No Groundhogs in Nicaragua

Trying new foods...,

Well, this past week was really tough.... A lot of the Hermanas' baptisms fell through at the last minute, so for January we ended the month with the low number for our Zone. The Zone Leaders and the Assistants to the President were calling me and asking what was going on and why the baptisms didn't happen. All the Hermanas were struggling last month, and Elder Smith and I haven't had a baptism since December.

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However, coming up in February, we should have a really great lady and her granddaughter get baptized. They came to church with us again for the third Sunday in a row, and they are really excited for their baptism. Unfortunately, the grandmother has to travel to Costa Rica for a week, and we are a little afraid she won't be able to come back. So we're praying like crazy she will be able to return to be baptized with her granddaughter.

We actually have a few other investigators who want to be baptized, but they will take a few months because they are waiting for their divorce to finalize, or they don't want to get baptized and just want to learn more about the church. Anyway, there seems to be a lot of pressure lately to increase the number of baptisms, but Rivas is a difficult area and we are working our tails off. This next week we will be doing divisions almost every day so that we can find more new investigators. I'm a little nervous about our interviews coming up with President Russell later this month.

Sounds like my folks had a great Stake Conference this past weekend with some really good talks. My dad said the Salt Lake City West Mission President talked about many of his missionaries come from broken homes and desire to have a strong family like some of the examples they see in Utah. Well, nearly every family here in Nicaragua is broken apart. Even when we find someone who accepts the Gospel, it is pretty rare for the whole family to become members.

So kind of a frustrating week, but happy February and too bad there aren't any groundhogs in Nicaragua!