Hola Familia!

Thanks for the emails again, even though this is around the 60th time, i enjoy reading them every time. It sounds pretty good up there with fall coming in. Nothing to new has happened here in Puerto, just some rain like always, and good stuff like that.  

  This month we have had a hard time finding new positive investigators to baptize, everyone seems to already be part of the Morava church or something else and does not want to hear the message. It is so hard trying to share something you know is true to people that are just stuck up in their own beliefs. Luckily though, we found a family of seven people right on the beach who want to be baptized! They even went to church. This is a big miracle in my mission. Even though I have been in this area for five months now, there are always more people to find.

  Lots of dog attacks this weeks, we have an investigator named maria that has some dogs, and every time we approach her house, they try to bite us every time. Maybe we will invest in a slingshot...., luckily none of us have been bitten, yet. 

  Yeah, if you seen that picture of the beach, you can see that it is quite polluted, people just throw their trash wherever they want, its really sad. You can find everything just laying around, broken radios, tons of shoes, and even broken TV's. That's why Lake Managua is very polluted, because all of the trash ends up there. 

 There is really not anything new that happened, sorry, its all pretty similar every week, got a haircut, we went shopping for food, same old same old. Thanks for all you do familia, love you guys!

Honderainian migration

Well, as you can see by the heading, Puerto has a lot to do with Honduras. I swear about half the people here are from Honduras. There is a great division between the mesquito people in Honduras and Nicaragua that situate in the Esat Coast, and the Latin American Western Coast. There has been lots of talk about this resentment from the natives here. They want to be their own community.

The members of the ward went to the temple this week, so president Glen of our district was absent this week. It takes a few days to get there from Puerto, so its quite a journey in the bus. I cant believe what they imagine when they go their, living in a small society where only the very richest people have a car if its not a taxi, and then go to a building like that. I don't want to say my branch president is poor, but lives in very modest conditions. 

Also more stuff about Hondurainians is about our neighbors! They were baptized and married this week! It was so great, and there were so happy! The photo i sent is of them and one of their children, the others are only more neighbors. sadly, the moms mother has fallen sick and they had to return home this morning to Honduras at 4 am. Only one day after their baptism and confirmation. Hopefully they will find the church there. What luck. What is really cool though, is that I started teaching this family since I came to Puerto with Monson, this is a five month conversion! Just safe to show that some people take a little longer than others to be converted. 

Sad news....... our neighbors dog Spikey passed away.... and they buried right infront of the house... kind of strange. then the same day a boy in another neighbors house passed away and they burried him right infront of the house as well. Strange customs here in Nicaragua. 

The other photo is me and my ZL Elder Compton from Brigham city. He is finishing his mission in three weeks, it will be sad to see him leave. 

Thanks for all of your emails! I love you guys all so much, dont forget to read your scriptures and pray! Love you! 

Venido de Presidente

As you can see from my email heading, the mission president came this week to talk with all of the missionaries. it was really great to be able to speak with him, he gave me some great council to use in my work.President Collado is from Costa Rica and i think is about forty years old. He was very interested in what i had to ask him instead of an interrogation as some interviews are. He really tried to help me in all my problems that i have in the work, and is very sincere. I learned a ton.

We also got some medicine and some permeation for all those critters lurking in our house. Such as Tarantulas, Cockroaches, Rats, and above all mosquitoes. 

This week some really heavy rain came in. We had a bit of a dry spell, but this week it pored. Most of the houses here are supported on stilts, some sitting as high as 6 feet off the ground. We lived by a house that was really big, and really high. The stilts did not sit straight and we knew that it was not going to last very long. This week at 2 in the morning one of tghe days the house fell in a rain storm. Luckily the house and people were not damaged in anyway, but now they have to scrap everything. Really taught me you have to have a good foundation if you want your house to last.

This week we had some unexpected people in the church which was great. A big rain storm came in the morning, so we went out in the rain a little bit. We promised the people that if they would prepare to go to church god might let up the rain, and guess what! It stopped, but we still had a pretty bad attendance. Our Branch is not doing very good, but all is well.

Some really cool investigators came to church this week. They are from Honduras. No one else looks to promising though. We are trying really hard to get some baptismal dates with the people. 

Thanks for all you do, love you family, have a great week!

Conferencia General

Amado familia! I hope that your week was as great as mine was! We worked really hard this week  to have a ton of people to go to genral conference this week. At the end of the week, we  had a grand total of 20 people committed to go to at least one of the sessions this week. As we  passed by for each session, each person told us that they would go the next seesion, and the  next session, until hardly anyone went. Luckily a neighboring family decided to go, named  hermano santos and hermana anselma! what a blessing! And our awsome convert Francisco went  to three of the five session, which was great. We rented out three buses for every session, so it  was a really big deal down here. The church never spends money like that. 

Today we had a giant water balloon fight, which was fun and super hot. I bet i sweated a gallon of water. After we did the weekly tradition and went to eat at pizza johns. 

I really learned a lot in conference this week. I really enjoyed the talk given by Bednar about how even the apostles and the prohphet are extremely old, they have wisdom and need to be heard from. I hope that you all had an opportunity to hear from them this week. They were great. Thanks for all family, i love you!

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!