#67 Nagarote

Hey family,

So how is it all going? It will be really fun Skyping you all next week. I’m pretty excited, and it will be fun to hear what is up from your own voices. I don’t think that Christmas has really hit me yet. It is still super hot and there are not very many people with Christmas trees or anything like that. Pine trees don’t exist here, so the only Christmas trees are the artificial ones, and only the rich people have those. But yeah, life is good and its pretty cool. 

So I’m happy to hear that Bailey is doing well. I bet that he is loving life right now. The MTC was a blast, and it was fun just hanging out with a bunch of people with minimal stress. Good stuff. 

So this week was pretty cool for me. I was only able to work in my area for 3 days of the week, which was pretty lousy. President requires that the leaders do divisions of 24 hours twice a week, so on Tuesdays I work in Mateare, and on Fridays I go to La Paz Centro. Plus the ZLs regularly do divisions with the DLs and this week was my turn. So on Wednesday I was in Leon with one of the ZLs. So this week I’ve slept in a lot of different beds, but that’s alright. I’m happy, because our district is doing really well compared to the other districts. On Thursday we had a meeting in Leon with President Collado and we basically had to stand up and present our areas to the mission pres. We had to explain how many investigators and families we have with baptism dates and such and such. We are throwing fire so that’s pretty cool. This week my companion and I baptized a woman named F, and in La Paz Centro, they baptized a family of 5, which was awesome. The baptism of F was pretty crazy. It was going to be at 5pm, and we cruised by her house at 3ish. There was an evangelical pastor and his wife in her house shouting at her and saying a bunch of untrue things about our church. We just sat down outside the house and listened to the stuff he was saying from the other side of the wall. Then, when it appeared that he wasn’t going to leave any time soon, we just stood up and walked into the house. The reaction on the pastor’s face was priceless. He became really nervous, and stopped talking garbage about our church. Then he and his wife just stood up and left quite quickly. They were even forgetting their briefcases and stuff like that. I’m pretty convinced that the guy knew he was telling lies. So yeah, that was cool. F was awesome, and she disregarded everything that the pastor had said, and announced that she'd get baptized at 5pm. So yeah, it turns out that her family all turned against her, even her own husband who believed everything that the pastor had said. So we left the house, and ran around getting things ready for the baptism. At 4:30pm we were walking by the house where we meet for church, and F was already waiting outside to get baptized. She said her husband was angry, but that she was convinced she had to be baptized. So yeah, it all went really well, and I’m impressed with her faith.

So that was a cool highlight in this week. Another cool thing was when I went to La Paz Centro to interview the family of five who was going to get baptized. I talked with the dad, and he confessed something really bad to me. It was one of those things where I had to call the mission president to see what he had to say. So I stepped out of the room and called President Collado and explained what the deal was. The phone was quiet for a while, and then he just said to me, "Ok Elder Stark. What do you think? Do you think that he should be baptized?" I was surprised and I didn’t really know what to say. But I walked back into the room, talked to the guy for a while, and the spirit just let me know that he could be baptized. It was a really cool experience for me, and I imagine that Dad probably has moments like that all of the time. I learned a lot about the Atonement in that moment, and it was really special to me.

So life has been good for me. I felt like this was a pretty good week, and I hope that next week will be even better! The mission is going well, and the time seems to be flying by. I can’t believe that Elder Rodgers will be coming home already. If you get the chance, you should have him come over to the house for like 10 minutes when I call home. I'd love to talk to him and hear what’s up. So I think that we'll be calling on the 25th. I don’t know if there are any cybers that will be open, but we'll be sure to look around. Either way, I'll still send an email on the 23rd, which is p-day. President Collado is doing the same kind of think that President Arredondo did last year with a super p-day in Managua for the whole mission. So that should be fun. I don’t really know what we'll be doing, but either way, it'll be fun.

Ah, so remember how I said that I didn’t like mondongo. Well yesterday we were in our food cita (which is actually a restaurant owned by some members) and they had made a ton of mondongo. They gave me a bowl of the stuff, and it was amazing. I think that the last time I ate mondongo I got a bad batch or something like that. I really, really, really liked it. Even the cow stomach was really, really good. I think that I might buy some more mondongo the next time I find it. 

Love ya all!!!

Elder Stark