Three Baptismal Services and a Wedding

Another beautiful day here in Ciudad Sandino!

OK, so for this week, the good news is that Elder Salmeron and I had five baptisms, plus Elder Hinojosa and Elder Roundy had five baptisms!!! The bad news is that the couple we tried to get married last week asked us not to come by any more and one of our investigators who was going to get baptized last Saturday drank some coffee, so we had to postpone his baptism (he is one of our investigators that came to General Conference with us). BUT, we helped the Hernandez family, Rosa, and a boy named D all get baptized last Saturday.

Our Saturday morning baptismal service!

The Hernandez family! I love these guys, and they are practically our neighbors.

We actually had three baptismal services this week. We helped Elders Hinojosa and Roundy with the first service on Thursday night when they baptized 3 people. Then, we had a second baptismal service on Saturday morning at 10:00 in the morning with 2 more of his investigators, the Hernandez family, and D. Then, at 5:00 in the afternoon on Saturday, we had a wedding for Rosa, followed by her baptism. So Saturday was s super crazy day! Then, on Sunday, we had 10 confirmations during Sacrament Meeting!!! As a result, the meeting went about 45 minutes after the hour with all of those confirmations, ha ha! Oh, and I forgot to mention that Elder Salmeron and I brought 13 more investigators to church yesterday, and Elders Hinojosa and Roundy brought 12 more investigators, so in addition to all the baptisms and confirmations, we had another 25 investigators at church this week! The Barrio Trinidad (our ward) is so cool and growing incredibly fast -- it is awesome!

Me, D., and Elder Salmeron.

So we started teaching the Hernandez family and D in February. The Hernandez family actually live in our little neighborhood (where it is super hard to work and find people who want to listen). In fact, they are only about a 1-minute walk from our apartment, ha ha! They are such a super cool family, and they LOVE the Church and even love staying for all 3 hours on Sunday!!


We actually lost contact with D for a little while -- he was in that big group of investigators we took photos of in March (he actually took a lot of the photos). He was in the big group of people we baptized last month -- he is a good friend of the kids in those families -- but he stopped coming to the lessons. When Elder Salmeron arrived, we decided we should go track him down and we found him! He decided he wanted to get baptized, and now he even wants to serve a mission in 4 years when he turns 18!!

Rosa's wedding.

With Rosa, her new husband is going to prepare for baptism maybe next month, but he has some problems to overcome with smoking, so we will see.

Rosa's family just before her baptism.

One bad thing that happened this week is my companion, Elder Salmeron, lost all of his money! Which was bad because we had to pay for bunch of taxis to go to other ares for baptismal interviews, and we had to pay for the wedding and cake on Saturday. I wasn't very happy with him for losing his money, but he is really poor and isn't able to get much money from his home, so I took some money out to help him this week. Otherwise, I was pretty happy with our little district of 8 missionaries as we were blessed to finish the month of April with 19 baptisms!! Elder Salmeron and I are hoping to have 4 more baptisms this next Saturday, and other missionaries in our district have 5 scheduled, so we will be busy doing more baptismal interviews (we are hoping to hold the baptismal services before the next cambios in the middle of May). So it should be another crazy week!

Elder Hinojosa and I were a little tired by the end of this week!

Well, I hope everyone is well back home! I am not having any stomach issues right now from the food, but I am constantly worried about the work, or investigators, or being a District Leader. We have been so incredibly busy, but it has been an awesome experience and one of the highlights of my mission so far! I guess you could say that even though I do miss home, I am losing myself in the work like crazy right now, and it feels good to be so busy!! The work is still blazing strong here in Ciudad Sandino in the Barrio Trinidad!!! Thanks again for the emails, letters, and packages from home!!

The missionaries of the Barrio Trinidad: Elders Hinojosa, Salmeron, Roundy, and myself.

Also, a pic of all 8 of the missionaries in our awesome district! We've had a super busy month!