Adios, 2015! Bienvenido a 2016!

This was one of our New Year's Eve dinner appointments, and it was big. We were invited, along with most
of the missionaries in Rivas, to the home of two of our baptisms from last week, and then one of their
friends who is an investigator of one of the Hermana companionships.

Another picture of the dinner appointment.

Well, the best part of New Year's Eve was that we received multiple invitations for dinner. We ended up accepting three of the invitations, ha ha. After dinner, there wasn't much to do so we made our way back home. We did buy some ginger ale to toast and drink in the new year, plus we ate the rest of our candy from Christmas, so it was a pretty good night for eating.

This past week was pretty tough with the holidays and all the parties going on. We weren't able to bring any investigators to church, and the ones we have been working with gave us all sorts of stories and run-around, so I was pretty frustrated. Luckily, some of the members of the ward brought 3 referrals for us of people to work with.

Missionary Dummies -- just a silly pic of
our name badges on some dummies that were
prepared for the New Year's Eve celebration here.

Despite not coming to church yesterday, we do have two investigators that are pretty positive for baptism maybe later this month. First is J. He has come with us twice to church, but we couldn't find him this past week because he was partying with friends, so we obviously have some work still to get him ready for baptism. Second is R. who is a good friend of B. (the man we baptized on Christmas). He was sick yesterday so he couldn't come to church, but he told us he wants to get baptized and we are hoping he might be ready by the end of January.

Lucky for us, we just got through the toughest time of the year to work with people because of the multiple holidays, festivals, and parades. My last area, Masaya, and this area here in Rivas are both really Catholic, so the holidays have been especially challenging. Now hopefully things will start to get a little easier to find people home.

Some of the cool sights from Central Park here in Rivas.

We got an email from President Russell that told us we will be having our mission celebration not this week, but next. We will be going to this place called Giant Beach where we will spend the day playing games, eating, and hanging out. The cool part is that it is in my District and only about 20 minutes away, so it will be a short trip for us to get there.

I took some of my Christmas money and did a little shopping today. I bought a new side bag to use while proselytizing. It only cost about 500 Cordovas ($15). Now don't get me wrong, I love my Ogio backpack, but I might take a little break from it while I am here in blazing hot Rivas (the black backpack on my back gets pretty miserable some days). I also took some money and bought a new pan and spatula. We also went to Burger King for lunch today, which is the only American restaurant here in Rivas and is a little pricey (I should say priced like it is in the US). We also used some money to buy a few small church supplies for our recent baptisms.

Otherwise, nothing super special going on this week -- just lots of work trying to find more people to teach.  My 'son' is almost finished with his training. It is hard to believe we are now in 2016. I still feel like it is 2014. Enjoy your cold weather back home because we are going to start getting even hotter here in Nicaragua. Usually after Christmas, the weather gets hotter and hotter until Semana Santa, which is in April...miserable. Hope everyone had a great New Year's.