Knee Injury Curse

It has been another great week here in Ciudad Sandino! I don´t know if you can believe it, but I just came from the hospital where my companion was being looked at for a left knee injury. He was sentenced to a week of complete rest, though we won´t be having emergency exchanges, we´ll just take it easy and pray it gets better. I guess it´s just my curse that all of my companions injure their left knee.

Funny story from this week:
We´re knocking doors, and we come to a house where there is a little girl playing with toys in her front yard.
Us: Is your mom home?
Her: Yeah
Us: Can you call her for us?
Her: No, if I leave, someone will steal my toys

A cool investigator that I want to talk about this week is named Hilary (pronounced heelawry). She is 16 years old and dating an inactive member of the church named Jason (pronounced yayson). Jason´s mother, a very active member, determined to do anything to get her son back to church, invited Hilary to attend church, and she came. We of course jumped on this opportunity and made an appointment to visit her. Passed by her house, but she wasn't home, we passed by the next day a couple times, without luck. We kinda forgot about her, until the next Sunday, lo and behold, she comes to church again. Thrilled to see her, yet a bit bothered by the fact that she was impossible to find, we made another appointment. Two times at church meant she could be baptized if we could find a way to teacher her all of the lessons. We have successfully taught her twice now, and she is accepting everything. Really a golden investigator, but wasn't ready to commit to baptism yet. We'll keep working with her, and we are going to work ferociously with her inactive boyfriend, who may re-activate when he finds out that he could potentially baptize his girlfriend.

Anyway, that´s all for today, love you and sorry for the lack of photos!
Elder Stephen Watts

Answers to some of the questions we asked:

What's the most interesting food that you've eaten?

The most interesting thing I have eaten was iguana, but I thought it was chicken until I was midway through and they told me it was iguana. The worst thing I've eaten is called indio viejo and to describe it, I would say it tastes and smells like an indio viejo, go ahead and plug that into google translate. The best thing I've eaten are pupusas, which we got at a restaurant owned by El Salvadorian immigrants. A pupusa is essentially a stuffed tortilla, and mine had cheese, sausage, and basil leaves. Tasty tasty.

What kind of drinks do people give you?

We mostly drink fresco (juice mixed with water and sugar) but there is a drink here that is made with chocolate and corn powder that white missionaries refer to as mud, but I actually really liked it, probably because the one time I had it she added a ton of sugar.

Tell us a little about your schedule.

Our schedule is: Wake up at 6 and do exercise, personal study, and get ready. Leave house at 9. Eat lunch at 1 and do companion and language studies after lunch. Leave house again at 3:30 and work until 9, 9:30 if we have an appointment.

About how many lessons do you teach a week?

We find, on average 15 new investigators a week, which means teaching the first lesson at least 3 times a day to people who are receiving us for the first time. Other lessons add up to nearly the same, maybe 10 or 12 a week.

New Companion

Elder Watts y Elder Cardona

 So, update on the emergency changes I had last Wednesday: my first dad (trainer) Elder Cardona is not going home to Guatemala, he is hanging at the AP's house with an elder who had his appendix removed recently as they both recover. My new Dad's name is Elder Solis. He is from El Salvador, and like Elder Cardona, doesn't speak any English. He goes home the first week of January, and is pretty sure I'm going to kill him. That would be pretty sweet, because he is a hardworking missionary and, though I liked Cardona, the area's seen a nice increase in success since Solis got here.

Elder Solis y Elder Watts

With Elder Solis, we found and began teaching the coolest family I've taught thus far in my mission. There are six of them (4 kids, 2 parents) and with the exception of their youngest son who is just 3 years old, everyone listened intently, asked questions, and responded well to the questions we asked them. When we returned, we were delighted to find that the dad and the oldest daughter had read the Book of Mormon, making them the first investigators I've had that actually read the first time I've invited them to do so. I was way excited!

Love you all!
Elder Stephen Watts

Answers to some of the questions we asked:

At McDonald's in Managua

Last week he thought he was getting a Nicaraguan companion who was visa waiting.  Here's his response as to what happened:

President called an audible and sent me Elder Solis, instead of the other Elder, which would have made sense because he was loosing his companion at the same time. So, instead of a 2 companionship switch, we had a complicated 4 companionship switch.  But I'm not complaining, I like Elder Solis, and the fact that I don't have to be senior companion in my training.  

I didn't know what an "audible" was, so I asked.

Audible is a football term for when you switch plays at the last minute, ie, after the huddle, before the snap, you yell out new instructions based on the defense.

Tell us about Elder Solis:

My new companion is a convert, but neither of his parents converted, only him, along with his older brother who also served a mission in the D.R. and his younger sister. He was only 3 years a member when he left for his mission.

