name is Marco he is a good guy.
Most of the time we are trying to find old members to bring them back to church

I found out today part of my area is a island! but we can't go to it because we can't get on a boat. We have lots of members that live on the island.
THIS IS A PICTURE OF ME EATING A PIRANAH
haha
This is a picture of me with the Bishops kids. They remind me of Gracey and Brinnly.
The Picture of the sunset is outside of our apartment. It's pretty awesome!
The other one is of me with a members kids.
I gotta go! We have to do our grocery shopping. I'm going to have to dive in my account this month because we are out of water and I have to travel to Asuncion (I should get reimbursed for that)!
I love you Family!
Love,
Elder Osborne

General conference week.

What’s up family?
I hear your on the way to St George.. that’s rockin!

I just got off a bus to de jibawaju its about 3 hours from our house and we had to go there for a Zone Conference. Zone Conferences are usually lots of fun. I was with Elder Bayles and Hermana Wood they came from the mtc with me.

So this week General Conference was rough. We didnt get a signal at our church so I was only able to watched half a sesion on Saturday and half a sesion on Sunday and no priesthood it was awful. On Sunday we had 9 people watching conference in that bad boy and 6 of us were missionaries so people don’t really care it’s sad!
On Saturday we had a sleepover so I slept in our hammack The dang thing broke in the middle of the night I fell on top of this Mexican kid..LOL…Ouch!

But this month on the 27th Elder Bednar is coming to paraguay to give us a devotional pretty cool! I’m really excited about that!

So the pictures I sent this week are of my church its the biggest church here because it’s the stake center.

It rained way bad so we had a huge flood and next month it is suppose to rain all month long they say it gets upto 2 feet deep pretty crazy!
It’s still way hot and when it rains it sucks…
other than that it is just me and the sun!

I Got my package from Mom! Loved it! They said I have another one at the office so I will get that at some point. For Christmas I would LOVE a 49’s Hat with the flat rim. We are able to wear hats here! I wish I would have brought the hat from Trek..The ones they have here are no good! I know it is expensive for postage but it means so much to get something from HOME!

That pretty much sums up the week!

Stay Classy!

Stay Cool!

Stay on your knees!

Love,

Elder Osborne

I can actually leave the house this week! 10/1

Hey Family!
How are you all doing in Utah? I’ts wicked hot here! It’s about 120* today! It is Hot and windy!
I’m still going on visits and yeah the President knows that I have had Dungue Fever. I’m doing better now but I still have the killer headache and still a little sick and very weak.but yes mom, I’m doing a ton better! I can actually leave the house now! Missionaries get this but it hasn’t happened for a while so it was just weird that I would get it. haha Yeah mom, I use the mosquito repellent it but its wicked hot here it sweats off in like 5 minutes after walk outside! It’s a hot you have never seen mom haha

I’m sending some pictures -These are the 2 hermanas in our area (sister missionaries) . Its cool they had a baptism last Friday. This is a picture of them and their new member. We mainly work with the menos activos and try to get people to come back to church our biggest concern here in Conception

Our baptism didn’t show up to his baptism hahaha. That kind of stinks. We are going to go visit with him this week to find out what is going on.

This picture is one of my favorite little person. Javier.

These kids love me to death because I will play with them. so we usually go visit them at nights that’s when we do most of our visits because its way hot here. It’s 120* here today! It’s getting unreal hot and it’s hard to buy water all day because its wicked expensive!

This is one of my most favorite families! They live about 40 min away we go there every other day. They live in the ward their house is about the size of our basement bathroom ….maybe smaller and the have 6 people in their family. The dad hunts crocodiles for a job making 50 mil a week that equates to about 10 dollars. (Soooo poor) I love them so much!

The district leader had to go to Asuncion for meetings so my district leader from the MTC is here in conception with me and my companion. I need some new Spanish scriptures so he is buying them in Asuncion for me there like 150 mil so like 30 dollars. I did get some in the MTC but they are not very good quality.

So this week we had a visit with a man and he was making fun of me because my Spanish and he kept spitting his vodka in my face and I almost wanted to get up and hit him right in the face because of how he was acting and then I just stood up and said the only difference between our religion and others is we know God wouldn’t give us a prophet and then take them away and not have them anymore. I think his wife felt bad for the way he was acting. She asked us to come back when he isn’t drunk so we will see how this goes. It’s kind of frustrating because it seems like here everyone is drunk by noon.

I wonder if Sister Amakom was in the nicer part of conception( They usually put the sisters in the nicer areas) there are 3 ramas I’m in rama 3 we have to walk 40 minutes to get to a paved road and to get to any store so we only come here every Monday and Tuesday for meetings.

I’m praying for Grandma Great all the time I hope she will be there when I am home I love her so much and I miss her like crazy!

I love you like crazy!
Elder Osborne

Trevor has Dengay! 9/24

Hey Fam

How is everything going?

Last week was a little rough the Doctor wouldn’t let me and my comp leave the house ha so we only went out at nights because I have the Dengay! Dengay isn’t something you get from people it’s from mosquitos. I didn’t eat for 4 days and before that I threw up everything I ate so I got pretty skinny in the last 2 weeks. I lost about 15 pounds in 2 weeks! The Doctor said the first time you get it it is exactly like having the flu! and I have had a pretty gnarly flu all week! My belt doesn’t fit me anymore and none of my pants ha so its kinda a bummer. My companion has a bad cold…but things are real swell here.

This week went by really slow because we couldn’t go out and work to much but I studied and read a ton and sent a package home and got some sweet things from the people. The package cost me about 156 mil. (I think that is about $28).

So we have had zone conferences it crazy because we drive 3 hours. It was cool to see my buddy Bayles is in my zone and Hermana Wood. It’s a good time but my best friend is my companion.

Elder Rigby is in Asuncion 7 hours away he writes me every week I love that kid ha he is going to be my best friend when I’m home. between him and Gordon

I really am having a good time here! But seriously I’ve had a freakin’ rough start between the bad knee and now the dengay ! ha ha probably the worst start that could ever happen to a missionary! but I love the people!

We had 7 investigators in church none of them are the ones that we have been teaching so they are all just new investigators. ours have a different excuse every week it get frustrating!

So, me and Elder Gordon decided that when we get home, we are going to open up a bowling alley and call it 2 hot dudes.... so it will be cool !ha ha

Elder Gordon has been here now for 4 months so I might be here until January – Unless I get sick again and they send me to the big city!

That’s so cool about Mattea getting a bow for her Birthday! I want to start hunting way bad! everyone here hunts and I want to be into it!

I’m sending some pictures…umm the one with the chicken is Gabilon. He has to come on most visits with us because we don’t speak Guarani.

This picture is of me with a facial hair I just wanted to see how amazing I look now I know hahah. Me and Elder Gordon on “P” day being silly.!

We got a Canadian flag just because it spices up the room ha

The pink building is out house…. yeah it’s pretty sweet!

These pictures are of the kids that live next door. They are about the ages of Preslie, Paisley and Tynslee. So I feel like I have brown nieces here in Paraguay. They knock on our door all the time and want us to come out and play with them. We spend a lot of time with them. They are so cute!

This is a Picture of a girl we are teaching. She is Mattea’s age. It makes me really miss Mattea a lot! She is drawing on my arm.

This is a sweet picture of our pringles stach…Yummm.

That’s pretty much a wrap up of my week.

I Love you Family, More than you will ever know!

Stay classy!

Elder Osborne