Ciudad Jardin!

This week was really fun! I went on divisions with the district leader elder Harris, which was super cool. Working in his area was really fun, and then in the night of Saturday, he had two people baptized that we taught before! It is really fun speaking Spanish with my Latino comp 24/7, but is sometimes a little tiring, because I can’t explain myself as well as I want. 

A funny story this week, on Wednesday night, some catholic people invited us to eat from their little food stand. As we were sitting, eating a hard tortilla with vegetables on top, I felt a big wet bird turd run down my arm! And sure enough when I looked up in the tree above us, there was a morning dove right up in the tree, enjoying his night! There are a lot of funny and weird experiences here like that, like the time when a drunk man asked Elder Perkes (my old companion) and me if he could fight someone from our religion, we told him no, and he walked away!  

This place is crazy! The people are crazy, the food is.......different, and the sun is hot! We received elders from El Salvador, and they complain how poor and hot it is here!  Crazy!  But it is great here, the people are so humble and are ready to hear the gospel! Here are is a picture of where I live in the attachment below! Thanks for all you support, love you all so much!!  

Valentines Nica

Hey family, Happy Valentine’s week! They celebrate that too here in Nicaragua! 

I think they celebrate almost all of our holidays except the Fourth of July. 

Mucho love to all of you! This week has been really good, but our number one 

investigator was not in church this week! We are close to baptizing him; his 

name is Walberto Silvio Espinoza! All he has to do is go to church one more 

time and accept the commandments and he is set! My companion Elder Estrada is 

crazy, but we are working really hard together. Yesterday we found a guy from 

Maryland USA named Hugo, and are going to visit him this week, he was very 

interested to hear about us because he is a truck driver and has seen the 

temples across the USA!

Today was great; we went to the market which is crazy! People and all types of 

things everywhere! But also really smelly. We were looking for a new bag for 

my companion to use in the streets. You can find almost anything you want at 

the market, and a lot of things are at a good price, sorry I don’t have pictures, 

I will take some more next time.

Just want to remind you all how lucky we are to live in the U.S! People here do 

not have the opportunities that we have at home. I am so grateful that we live 

in a place where we have nice things. There are parks here, but not very good 

ones. We are so lucky to have the education and all the facilities like parks, 

recreational land, libraries, and nice schools. Next time you feel bad just 

remember all the nice things we have and that it can always be worse! the average 

person here makes about $300 a month! 

Thanks for all the support you have given me! Love you all and miss you as always!

Donuts!

Hey family, thanks for the emails, I hope that you are all having a wonderful Valentines week! They kind of celebrate it here as well. Today we went to my favorite store American Donuts and there were little hearts on my donut! Feels like Valentine’s Day! But seriously I love you guys so much and hope that you all have a great Valentine’s Day. 

We had stake conference this week which was great, but we had to wake up super early to try to get investigators to church, so I was dozing off during the whole thing. All I remember is that someone from the seventy came and talked very enthusiastically about tithing and things like that. It was the most Mormons I have seen in Nicaragua yet!

Crazy how warm it is up there, but the cool certainly did not come here! I sweat so much all the time; it feels weird when I am not sweating! 

  

Davis, I know that you are going to do a great job as president of the deacon’s quorum! Just remember to be friends with all the members and try to make them all feel involved.

 We have an investigator we want to get baptized named Silvio Espinoza. He is so hilarious, because he likes to joke in English with me, and has no shame in talking about whatever he wants to! He keeps telling us that he is going to be a member someday, but is scared to accept a date for baptism. Besides that, we don’t have anyone ready for baptism right now. It was kind of frustrating because we had like eight people committed to church and not one of them went. 

Some things about Managua I can say is that it is really busy, people always going somewhere. Lots of buses, motor cycles, people walking, etc.  It is much busier than Tipi Tapa. Another thing really cool is how we have nice stores here to buy stuff like donuts! Super awesome. Our house is really small, but we have running water 24/7 which is a great blessing. It has not rained here for a couple of months now, but the trees are still green! The people here will tell us anything to please us, and then just blow us off. One reason I like Silvio is because he always keeps his word, one of the few. The Latinos are very expressive and get offended very easily. They are not as blunt as I thought they would be, they are just not afraid to say what they think. We live by the airport, so we see planes coming in all the time, lots of homeless and drunk people everywhere, like on the same block as our house, which is kind of weird. They always ask for two pesos as we walk by. Tons of beggars everywhere! Lots of trees and not much grass, super sunny all the time!

I like Managua, because it is not as dirty as Tipitapa where sewage was running in the streets, and where everyone burned trash. People in Managua actually have somewhat of an education, so it is different teaching them than in Tipitapa where they just accepted what you told them.

Thanks for your emails and all that you do for me! Les amo! I love you! Have a great Valentine’s Day!

Good week in Nicaragua

This week was really good here in Nicaragua, We baptized a lady named Melany, but in Spanish her name is Melanya. It was really cool to see her baptized, because the missionaries had been working with here for months now. I will try to send a picture to go along with this email. Thanks for all you do for me, Love you all so much and miss you as always.