Interviews, Old Investigators, and Dancers

This is one of my buddies here who always goes on divisions with us.

Well, this past week was rather normal. There were a few days that I was out of my area doing interviews for the other missionaries in my district, and all afternoon on Sunday I was out of our area. As a result, we struggled hardcore on Sunday to bring our people to church. A lot of our investigators were hiding from us on Sunday morning before church, or they didn't make it. For example, we have been teaching a mother and her son for the past month, but they have only made it to church once, and they even showed up on their own that day. So yesterday, we stopped by before church and they were actually getting ready to go. But ten minutes after church started, they still had't arrived, so we called them and they said they were "on their way." In the end, they never showed up, so that was one example of how frustrating our day was yesterday.

On Sunday, they had a bunch of traditional dancers
going around everywhere and stopping on
street corners to dance to music.

Well, the Hermana in my district ended up not getting sent home for her knee problem, so there were three hermanas working in the area together this past week, just like before cambios, but two of the hermanas had been in the CCM with me: Hermana Haws and Hermana Powell, which was pretty cool to serve with both of them again.  However, today Hermana Haws had an emergency transfer because she was apparently only here temporarily until a call was issued to a member from the stake who will serve a mini-mission for about a month. It will be really interesting to see how that works out because not all of the people serving mini-missions are always as motivated as a full-time missionary.

A pretty awesome thing this past week was I got a call from some of the people I had baptized while I was in Ciudad Sandino (they were the ones that got married and baptized on Valentine's Day). They wanted to let me know that they were going to the temple again and they both got callings to serve in the ward. They also said that there are 6 missionaries now in the Trinidad Ward, and they like to go out on splits and work with them. So that was a really cool phone call.

The dancing was pretty cool, but they move reeeeeally slow!

I also got a call from Elder Rushton in Bluefields who wanted to let me know that they had baptized a guy named B. who I was teaching for my last few weeks in Bluefields. Another crazy thing is that I did a baptismal interview for a guy here in Masaya who the Zone Leaders have been teaching, and it turned out that it was a guy I had contacted last year when I was first out on my mission. I remembered the house, and when I met him, he recognized and remembered me too! We weren't able to teach him much last year because he told us he was never home, but we left him a pamphlet, and he still has it to this day! Unfortunately, he didn't quite pass the interview as it turns out he still needs to get married, so that's a bummer, but he will get baptized once the Zone Leaders help him get things sorted out.

It is really weird to be walking around in my old area from last year and seeing all the houses that I had knocked on their doors and they were super negative to us. However, there are also some houses of people that the Zone Leaders will be baptizing that I never talked to them and I think to myself, "Dang, why didn't I talk to them?"

Anyways, this next week we have a baptism scheduled for a 19-year-old lady named A. (she is a lady because she has 2 kids). So I actually met her last year when I was on divisions with the District Leader here, but she never got baptized. Then when I first arrived in this area, I remembered her and we found her and have been teaching her since. She is finally ready to be baptized and we are doing everything we can to help her make it this week.