A Christmas Miracle in Rivas

Our District here in Rivas

So our apartment here in Rivas is pretty nice. This is our kitchen area.

This past week, we had to go to Managua for the Newbies Meeting for my companion, Elder Smith. We had to wake up at 3 AM to catch a 3-hour bus ride to get to Managua for the meeting which started at 7 AM. The meeting lasted until about 2 PM and then we caught a bus back to Rivas that was so crowded we had to stand the entire ride. It was a pretty miserable journey because I am too tall and I don't fit, so I had to hunch down the whole 3 hours back home. As for the meeting itself, Elder Smith did great in the practice sessions, and they gave us Burger King for lunch!

This is our study.

Yesterday in church I got to meet a lot of the members of the ward, and a super rich family invited all of the missionaries in Rivas over for dinner on the 24th, so we should be eating well. We also found some way positive people that will hopefully come to church next week, so the area will start going better here in a bit, but this week might be a little rough on the area with all the conferences and Christmas and stuff, ha ha.

The house even has a big backyard.

We did have something super crazy cool happen this week -- really you could call it a miracle. So this eternal investigator decided she wanted to get baptized on Saturday, and we missionaries really had no hand in it. She said she just got in the holiday cheer and decided this would be a good week to be baptized. Plus we will be having a baptism on Christmas evening, so Elder Smith and I will be having two baptisms this week! Complete miracle!! My district also has 2 other baptisms, so we will end the year with a bang and a holly, jolly Christmas!!!

We got the Christmas ambience going in our apartment.

In fact, as a mission, we achieved our mission goal of 2060 baptisms this year, and as a result, the entire mission gets to go on a trip in January to San Juan del Sur, which is the nicest tourist place in all of Nicaragua. Funny thing is that it is located in my district boundaries (although we are forbidden to go there on P-Days, sadly), so it is just a 20-minute bus ride from where I am at here in Rivas. Also, because we are so close to San Juan del Sur, they have a lot more American brand items here because of all the tourists, so I will probably take out some of my Christmas money and buy some neat stuff and more food.

So the family of our investigator who is getting baptized on
Christmas cooked us some dinner and it was actually
super good. They are very, very poor, so it meant
a lot to them.

Tomorrow we have our Multi-Zone Conference and we will be leaving Rivas about 4 AM again. The conference is supposed to be exactly like last year and we should be getting our Christmas packages from home tomorrow. Anyways, so we have people feeding us on Christmas and we should have our packages, so this Christmas should be a good one, and I won't lie, this year I'm not nearly as sad as last year. Can't wait to Skype with my family on Christmas, and I hope everyone else has a great Christmas as well!

Elder Smith, Me, Elder Foster, and Elder Jensen, who is the District Leader of the other district here in Rivas
and who was in the CCM with me.