#75 Nagarote

Hey familia,

It was awesome to get your email. Wow, it sounds like it must be pretty freezing cold back at home. That’s crazy. Here it’s just the same as normal. Its pretty hot, but yeah whatever. I really liked the luge that was built in the driveway, and the snow chair/snowman thing. Hopefully nobody hits it with their car. But yeah, wow. It must be pretty fun to just hand around at home and play in the snow. So I remember looking at my watch and seeing the date and thinking that I only have 6 months left here in this country. That’s a really crazy thing to me, and it’s freaking me out. I can't believe how fast the time passes by. I only have 4 changes left in the mission, wow. 

So as far as my p-day went, it was pretty good. Last night at 6pm the zone leaders called and wanted to do a meeting with the leaders here in Leon, so we went there and had a meeting. From 2 until 4pm, the stake presidency came and did a joint training here in Nagarote with the branches of Nagarote and La Paz Centro. It was pretty cool just to be there and help out with the training of the leaders in the branch. When I first came to the branch, all we had was the Branch President and his first counselor, and the relief society. Now, we have established an elders quorum We now have an Elder’s Quorum President, we have a 2nd counselor to the Branch President, and yesterday they just called the Young Men's together. And the coolest part??? J (the guy that we just baptized 3 weeks ago), he's going to be the young men’s president. I was with him in the leadership training, and we taught him about the deacons, teachers, and priests (diáconos, maestros, y presbíteros), and how to run the show. So yeah, I’m super excited for him. Oh, and yesterday we gave the Aaronic priesthood to J, and his son (who isn’t baptized yet) came to church, and gave the closing prayer in the Elder’s quorum class. We're going to ordain like 8 men to the Melchezidek priesthood next month in the stake conference. I really feel like we have a fair chance in making Nagarote a ward rather than a branch! I can’t believe that we have made so much progress. Fun stuff!! The branch is progressing a ton. When I came, we would run the show. We would teach the 2nd hour, and we would also teach the 3rd hour. But yeah, now there are teachers for the classes, and as missionaries, we are taking a step back and letting the members run the show. It’s awesome. Plus the attendance is now 79. That’s like a 40% increase. So yeah, we're all happy. The work is progressing very very well. Sunday morning, we baptized a convert of the sister missionaries. It was cool, and my comp was super excited to be able to do the ordinance. So yeah. That guy is also going to be called to the young men’s presidency.  

Transfers are next Tuesday, but I don’t think that I’ll get changed. The trainers are usually glued to their kids for the whole 12 weeks. But yeah, we'll see what happens. I'd really like to visit the Atlantic coast, or in the jungle up north in Matagalpa, but who knows. Wherever they send me, I’ll be happy. I really like Nagarote a lot. Its definitely one of my favorite areas. 

So during the week, we've just been working a lot with our investigators. We've got a family that we're teaching named P and B and they're pretty cool. They want to be baptized, but we've just got to convince B to get married to P. P came to church yesterday and loved it. They've already been before, and yeah, I feel like they'll get baptized soon. Once, while we were teaching them, the parents of P came to the house, and we taught them. So on Sunday P Sr. also came to church. Plus we brought a rich lawyer who seems really interested in the church. His name is A. Anyways, we're doing pretty well here. 

So on Sunday after the leadership training meeting, I asked the guy from the stake presidency if he could take us to Leon. They had rented a microbus (in other words, a 15 passenger van), and they said sure. So we all packed into this tiny van. I think that there were over 20 people in that thing, and we got to Leon. I was in a meeting forever with the other leaders in the mission, and then we went and slept in the ZLs house and played lots of UNO. It was fun to hang out with other missionaries. One of the other DLs in the zone is from Firth, Idaho and it was cool to be with someone from Idaho. Anyways, sorry that I didn’t take a ton of pictures this week. I keep forgetting to take pictures. It all seems really normal to me, and I don’t see the purpose in taking pictures of everything. But yeah, I had to take a giant box of pamphlets and Books of Mormon back to Nagarote, so I today I walked all over Leon with a huge box that was really heavy. There are so many weird Europeans in Leon. I don’t know why, but they are so weird. They dress weird and look like they haven't showered in a month. The white people that are tourists in Leon give a bad reputation for us normal white people. But yeah, we finally got back to Nagarote, and cleaned the house, ate some tacos mexicanos, and now we're in the cyber. So that’s about what happened this week. Thanks for the email you sent me, it sounds like you're all doing great! Have a great week!

Elder Stark