Una semana mas!

Well, this week was actually really great. As you may or may not have known, this week was changes! And i am staying with Elder Accordino for one more change! I am really excited about that, i love this area a lot, and we have a few really great investigators. 

Somethings that happened this week...

My comp got attacked by a dog as we were leaving an investigators house, but miracuosly he was shutting the gate to their yard at the same second the dog bit, so it got a face full of wood. What a miracle. This morning we saw a boy that was not so lucky that was provoking our neighbors dog and was attacked. This kid is not very kind, so he deserved it. 

We found a huge green crab in our bathroom. My comp was already paranoid of tarantulas, but when he went to the bathroom a crab went running around and scared him quite good. Not to mention a rat is living in our house, we came home and he ran around the room a few times, then up into the attic.

 Last night we were playing games at our dinner sita where you try to push the other person over trying to only use your hands, and when we left at eight thirty, we saw the lunar eclipse, which was totally unexpected. All of our neighbors have a weird ritual that you must make a ton of noise by banging things around the house to make the blood moon go away. They say if a pregnant woman is out during a lunar eclipse it will make the baby defected when born. Weird....

On Sunday all of our possibilities fell to go to church, but luckily a family went that we did not expect to go, which was a big miracle in our week.

Today Elder Shirlee is being tranferred to new area, so I wont eat lunch with him any more. He is the one in this photo sitting to my left at lunch.

Well, thats my week! Love you guys a ton!

One Year Down

Well, completed a year this week. It was great. We made pancakes to celebrate and they were delicious. It has been really rainey this week, some good ones came through. 

 Francisco got the priesthood yesterday which was great, and was really happy about it. He is a shy dude, but is always really happy and wants to do whats right. Another great thing that happened was the church attendance. As you remember the rainstorm came last week so the attendance was only 32. But, every must have felt bad for not going last week and the attendance was 105 this week! What a jump. Anyways, Puerto has been growing really well, with an attendance of 780 this week in the whole town and the church has about 10 years here. That is progress! 

My comp found a tarantula crawling up his leg in our bathroom while taking a shower this week. It was super grande.

We baptised a nino this week named Becker this week. He was a jaron, or to say that he probably will not be the most reliable convert, but we put a goal for his family to reactivate 3 weeks ago and for him to be baptized, but turned out that only he went to church. We then bought him some new flip flops to congratulate him.

Right now a huge rain storm is flooding the streets outside. The power already turned off once here. 

This week we are going to try to invite lots of people to be baptized. Hope that we can find them! Thanks for all the support you have given me over the past year, love you guys!

Clima Loca

  Hey Family, thanks for all your emails, I hope that all of you are doing very well and that you are grateful for the cold weather that is coming in.

  This week was really great with Elder Accordino, we had a family baptized this week! they were all ready to be baptized and married this week, when bad news came in. Our lawyers were caught in Managua for the night because of plane problems. We though we would have to delay the marriage and baptism for the next week, but miraculously we found a lawyer at the last minute. They were able to marry and be baptized this Saturday. 

  Then disaster struck again the next morning! A huge storm came in that night and i have only seen it rain that hard one time before in Managua! There were rivers going everywhere and everything was flooded! We were soaked to the bone, but luckily I had a water proof bag, so my scriptures did not ruin. We passed by all of our investigators and members, but almost nobody went to church this week. We had an attendance of 32, which is an all time low. So sad. But... The two that were baptized and married c
ame to church and were confirmed. It was a miracle.    

  This week we also found some lovely neighbors living under our front porch. One night we came back to hear a bunch of snorting and grunting under the porch. We found that it was a huge old pig that had just given birth in the last few days with a bunch of piglets! they were super tiny.

Today we went to the beach again just to hang out for an hour. Today is independence day, so tonight will be crazy. Hope you enjoy these photos. They are of some of my best friends in the mission. My comp in  the pink elder Accordino from Saint George, Elder Shirlee the radish hair from Boise. And Elder Chen my District leader. We all eat lunch together everyday before working, it is great. 

Love you guys, stay safe!

Tons of Baptisms!

This week has been really good, the zone broke a record for baptisms this week. This month Püerto Cabezas has baptized 64 people which broke the old record of 52 in one month that was set last year! I am going to send a picture of the bunch that was baptized this week. My comp and i were able to baptize one of the little kids named Junior this week. It is pretty crazy that we baptize so many here in Puerto. Most missions have the problem that they dont baptize when we baptize every month for sure. I feel like sometimes missionaries just baptize people to get the number like a grade, or baptize only because they are pressured to and have to find someone. It just reminds me that every mission has a different way to do the work. 

     We also found some other cool families here! Due to the Marava church, German influence is heavy withing this area. We have to families both with the last name Hitler! They are both looking really positive, because they both want to be baptized. We will see how that goes this week.

 President Nelson came to Managua and we got to skype to see his broadcast. It was really blurry and hard to hear, but also really cool to see the presdient of the twelve. Than we ordered pancakes from the nearby hotel to eat. Then last night he did a meeting in managua last night, and he taqlked a lot about medical stuff and related it to the gospel. It was really cool how simple he tought, but with how much meaning he had behind his words.

Well, thats all for this week, love you guys a ton, and hope that all is great at home!

Hey Family!

Hola Familia! Sorry I could not send you a very long email last week, the internet went out in all of Puerto last week and we could not email very long when it came back on. 

 This week was really good. My new companion is from Saint George Utah named Elder Accordino. He is a total country boy and loves anything that has to do with trucks, planes, engines and all that kind of stuff. We did not baptize this week, which was a little disappointing, but we have one set for next week! A boy named Junior whos parents are menos activo wants to be baptized! Also good news is that Puerto Might break the record for the zone with the most baptisms this month! The old record was set last year at 52 baptisms for one zone, but this month Puerto might get 60! Que alegre!

I miss you all so much. It has felt like forever since I have seen you all. There are so many things I miss back home, but I can’t complain, Puerto really is the best. Here on the mission there are sure a lot of ups and downs. Especially when you are not having a lot of success in your area, but everyone else is. That is really hard. 

We are teaching a family that lives right by our house with the man named Kiko. He is a very nice guy who is looking to change is his around. He even went to church this week which was awesome! 

It’s still in the rainy season here, so rain showers pass be quite frequently. The mosquitos are getting really bad, but luckily we have mosquito nets, so I don’t have to worry about getting Chikanguya or Malaria quite as much. Malaria is starting to break out here I have heard, but the mosquitos really only get you in the night if you don’t have a mosquito net.

Today we played frisbee as a zone which was cool. A sister had her birthday today so some other missionaries threw eggs at her which is Central America tradition. I get burned so fast here, because the sun is so powerful here that after one hour I was turning a little pink. Afterward we went and ate some pizza at a small local joint named Pizza Johns. 

Elder Nelson is coming this week! All of Nicaragua except for Puerto gets to go see him! But that’s ok, I would really totally be here in Puerto than be in any other zone! This week we had a bonfire to welcome the three news that came into the zone, which is always good. My friend Elder Pilling from New Zealand was transferred out so that was a bummer. Due to its length from the other side of Nicaragua, only a few people are changed each six weeks, so we are all really good friends here in Puerto. It is a lot different than any other zone.

Well, that’s all i can think to say, I love you all so much and hope that you guys are good. Love you!