Awesome Week -- Baptisms, Pupusas, and the 4th of July!

Her mom and some family friends also from El Salvador came to the baptism.
It was a really nice service, and she asked me to baptize her.

Well, this past week was pretty awesome! We had our baptism and she was super excited all week. Also, the district had two more baptisms, and this next week our district has 7 more baptisms scheduled. Elder Jimenez and I have one of the seven, who is K., the little brother of our baptisms from 3 weeks ago. That would make 4 straight weeks with a baptism, which has been pretty amazing.

After the baptismal service, we celebrated with the branch president
and some other members of the branch by learning how to make
"pupusas salvadoreanias." My companion is from El Salvador also,
so he was super excited and if you ask anyone from El Salvador, they
are the only ones who know how to make real pupusas -- not the same
as the ones Nicaraguans make.

So my companion, Elder Jimenez is getting pretty excited about going home next week. He already has his suitcases packed and has everything arranged in Managua for his trip home, so I guess you could say he is pretty "trunky" and it is getting harder to get him motivated to get out and find people to teach. Even still, we have a lot of people we have been teaching and we were able to bring 10 investigators to church yesterday.

Speaking of church yesterday, the new mission president, President Brown, came to our branch in Granada yesterday. He and his wife sat up on the stand and even shared their testimonies during the meeting. They actually both speak Spanish pretty well, but they do have some pretty funny, gringo accents, and their children don't speak any Spanish at all. However, it was kind of weird to see how white and pasty their skin is as they just arrived from Utah. They are really nice, but we didn't get much time to talk with them after church.

Elders Nave and Marler also accompanied us as they wanted to try
making them as well.

On Wednesday, I had to travel to the eye clinic again for the same issue with my eyes -- red, swollen, crazy itchy, and super uncomfortable. They are going to try 3 new medicines to see it they work any better, so I have a return visit this next Friday. Also this past week, we woke up every morning at 5:00 and went with the Zone Leaders to the church to play soccer or futsal (concrete-court soccer using a tiny ball) for some exercise.

"Pupusas Salvadoreanias"

For the 4th of July today, we had a zone activity and played volleyball at the church, which has a real volleyball net. I had my volleyball, and wow, was I super rusty from not playing a real game since the MTC. It was a lot of fun, and then later tonight we are going to the Zone Leader's house and order pizza to celebrate. In fact, a lot of Nicaraguans wore red, white, and blue shirts today, or shirts with the American flag on it, just because a lot of them really like the USA here. However, no fireworks this time of year, and you can't even find them anywhere to buy, which is a shame. Anyway, sounds like things are good at home. Have a great week everyone and light some fireworks for me!

Having lunch with the Zone Leaders at a sweet Mexican restaurant here in Granada.