El Fuego de Sandino, an Egg War, and a Trench!

Check out these cool parakeets!

Cleaning the font early Saturday morning to
get ready for our baptisms!

Hey!!! First... DUKE basketball -- champions!!! :) How cool is that? However, I'm super depressed that I missed watching the championship game (my Dad sent me a news article talking about it). Dang I miss basketball.

Elder Hinojosa, Me, Y.L., Elder Salmeron, and Elder Roundy

OK, so for my week!! Well, I am proud of my district, because we're currently number 1 in the mission! This past Saturday, we had 4 baptisms in the district, including one for me and Elder Salmeron. Also, between the 4 companionships in our district, we brought 36 investigators to church yesterday -- we are so incredibly blessed, and we're trying to work hard. Plus, Elder Salmon and I have two more baptisms and a marriage scheduled for this Saturday. The couple even went to church yesterday, and we made sure we invited the Bishop and his wife to be there, ha ha. Our Zone Leaders are super happy with us, and I guess our Mission President (President Russell) and the A.P.s (Assistants to the President) are even a little surprised because in the past, Ciudad Sandino has usually been one of the lowest in baptisms and a super hard part of the mission, but right now Sandino is on fire!!!

Being a District Leader is pretty fun and keeps us busy. In the Managua Zone, there are 4 Hermanas and 29 Elders, and there are 8 Elders (including me and Elder Salmeron) in my district.

Y.L. has become a good friend. He is a Mesquite Nicaraguan,
and he is almost as tall as me, which is pretty cool.
We have been teaching him since January, and he
finally felt ready to be baptized!!

Yesterday was the birthday of Elder Hinojosa (one of the Elders in our district who serves in the other area of the Barrio Trinidad who came here with me in the same cambios and has become a good friend of mine. He is from California, but has Mexican heritage, and his name is from Spain, and then he kind of looks Asian, ha ha.) Here in Nicaragua, when you have a birthday, you have to smash eggs on their head (it's rather weird, but it's what everyone does here, ha ha). So Elder Hinojosa and some of his converts planned an egg war. We worked super hard all day, and I did 2 baptismal interviews for them, and then we made sure we had all of our numbers reported before we let loose. It was super fun, but we sure didn't smell very good afterwards. They also resorted to smearing shoe polish on us, with mustard and mayonnaise mixed in, and then they threw glitter on us! It sure felt good to take a shower that night! Ugh! It also happened to be the birthday of the daughter of a super awesome family that fixes us dinner 4 times during the week, so we celebrated with them also and it was pretty cool!

This is Elder Hinojosa and the family's daughter that we
celebrated their birthdays together. Not sure why she
didn't get some eggs too?

For P-Day today, we had to take the bus into Managua so Elder Salmeron could get his ID, so it was a rather long and tiring day, ha ha. We did take some pics of Lake Managua in between busses on our way home. I'm also happy to report that I have not felt sick at all this week. I have just learned to avoid eating heavy, greasy food late at night when people are trying to feed us, ha ha, and then I am all good.

This is the trench we dug so our investigators could come to
church with us. It was super hard and soooo hot!!

Also, this past week we did a service project and dug a trench (see the pic). It was super hard and incredibly hot! We sweated a ton! The family committed to go to church with us on Sunday if we would help them get the trench dug. We dug it, and they all came to church! It kind of reminded me of working in the yard with my Dad back home when we had to dig trenches like this one for our sprinklers and fence posts and various things, ha ha.

Soaking up some Nicaraguan rays!

Well, hope my little brother had a great birthday last week, and my little sister has a great birthday next week! Also, good luck to my older sister, Erin, on her finals this week, and Drew in the school musical! Have a great week everyone! Thanks for all your prayers, emails, letters, and packages! I love them all.

Lake Managua on our way back to Ciudad Sandino today.