León – Week 66

[Week 1 in León (Malpaísillo Area,  León Zone), week 1 with Elder Ramos]

Hey everyone, sorry it’s been so long since I have sent a big group email out! Its difficult to do with limited time and everything so I’m sure you’ll forgive me.

We had an awesome week! Firstly, we had our final zone meeting and got to hear the final testimony of Elder Martinez, a great guy from Mexico who replaced me when I left Ruben Dario. He also makes and sews ties so I have quite a few new “tuanis” skinny ties. We also made a pyramid of elders so I’ll try to send that photo after it uploads. We had interviews with president this week too so that was cool. We had to go to Waspan (the main office) which was a little different; normally they come to us, but it wasn’t too far so we managed. We also had a baptism this week! Her name is Arlen and she had been going to church for about 6 months continuously but she stopped going about a year ago. Elder Cuesta and I found her through a member about 2 or 3 months ago and we started teaching her. She came to church that first Sunday but after that it was harder to get her to come because of work and other problems. But she started coming recently with Elder Alvarenga and me. We had been talking about baptism for a while but nothing had ever been set in stone. It’s a little hard for her to pay attention for a long time which makes it a little more difficult to teach her (shes about 24). So we helped her get the baptismal interview set up and she passed and we challenged her to do it that next Saturday and she agreed! But she studies all Saturday and wouldn’t get back from Managua until 6 that night. Plus our capilla doesnt even have a baptismal font so we didn’t really know what to do. We decided to do the baptism in Managua so that she could get there earlier and so that her sister and nephew could come. So that was the plan. Then Saturday we couldn’t find baptismal clothes so I had to go to the market and buy a white skirt for her. The thing is that the Tipitapa market is INSANE and i was pretty much accosted by the crazy shop keeping ladies. In fact to walk the Tipitapa market as a white missionary is called “running the gauntlet”. So yeah lots of grabbing and people saying “mi amor, mi amor”. I ended up getting ripped off on the skirt but I wanted to get out of there as quick as possible. So yeah, we get to the chapel with one minute to spare and started waiting for her. and waiting and waiting. She has no phone and I wasn’t present when they had fixed the time and place of the baptism because I was in divisiones doing a baptismal interview. So I started losing hope pretty fast after an hour and a half. But we said a couple of prayers and about five minutes before we had decided we would go, she showed up!! So we did the baptism and we got a lot of local support from the young women of that ward because no one from our branch could make it. So that was really nice!  Oh yeah I forgot to mention that I was doing all this on an hour of sleep because I was stomach sick the night before. So yeah a very stressful day but it paid off! So that’s the cool story of the week and it’s so long to make up for a lack of other emails.

The rest of the week was filled with saying goodbye to my converts, investigators and the members, Hermana Scarleth (the wife of pres. of the rama) took us to Pollo Estrella and bought us dinner in case one of us was going to leave. And yesterday I found out that I was being changed to León, a city on the west side of Nicaragua. My area is called Malpaísillo and it’s a little village an hour outside of Leon. It’s close to Cerro Negro, the newest volcano in Central America! You can go there and sandboard down the face of the mountain/volcano (unless you’re missionaries, of course…) But yeah that’s cool.  That’s pretty much all the village is known for. There’s about 20 members here and they meet in one of their houses to have church so that should be interesting. It’s not even a branch, its a “nucleo.”  My new comp is Elder Ramos and he was also trained by Elder Alofipo, so we’re brothers! It seems like it should definitely be an interesting experience here. Here’s hoping everything goes well!

Elder Williams