Managua – Week 45

[Week 4 in Managua (Ruben Dario Area, Las Americas Zone), week 4 with Elder Baxter]

Hey Guys! This week was pretty good.

TUESDAY
We had interviews with President this week. We did our District Meeting at the same time. That took up most of the day. After we got back, we met with our investigators. Our goal for this week was to get a lot of investigators to the Stake Conference with Elder Renlund. We had about 20 people who said they were going to go and they were pretty positive, but not everyone made it.

WEDNESDAY
We studied in the morning, and went out and did visits in the afternoon. We found this big family to teach. They couldn’t make it to church this week, but said they would come next week. So, hopefully that will work out. We are teaching this family that consists of about 5 families that all live in the same house. So that’s cool! The jefe of the family, (the boss) is named Alejandra. There were so many of them, that split up into two groups to teach them. My comp was teaching one group on one side, & I taught another group on the other side. They seemed pretty positive and understood a lot. So, that was good. I started doing my magic tricks and a swarm of like 20-25 kids started surrounding me, wanting to see the tricks. I made a little girl cry because she thought one of the sponge balls came out of her ear. So, that was interesting.

ZIKA & EYE PROBLEMS:
I’ve been having problems with my eyes still. During the day, stuff is coming out and getting on my contacts & my eyes are hurting a bit. So, I’ve been wearing my glasses, but they are broken, so they don’t close. Today, we went to see if I could get my glasses fixed, but not luck! They said I’d need to get an eye exam and get a new pair of glasses, but they said it would be $100. I don’t have the money! So, I’m using glasses that are a little bit broken. Tonight, I’ll try to super glue them again. So, I’ve been putting in eye drops that I got from the mission nurse. I still don’t know if I really have Zika. It’s not like they have a test for it. I just talked to the mission nurse over the phone and she said it sounded like Zika. I’ve just had lots of goop coming out of my eyes so I’ve been using these eye drops that they gave me on Saturday at the multi-conference.

THURSDAY
Thursday was a pretty normal day. We passed by a lot of people. We talked to more of Naomi’s family. We discovered that a family that is related to her was married so that they could be baptized, but the missionaries that married them, left to go home right afterwards, and they were never baptized. They said they would go to conference, but they didn’t make it. We got a phone number for them, so we’ll keep trying to contact them.

FRIDAY
Friday, was pretty normal also. We’ve been visiting this family “mejilla”, which translated means cheek. Daisy, Rachel (13), & Jason (17) & the mom is, I don’t know, “normal mom age”. They said they were going to come to church on Sunday, but only Jason came. He was able to shake the apostle’s hand, Elder Renlund, as he was leaving the Stake Conference. He really enjoyed that! His friend just died, so he’s been thinking a lot about that. He liked the church a lot & this was his second time at church. He’s trying to prepare for baptism but he needs to stop drinking and smoking.

SATURDAY
Saturday was our multi-mission conference, the North and the South Nicaragua missions combined. I felt pretty cool because we got to take a bus for only $.07. We were on this bus for 1.5 hours. We got dropped off right at the church from directions that the Nicas gave us. It was pretty miraculous because Nicas don’t give very good directions!

SUNDAY
The conference was awesome! I don’t have my notes in front of me, so I can’t tell you exactly what was said, but he shared 3 messages from Pres. Monson. 1. Thank you! 2. As missionaries, we have the right & responsibility to receive revelation as to why we are serving in the mission we are in. So, I’m going to focus on that this week. 3. Our Mission President was called of God! He talked a lot about faith, told some funny stories, and greeted all the missionaries. He’s been to every country in Central America! So, he also saw Carlos (my friend from my first area) in the MTC.
The lady who makes us lunch every day spoke in Conference along with the Stake President, our Mission President, Elder & Sis. Renlund. He had some cool insights on the importance of the sacrament. Attendance was pretty good, about 700 people. We also received an apostolic blessing that the heat and humidity would be lessened for us. That was cool!

MY ZONE
My zone is good! I really like my zone leaders a lot! Our stake is having a “tarte blanca” (a white afternoon) next week where we try to baptize all of our possibilities.

INVESTIGATORS
Naomi & her mother were going to go Conference this week, but the invitations the Stake gave us to hand out gave the wrong directions to the building! So that was frustrating! We had 6 people there though! Michael (the son of a member) & his girlfriend Wendy came to the conference. Michael wants to get baptized, but they need to get married first. So, they are preparing for that next month. Hopefully, I’ll be able be able to baptize them during my 2nd change in this area. They showed up at 8:00 a.m. instead of 2:00. So, that was weird, but they did come back. Apparently, the Conference invitations were very misleading!

STRANGE FOOD
Some investigators served us a whole fish this week. It was still on the bones, so we just had to pick around the bones. So, that was interesting! I also ate a fish eye, which I found out later is a laxative. The next day, we were fed the same thing, only it was a smaller fish and it was dumped in soup.

MISSION RUMORS
I heard that if you get Zika twice, you have to go home because if you get it a third time, you die! (Strongly doubt this is true!)

BAPTISMS
We are hoping to baptize Adrianna this Sat.
That was our week! We definitely have some good people here that we are working with and some fun members. Everything is good! I miss you guys a ton! Hope you have a great week! See ya! Bye!