#92 El Naranjo

June 16, 2014

Hey family,

Well it’s been another week. I know that it’s physically impossible, but I’m convinced that the time has been going by quicker and quicker. It amazes me that another week has passed, and it makes me feel so weird. My comp is ending his mission in one week, and it’s like a preview of my next change. It’s really weird.

Well, its been going pretty well. Right now the world cup (mundial?) is on and everyone here in Central America totally loves it. Something about the culture here, but everyone loves soccer here. I enjoy playing soccer, but the Latinos love it. Kind of funny. As I’m writing this, the US is playing against Ghana I think, and everyone is totally enchanted by it. I can just hear the TV in the background and its funny to hear the commentary.

So it’s pretty cool this week. We've been working hard and trying to baptize a family before the change ends. I'm really hoping that we'll be able to get a family in before my comp leaves. It would be awesome to have a baptism. We'll see. We have found a couple new families this week, but they'll be ready for baptism in like 3 weeks. The area presidency changed the rule, and now the investigators have to go to church 3 times before they can be baptized. Its kind of tricky, but we're working with it.

So it seems like this week we've been seeing President Collado a ton. He's been going around the whole mission and doing a ton of meetings and stuff like that. On Friday we had another multi-zone meeting with him, and then on Saturday and Sunday we had stake conference and he was there too. In these next two changes, over 35% of the missionaries are ending their missions. All of the experienced missionaries are leaving. So basically the mission president is going around and training everyone and preparing the mission for that. Kind of cool. On Saturday we had meetings from 3pm until 8pm, which included a workshop for ward councils and an adult session of the stake conference. We brought a few investigators to the adult’s session, which was cool. And President Collado was there for all of the meetings. On Sunday, we had the stake conference. It turned out pretty good, and it was fun to hear from the leaders. I think that the stake is doing pretty well, and I enjoy being in the meetings and learning from these inspired people. 

So in stake conference, our convert J was sustained to receive the Melchizedek priesthood. He wasn’t able to receive the priesthood on Sunday, but I think that this next Sunday he'll get it. Pretty cool stuff. Hopefully he and his family can progress and stay active in the church.

Today for p-day we went back to Potosi and hung around. We ate at a cool restaurant and the guy gave us some coconuts again. He had a giant bird too and said that it was over 40 years old. I was talking to it a little too. Here in Nicaragua, you can buy the birds that talk, and tons of people have them. They're fun to mess around with. They're called Loras, but the kind of bird that we saw today in Potosi was a different kind. I have no idea what type it was. As we were coming back from Potosi, it started to rain a ton and it was pretty cool. The weather cooled down a little, and it was really relaxing. I think that for the first time in a long time that I wasn't sweating a ton, and the smell of the rain was awesome. The bus ride was pretty long, and it was awesome to just kick back and look out the window and see the world here. It’s completely different here, and it’s really interesting that millions of people live in these tiny communities and many of them don’t know what the rest of the world is like. Pretty cool. It has been raining a lot in these past few days, and sometimes in the nighttime I’ll just lay in bed and listen to the sound of the rain on the tin roof and it makes me feel really glad to be here. It’s awesome being a missionary!

We'll I’m glad to write you all again, and it’s fun to hear that all is well. I'm super excited to see you all, but I'm going to be really sad to leave this world here behind. I think that it will be pretty hard to readjust to the life back at home. It’s really weird, and I don’t think that there is really any way to describe it. But I'm enjoying my time here a ton, and its going well. Thanks for everything, and I hope that all is well.

Elder Stark