#76 Nagarote

Hey family,

Well, it’s been great to hear from you. That’s pretty awesome about Owen’s wrestling stuff. It sounds like he must be a pretty good wrestler. I can’t believe that he has a black eye, stuff sewn to his ear, and cat scratches. That’s really crazy. I really want to see some video of him. The next time that he's wrestling, you need to take some video and upload it to drop box so I can see. 

So this week has been pretty low key here in Nagarote. It was the week before changes, and we were just working and doing the same old stuff. We've put baptism dates with almost all of our investigators. We have P with a date for the 22nd. P Sr. with a date for the 1st of March. We have JA (the son of J and Y who is 21, and I really think that he'll be a future missionary) for the 1st of March, and a rich lawyer named A with a date for the 1st of March. They are all pretty cool. P and his wife B don’t want to get married though, so that could be a challenge. The problem is that B got married once when she was 16 and it turned out bad, so she divorced her first husband. And now she thinks that marriages don’t work out... yeah more marriage problems. So we'll see how we get that figured out. I put the date with A yesterday. After the 2nd hour of church, I went with him to the baptismal font where we baptize, and just told him that he could be baptized on the 1st of March and he accepted. Cool stuff.

At one point this week, we went to visit P and B and there was a weird insect thing on their house. It was disguised as a stick. I took some pictures of it. I was on divisions with a Latino named Elder R, and he told me that it might be dangerous/venomous. So we just took some pictures and walked away. 

So the cool thing is that we had training for the new missionaries and their trainers on Thursday. Normally we go to Managua to do that, but this time we went to Chinandega. We had to wake up super early to get there. It was the first time in over a year that I had been to Chinandega, and it felt so weird. I still remember the city perfectly, and how to get around. And it was super weird going back to my old area and visiting the chapel and all of that. I took some pictures of the font where I did my first baptism, and some pictures of the chapel. Really weird. Anyways, the meeting ended at noon, and all of the new missionaries and the trainers went on divisions with the elders in Chinandega. I worked in an area called La Florida, and it was super weird because I had worked in that same area over a year ago with Elder S helping out the elders back then. I still remembered how to get around, and I still remember a ton. It really surprised me that I could remember everything so perfectly. I was working with a missionary named Elder V and I took him to the investigators that the missionaries were teaching over a year ago. Kind of fun stuff. Anyway, while we were working, I helped them find a new family, we taught them, and I put a baptism date with the family. So hopefully now the elders can have some success. Anyway, we ended the day at 9pm, and then had to get back to Nagarote. We finally got into the microbus at 10pm and got back to Nagarote at like midnight. We were pretty tired the next day.

So the district is doing pretty well. In La Pas Centro they baptized a family on Saturday. It was pretty cool, and I had taught the family a ton of times. They are very cool converts. The Hermana’s also had a baptism for last week, but I did the interview for the guy and felt like he wasn’t ready, so they're going to teach him some more. Speaking of which, that same guy just found us here in the cyber just now, and gave me and my comp each a tie... kind of random...but very generous.

Well, that’s about all that’s going on. I took a little video of the street while I was sitting in the food cita. Nagarote is such a small, tranquil city, and its super calm and nothing crazy really happens. It would be a sweet place to retire. The branch here is doing well, and its fun being here. I took a little picture of the elder quorum class that you can see. It’s really chill.

Well, that’s about all that happened. Love you all,

Elder Stark