Winter Has Arrived

Winter is finally upon us here in Somoto, and while it is nice to have slightly lower temperatures, Winter means RAIN! It was like a flip of a switch. It rained for the first time on Tuesday and we were drenched head to toe in a matter of seconds, and since then it has rained everyday without fail. Somedays only a little and some days more, but everyday so far it has rained at least a little.I actually like the rain, but with the rain comes terribly muddy roads and a ton of insects seeking safety in doors, which two things I don't like at all. It hasn't been raining much during the night, but last night it poured and we discovered that our roof wasn't the most impermeable roof in existance and had all kinds of dripage. So that was fun and we're gonna look for a new place to live this week. Anyways, enough about the rain, here's a quick summary of the week.

E. Castro got invited to the ZL meeting in Managua on Tuesday which means I stayed with E. Diaz and Meza to work in trio. E. Castro getting invited to that meeting, means he will probably be called a ZL this transfer, which means I'll be getting a new companion, which I'm not to happy about because Castro is awesome. Castro thinks I will train a newbie when he leaves which would be crazy because I don't feel prepared at all to do that.

Wednesday, after reunion de zona, we held the baptism of Mama Nerly, which was awesome and she seems to be really happy. Reunion de Zona went pretty well and after accumulating everyone´s goals for the month, we ended up with a zone goal of 55 baptisms in May, which is pretty incredible, but also totally doable if we work hard. 

Thursday I don't remember, but I think it was just a normal day of working and we got several new investigators. 

Friday one of our Zone leaders, Elder Cedeño, came to help us get our baptismal interviews done to be prepared for another baptismal service of Chavalos. The interviews both went well, although we had to find Jonathans house to interview him and I had never been because we had been teaching him and his mom in the house of Jaudin. - Sidenote: it is really hard to find people's houses here because there are no such thing as addresses, so each person just makes up a dirección to get to their house. Usually the directions are something like "5 blocks from the cementary, then 1 block to the south and a half block to the east". - Fortunately we ran into them on the way to their house and it turns out they live in a house way back into the furthest corner of the area of E. Diaz y Meza. After the interview Cedeño and I had to meet up with Diaz and Castro, and Jonathan and Jaudin wanted to come with on bicycles, so Cedeño and I ended up riding the bikes with Jonathan riding with me and Jaudin with Cedeño cruzing through the wet backroads of Somoto. It was kinda fun and made me realize that having bikes here as missionaries would make a huge difference. 

All in all it was a good week. Sorry that there are no pictures.

Elder Hamson

(Editor's note: Here are two pictures he sent last week of a typical lunch and Seth and Elder Castro with a young new member named Uziel. Seth says, "He is like 11 and is way smart and I think on page like 150 of the Book of Mormon already!")