Conference Weekend, Bow, and Pupusas

In the jungle, the mighty jungle... this thick jungle drop-off is the backyard of one of our investigators.

Often it will rain so hard here that the streets turn into rivers.

This is called "bow," or at least that is how you pronounce it.
It is a plate of yuka and plantains cooked for a few hours in
a crockpot. It wasn't too bad.

With General Conference this weekend, our mission president wouldn't let us attend more than one of the sessions unless we brought at least 4 investigators with us, and well, our Conference weekend... was a success! We got to watch 3 of the 4 sessions, as well as the Priesthood Session on Saturday night. We were able to bring at least 4 investigators to the Saturday morning session, as well as both sessions on Sunday. However, we didn't get to just sit and enjoy the talks because we were busy giving up our seats to our investigators or other members, and we kept leaving to go get more people or help usher and all sorts of stuff... but I was able to listen to some of the talks. I really enjoyed the ones I got to listen to. Of course, they were all in Spanish and I was able to understand 100% of them without any problem, but I have realized that it is more difficult for me to actually remember the talks as well when I hear them in Spanish. I did happen to notice President Monson struggling a little bit during the end of his talk, and I really liked Elder Bednar's talk at the very end where he talked about the last few Apostles who passed away, showing their pictures and sharing parts of their last Conference talks. Overall, I enjoyed Conference a lot, but it was still rather stressful!

I know it's Catholic, but it's pretty dang cool looking:
La Iglesia San Sebastian, Monimbo Barrio, Masaya.

This past week was difficult because they held Catholic Festivals pretty much every day, with a new saint and new parades each day, as well as lots of beer and craziness. So trying to contact people was rough because it seemed like nobody was really interested in our message. Otherwise, it was just a normal week in our area, just trying to work around all the parties and festivals, which makes it stressful to try and get our goals for the week.

A pretty view of Laguna Catarina today.

This next Saturday we will be having a baptismal service along with the Hermanas in our ward (our area is half the ward, and the Hermanas have the other half). We will be baptizing a Young Woman who is part of a family of active members, but she hasn't been baptized yet. The Hermanas also have a few investigators planning to be baptized. Also this next week we will be having a multi-zone conference on Thursday, so I will get to see some of my friends from other zones.

Today for P-Day, we went with the Zone Leaders to Catarina Laguna, which I also visited when I was here in Masaya last year. Afterwards, we went to a place that serves pupusas, which is an El Salvadorean food, in honor of my companion's heritage.

P-Day pupusas.

Last, I had an experience this past week where I actually used the scripture my family is studying this next week. The Hermanas were struggling with a family that is committed to be baptized soon, but they have had some problems and the Hermanas asked me to come and try to help them. The father of the family was having some issues, but I urged him to realize that their family needs to have a firm foundation, with him leading the way. I used Helaman 5:12 as the base of my message to them, and we also read from the "Family: A Proclamation to the World." After we visited, the family decided to continue working with the Hermanas and strengthen their family, so it is cool that this was the same scripture my family picked for this week.

Mission buddies -- we all met up and took this pic while we were on divisions with the Zone Leaders.