#71 Nagarote

Hey family,

Well, I can’t believe that it's p-day again. The time just seems to keep flying by faster and faster. Life is good, and I try to enjoy every minute. We've been having some good success here in Nagarote. It’s always fun training new missionaries because they always have a lot of courage when they first come to the field. So we've been putting dates with everyone and we've been having a lot of success with that. My companion thinks that it's awesome to invite people to be baptized, so I’m totally on board with that. Cool stuff. Right now we have 5 investigators with baptism dates, and we were able to bring two families to the church. So yeah, we're both really happy.

My companion is cool. He is from San Miguel, El Salvador that according to Elder Schriever is near the Honduras border. I don’t really know much about that city, but everyone is saying that there is a big volcano that is going to erupt over there. Oh, and when I was at the training meeting I met a missionary who says that he knows Elder Schriever really well. His name is Elder S and says that he was in Elder Schriever’s district for a couple months while he was serving a mini-mission in El Salvador. So that was funny. It’s a small world. Oh yeah, but Elder V is a cool guy. He is only 18, and comes from a family who are members of the church. I think that he is the oldest and only has a sister. I’m pretty stoked to be training again. There aren’t many elders that have the opportunity to train here, because there are always so many sister missionaries coming to this mission. So I feel really blessed to have the privilege to train a new missionary again. Fun stuff. 

So that’s too bad that Elder Y left your area. He seemed pretty cool, and I wish that I would have talked to him for a little bit longer when I skyped. I bet the mission is pretty hard back in Idaho, and that it’s quite a bit different from Peru. So who is the new elder in the area? I really like hearing about the missionary work back in the ward, and I want to know what it’s like.

The harmonica is still fun, and I’ve figured out how to play quite a few hymns and other songs. The song that I like to play is "blowing in the wind" by Bob Dylan. 

So some of the fun things that happened this week was that we went with our branch president to do some service. He has a couple jobs. So we went with him to a little farm that he runs as a side job. He has a little plot of corn, and we helped him harvest the corn. Basically we just put on a long sleeve shirt and some pants and a hat, and went to the farm at 6am. It’s about a kilometer to the south of Nagarote. The sister missionaries went ahead in a horse carriage, and we walked there with the branch president. So we got there, and each chose a row of corn, tied a sack around our waists, and started to harvest the corn by hand. We were there for about 4 hours, and got quite a bit of corn harvested. It was pretty cool, and was fun to do some work. It made me trunky for working with Uncle Mark and Bricon. I miss working with my hands. 

The other cool thing that happened was then when we arrived at our food appointment, we saw a kid (he was probably 14) in the house with a giant garobo (iguana). He had found it in the mountains and was trying to sell it. So I couldn’t help it, and I asked him how much he was selling it for. He responded "cincuenta pesos,” which is 50 Cordobas. That comes out to be two dollars. So I couldn’t help it, and I bought his iguana. The kid offered to kill it and skin it, so I said sure. So he cut its throat and skinned it, and the next day on Sunday, we had a garobo soup. It was great!!!!! For just two bucks, we got a pretty good deal. My comp was telling me that in El Salvador they put you in jail for 5 years for selling garobo because they are going extinct in El Salvador. So yeah.... cool stuff.  I took some pictures, so enjoy!

Well, that’s about all that’s going on. I love you all, and hope that you're always doing well. I’m also really excited to hear how Bailey is doing when he gets into the field. 

Lots of love,

Elder Stark