Thursday, September 1, 2016

Managua and the mission office

August 27, 2016

These last couple weeks have been pretty good. Last week we didn't have any meeting because President was in Guatemala, so we had a bunch more time to work in out area. It's kinda crazy not really having a set companion, because the APs frequently go on divisions with missionaries that are struggling, which means I frequently end up working with members, which is cool because there are some really awesome members, but it's not the nearly the same as working with another missionary. Lately I've been working almost half the days of the week with a member. It'll only be crazy like this for this change though because we have an extra Elder in our foursome, leaving us with an odd number of 5. Since we are essentially one big companionship, we decided to split the area en three parts to be able to get all of the visits we need to get done in the short time we have in the area to work. That way we have three companionships with one of us working with a member.
Monday was a good, but busy day. We have a meeting with president all morning and then I have to take advantage of one of the few days he is in the office and get all the checks signed and plan for the weeks worth of meeting and travels. Also Mondays I do all my errands like going to the bank or whatever other random thing comes up, for example this Monday I had to go to the hospital to pay for a missionaries appendicitis surgery. Monday nights are always long because we are stuck in the office til 8:30, but fortunately Elder Ramirez's mom sent some bread and amazing hot chocolate with Hermana Poncio after there trip to Guatemala. Hot chocolate is normally a no go in Nicaragua, but after being in freezing air-conditioning all day it was quite nice. Oh yeah and this Monday we had an exciting experience in the gas station with some fool lighting his motorcycle on fire and then was very angry with the gas station workers for coating his bike in fire extinguisher powder. Managua always keeps you on your toes and also your windshields sparkling clean because everytime you stop at a stoplight someone will run up and try to wash your windshields. The best part is watching taxi drivers get all mad when the little kids climb on the hood to be able to reach the windshield lol.
Tuesday I had to go to the reunión de nuevos to make sure everything went smoothly with the breakfast and lunch, plus give a finance presentation. There are a ton of new missionaries in the mission right now, so there were 82 missionaries in total in the meeting (new missionaries and their trainers). One of the nice things about going to meetings is getting to see all my past comps and friends from my old areas.
Wednesday we had our multizone meeting most of the day which was nice to have some time just to relax and listen and take notes.
Thursday we had Alenkas baptism which went really well. We met her through a reference from one of our most pilas members, Hermana Cándida, who also always made sure that she came to church. Those two things I have learned make it so much easier for investigators to progress. A member reference that attends church is almost always a golden investigator. She is super pilas and will make a great member, she even brought a non member friend to her baptism, who also ended up joining us in the evening for our noche de hermanamientos, which was super cool because we just watched Meet the Mormons which is good fun and like 5 investigators showed up and enjoyed the movie.
Friday I finally had some decent time to work in the area and in that time Neilson and I had a super positive afternoon and one of our awesome investigators decided she felt ready to accept a baptismal date and we meet a super positive family. This family we had passed by earlier in the week and felt that we should contact them, but had to get home since it was already 9, but when we finally got around to contacting them yesterday they were super positive. Then last night one of our recent converts invited us over for nacatamales which was fantastic.
This week flew by, but I am so grateful it's pday and I can rest, because I'm pretty exaughsted. We started the day today by making a surprise visit to the mission home to wish Hermana Poncio Happy Birthday. We all pitched in to buy cake and the Sister training leaders bought roses. It was a nice way to start the day. Everything is going great here, wish you all the best at home, and I'll talk to you next week.
Elder Hamson
Here are a few pictures - The first is with President Poncio and the Records Secretary, Elder Ramirez, who are both from Guatemala and both chaparros. The other two pics are with the two APs, Elder Neilson, who is from Utah and was Financial Secretary before me and Elder Gonzales, who is from Honduras.  







































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