Just a Normal Missionary in Ciudad Sandino

My new little mission buddy
goes with me everywhere I go.

First off, I just have to say congrats to my cousin Hollie who just got called to serve a mission to Baton Rouge Louisiana!!! That's so cool!! I never would have thought of Louisiana. I also have to say that my friend Jonny looks kind of silly in his new Culver's hat -- ha ha, but I guess a job is a job (my parents sent me a pic of him).

My parents also mentioned the missionary in Mexico who passed away last week, but I had already saw that as one of the members in our ward showed us a page about that. Kind of scary, but don't worry about me. I'm doing really good, healthy, happy, and working hard! In fact, I have really come to appreciate that our little house is a lot nicer that other houses and this is supposedly the best one in our whole Managua Zone. I'm kind of lucky to have this one, and its actually in a really nice, little neighborhood that has guards at the entrances to keep out the drunks and such, so I have come to really like it!

OK, so my week! Sorry if it seems kind of boring -- not as much to report now that I am no longer with the Zone Leaders. I guess being a normal missionary is a lot less interesting -- ha ha, but I kind of like getting to spend all my time working just in my area, and we do have some stuff going on here.

Me, M., and Elder Rodas.
We always ask who they would like to have perform
the baptism, and they always want the gringos
to do it, ha ha, so I baptized him!

First, we had one baptism!! Of the three kids I was telling you about last week, two of them drank some coffee again..., but we are helping them this week by bringing them some different drinks to drink during the week. We took them a Nicaraguan drink called Pinolillo and we also took them some Cacao, which is my favorite Nicaraguan drink. So hopefully the other two children should be getting baptized this next week. However, their brother, M., was baptized and confirmed last Saturday! That was the big news this past week.

We also attended a super fun birthday party last night with una hermana that lives in the house of our pensionista where we eat lunch every day. That family is really awesome and all of their children are about our age, and all of them have served missions! 

Oh, how could I almost forget? So we have another 20-year-old girl who we found lost in the records of our area book, and we have been working with her since my first week here in Ciudad Sandino. Well, the District Leader wanted to interview her again -- she has passed two other baptismal interviews previously, but she supposedly has a bad habit of drinking alcohol the night before her baptism, or at least that is what the other missionaries had written in her teaching record. She is actually pretty cool and she seems to love the gospel -- she knows it all and says she wants to get baptized... at least up until the day before her baptism. Her 13-year-old brother also lives with her, and we have been working to help him get prepared to be baptized in two weeks. Well, she was going to get baptized again this past Saturday, but she sent some text messages saying she was super far away and telling us that she drank alcohol again the night before. However, we eventually found her just hiding under her bed and we could tell she really didn't drink. We had the Zone Leaders come and try to help encourage her so she would come get baptized, but it didn't happen again. It's so weird -- she keeps saying she wants to get baptized, and then she keeps backing out -- for three times now! Well, we're going to try again for this next week..., but we don't have a whole lot of hope. We'll work with her and maybe we will see a miracle!

Well that's about it for this week. I am about out of time, as usual. Thank you everyone for your emails and letters! I love the updates of everything! Have a great week!

M.s Baptism.