A Speedy-Walking Chellie

This is our casa. It's actually a really nice little house,
it just gets a lot of dirt that blows in....

Here is our little kitchen area.

Sorry I didn't have much time to write today. I had a lot of emails to read from everybody -- ha ha! Thank you so much to everyone for the advice and words of encouragement. I imagine that this area is just another chapter in my mission story, and I need to try and enjoy it no matter how difficult it gets. I definitely didn't feel I was ready to be a senior companion, but I am learning. It can also be a little annoying when your companion wasn't trained properly, but don't worry, I am not going to get lazy or slack off for nothing. My companion is just going to have to learn how to work!!!!! In fact, my new companion, Elder Rodas, is always telling me how he's glad that he has a "speedy-walking Chellie" that pushes him around (he does walk very slow, so I do literally push him sometimes, ha ha). Thanks again, everyone. It really helps knowing that there are people thinking about you back home. I really appreciate that people are actually reading my blog posts, and I love the comments. They make me super happy!!! :)

This front room is where we study.

OK, so we've been making good progress in the area, and in fact, we already have 3 baptisms scheduled for this Saturday! Long story short, the mother of this family was just baptized in November, and her three children were supposed to be baptized with her, but they accidentally drank some coffee the night before their baptism (the same night as their baptismal interview), so they couldn't get baptized the next day with their mom. When I first arrived here last week, I was looking through our area book because I was so frustrated we didn't have anybody to teach, and I found this family's progress sheets and asked my companion about them. For some reason, after the mother was baptized, they never went back to help the children get baptized. So we went and found them, and we have been working with them all week. We took them to church yesterday and they have another baptism interview tomorrow!!! Maybe there is a reason this family had to wait until now, but it makes me incredibly happy!! We also have been working super hard and we have two new families that we are teaching -- and whole families are super hard to find because it is difficult to find everybody at home at the same time, let alone entire families who actually want to listen and talk to us. So the area is picking up a little bit and we're making some progress. Thanks again everyone for your prayers back home.

So I found out that they also play Angry Birds down here in Nicaragua,
but it's just a little more realistic....

We had Zone Conference this past week and the Mission President came and 'machete'd' us like crazy because this zone was slacking soooo much and not having many baptisms (my new area wasn't the only one with missionaries not working). So we're definitely feeling the pressure to improve FAST, ha ha. BUT, I do have to say, I love my new area. Yes, it's a lot of dirt and not as pretty, but I love the people here. Our bishop is awesome and super funny, and we have some really cool investigators and I have really loved teaching the people here.

So, that's about it for this week, but I'm so happy we have some baptisms coming up, and I'm feeling a LOT better about this new area!!!! I included some photos of our little casa, and today, for P-Day, we played baseball with some other missionaries from our zone and we brought some investigators and ward members and it was super fun.

Playing baseball on P-Day today. My companion, Elder Rodas, is in the blue floral shorts.