Waspan

This week flew by and was actually unexpectedly crazy. To start Sunday was pretty sweet because it was our first Sunday in Waspan. There are two branches and a ward that use our church building, so we start at 10 and go in reverse order, with sacrament meeting starting at 12. It went well and we got to meet a bunch of super cool members. But the big surprise was when we were waiting for sacrament meeting to start and were going around introducing ourselves we ran I to nonmember after nonmember and realized that there were 9 investigators at church, even though we had only brought three with us! A bunch of members had brought family members that weren't members and were excited to have us get to know them. Now granted a few of them live outside of the area, but it was still a huge blessing to have members already bringing people to church on their own! 

This week was a bit of a headache as far as money problems were concerned because after months and months of waiting, all missionary cedulas were approved all at once. Apparently it was because of the elections or whatever, but once elections passed a new guy was put in charge of immigration and he approved like 157 missionary cedulas on the same day. I went with President and his family to all get our cedulas the week before transfers, but now that transfer week craziness had ended all the missionaries had to come this week to Managua on different days. And after two meetings last week, there were tons of missionaries asking for travel reimbursements and people running out of money. The good news is I no longer have to carry around my passport with me to go to the bank, pay bills, etc, because now I am officially Nica after a year of waiting. Also it was cool because a bunch of my missionary friends had to stay in Managua two days because the new missionary training meeting and their immigration appointment were back to back. So that was cool because I got to work with Elder Perry and his trainee Elder Sanchez. We also got permission to visit a family of recent converts in the Maximo, so that was sweet to get to stop by and say hi to Angela and her family before heading off to work in waspan. Wednesday there was a broadcast for missionaries with some teachings as well as changes to key indicators and the missionary schedule, so that was pretty exciting. Last week President and the Assistants were working on the new schedule for our mission to incorporate the changes, so that'll be interesting to have some changes. Although it's likely that my schedule as Secretary won't change all that much. 

We are still working hard to find people to teach here in waspan, because we only have a handful of  evenings working here in the new area. It'll be so much nicer once the office is moved to Waspan next week because right now the office is about 35 minutes from our area and with traffic it takes much longer, but once we move we'll be able to start working the second we finish with office responsibilities. One of the families we are working with right now is a family of six and they are super awesome. Two of the older kids have already been baptized, and the mom, Angela, always comes to church and is totally ready, but she wants to get baptized with her husband who has been struggling to give up alcohol. So we will be visiting with them as frequently to try to help Antonio leave alcohol completely in the past. There are some really incredible humble people in Waspan and we are way excited to get to know more of the area and continue finding cool people.  

The big shocker of the week was the passing away of one of our converts from the Maximo Jerez. Juan Jose passed away on Thursday.  The only reason we knew is because one night driving past his house on the way back from Waspan we saw them loading his coffin up into a truck outside of his house. We always knew he was close, but figured we'd be able to visit him before he passed. We'll probably get permission from President to visit his family sometime soon. It's not too sad though because he has been suffering for a long time now with his condition and even after his baptism he told us that he felt ready to go. We know he's in a better place now though and now it's just a matter of working with his family to get his temple work done. We are just glad to have found him and helped him when we did!

I always love to hear from you all and I'll talk to you all next week! 

Elder Hamson

Here are some quick pics. The first is of these sweet lizards, aquí le dicen garrobos, that we always see. They are generally like a foot and a half long, but definitely get bigger. In the pueblos there are always niños walking around with a slingshot in hand and a dead garrobo hanging out of their pocket. The next picture is by the capilla in waspan of the motor-tricycles that are all over the place in waspan. And finally a picture of Diaz schooling some local chavalos on Pday.