This entire week we have been working in a trio because the new missionary still hasn't arrived. Word is we will be getting a mini missionary from Chinendega, Nicaragua tomorrow. Working en a trio consists of a ton of walking, splits with members, not being able to visit nearly as many people, and sharing two beds. Luckily we have two preisthood holding young members who have been willing to help us out and them both being a little odd and usually aren't available the entire day, we greatly appreciate their help.
Tuesday this week I went to Ocotal on exchanges to work with our zone leader Elder Cedeño, who is quite short but walks extremely quickly, so I had a very productive day working with him. We had a bunch of really good lessons and got a good number of baptismal dates set. Also he had to go interview one of the Sister missionaries investigators, which meant I got to talk to the Sister missionaries in ENGLISH which was nice, because I can converse effortlessly.
Thursday we had another exchange, but this one was a lot more difficult because Castro left and Diaz was working with a member which meant I was the señor companion and had to run everything with Elder Reinoso only their for back up support in lessons. I still don´t know the area too well, but it was easier than I expected to remember where everyone lives. It was tough to lead the teaching, because some of the investigators I had only met once and didn´t have a very good idea of what lessons they needed, because I had been working in Diaz´s area a bunch. Over all though the day went well and I learned a bunch and realized that I still have a lot to learn.
Saturday started great because we had a baptism in the morning and a bunch of investigaders attended the baptism. Elder Castro baptized a older lady named Maria and it was rather an interesting baptism because immediately after being baptized she began to sing some song about being baptized. It was quite entertaining. She´s a little strange, but has an awesome testimony of the church that she shared with everyone last fast sunday. Saturday night we have Noche de Hermanamientos, which is basically a short spiritual message followed by some game and then some snacks (which we buy.. one of the hardest things about being in Nucleo is not having a branch budget). The night started off great and Pricsila even had one of her friends there and she was super animado about the whole thing and even volunteered for the opening prayer, so we were stoked about the posibility of a new investigator. Then for the game all of the kids wanted to play asasino, which is really an innocent game where one person is it and winks at other people to get them out and the goal of the game is to guess who is doing the winking. Several of the people there were offended by the name of the game (we learned this afterward, they did not say a word in the moment), however and several people departed into the other room and it some how turned into this big thing where Pricsila´s friend left without a word, several other investigators expressed that they would not be attending church tomorrow. IT was a huge disaster.
Sunday made up for the awful saturday night because there were a number of miracles. The first being the extended family of an investigader that we met when we were out reminding people to come to church. We invited them to come to church and it seemed for a while that they weren´t going to show up, but then near the end of sacrament meeting they showed up, the young mother holding her infant baby in one hand and pushing her mother down the hot, rocky road with the other hand and the 6 year old trailing behind! We had no idea the grandma was wheelchair bound or else we would have assisted them, but it certainly explained why they were late, because that is an extremely long way to push a wheel chair one handed over an incredibly rocky dirt road. Another miracle that occured was that we didn´t lose a single person because of the events the night before, every single person that said they wouldn´t come came and enjoyed the spirit that was present in the meeting. Another miracle was a woman named Rosibel, who is catholic and had only been to one of our activities in the past because her partner (not husband... literally no one is married.. so frustrating) dragged her along with him, but this Sunday he was out of town and when we passed by her house to see if she was coming, she wasn´t there, so we were ecstatic when she showed up to sacrament meeting by her own free will! In total we had a church attendance of 40, which was awesome.
All in all a good week.
Here are some pictures from the week. The first is of the three of us all crammed in a tricycle because we were extremely tired and didn´t want to walk all the way from Elder Diaz´s house to mine and Castro´s on the opposite side of the city with all our stuff. The second picture is Elder Reinoso, who is from the Dominican Rebpublic, and I at the house about to finish the day with some tacos from a delicious mexican restaurant. And the last photo is after the baptism waiting for a bus to take us all back into town.
A ride in a pickup truck from Cacuali back to Somoto, courtesy of a very nice guy.
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