After telling me how he'd been stomach sick yesterday, he added this comment:

I have begun to realize that every drink anyone gives me here (with the exception of coca cola) is made with the city water. Literally no one here drinks purified water, so I'm beginning to embrace it, as it is my only option. Also, I realized that I'm crazy blessed to be in a house that has water all the time because about 75 percent of the houses here don't. Typically, a house will have a number of giant drums filled with water outside their house that they use for everything. Luckily, most of them are careful to get their drinking water when they have water so we're not drinking out of those gnarly drums. In some cases, the water comes on so rarely that they just leave a faucet over the drums open all the time and the drum never overflows.

Emergency Changes

I don't know if I mentioned it before, but my companion suffered a knee injury a few weeks before I arrived. Well, he rested it 3 weeks as were the doctors orders, the last of those three was our first week together. Anyway, we got right back to work and we really do walk a ton. Our area is huge, and gas is like $6.00 a gallon. Anyway, recently, his knee started giving him tons of problems again and we went to the doctor yesterday to check it out. The doctor said if it got much worse, they were going to have to operate on it. They told my companion that he shouldn't even be walking for the next 3 weeks, and so President decided to send him home to recover. I haven't met my new companion yet, but I heard he is a Nicaraguan, who has less time in the mission than I do, who is visa waiting. So, I'm going from 4 weeks into my training (which should last 12 weeks) to being senior companion. Pretty terrifying really because I still haven't really gotten my bearings here in Ciudad Sandino.

Enough logistics, its cool story time:

We typically don't enter Nueva Vida (the ghetto portion of our area) on weekends para nada. It's way dangerous.  But last Saturday morning, my companion felt a strong spiritual pull to go hunt down this reference that we had received for a young girl that lived pretty deep in Nueva Vida. We had tried to hunt her down earlier in the week, but were unsuccessful. Notwithstanding, we entered Nueva Vida, and on our third try, after receiving a ton of attention from some suspicious looking boys in the neighborhood, found our girl. Zenelia is just the kind of elegida we are continuously instructed to find and teach. We had an awesome lesson and stayed a while longer answering a few of her never-ending questions, before asking her to write down her questions for us to answer in our return visit. I look forward to teaching her some more, and we returned from the ghetto without any harm.

I really do get a ton of looks everywhere I go. Turns out, not a lot of people have seen a real life chele before, and (trying hard not to sound conceited here, just saying it how it is) all the girls think I'm the most attractive creature they've seen. Hey, if it gets us in the door, sweet, but hasta allí, no más.

Anyway, that's the update for you all!

Love,
Elder Stephen Watts

Rice, Beans, and a Priesthood Blessing

Well, after two weeks of rice, beans, chicken, fried platanos, and coca-cola, yours truly is still alive. Turns out that the Nica diet, as boring as it may be, is sustainable! And at least none of it grossed me out. As much as I'd love to talk more about life as a missionary in Nicaragua, I think it will be of more worth to talk about the work.

We generally have no problems finding people to talk to. Honestly, about one out of every 10 houses will let us come in and spend 45 minutes talking about the restoration. Unfortunately, a second visit is an entirely different matter that has proven exceedingly difficult. My favorite investigator has been a young mother named Mercedes. When we knocked on her door, she let us in and said she had a sister that had joined the church and was honestly a little interested to hear our message. We had a beautiful meeting with her, and planned a return visit. When we returned, she was actually home (what?) and jubilantly let us enter (what? what?). She said she had been up all night with her daughter who was sick and she asked us if we would pray with her for her daughter. My companion quickly explained that the same healing power that existed in Christs time had been restored and that we had the keys to perform the same blessing and by her faith, her daughter could be healed. He proceeded to explain how a priesthood blessing for the sick and afflicted worked, and together we gave one to her daughter. The spirit was so strong, and I hope she can see a miracle, and maybe from that, investigate our church more sincerely. We will see when we visit her tomorrow.

Just one more quick story: We went out with a young man in our ward named Kenneth (it's weird, most Nicaraguans have the most American names pronounced in the funniest ways). He is currently called as a ward missionary, and is awaiting his own mission call. He knew of an ex-investigator and we went together to visit her. We had a great lesson, but of course she wasn't home for the follow up visit, nor did we see her at church as she promised we would. The cool thing is, after the lesson, Kenneth said something like, "What the heck Watts, you spoke perfect Spanish in there." I responded simply with, "Solo puedo hablar Español cuando siento el Espíritu." I can only speak Spanish when I'm feeling the Spirit. How true that has been, every time we've taught a lesson, I've had no problem keeping up with the conversation. Even when we were teaching an elderly Nicaraguan, that talked fast, and had no teeth, I could hear the spirit whispering in my ear exactly what he was saying, and I've always had just enough Spanish in my back pocket to say what needs to be said.

I love you all!

Elder Stephen Watts

P.S. Here's how addresses work here. Like people put this on official documents.
Arriba- Up the hill- East
Abajo- Down the hill- West
A Lago- Toward the Lake- North
A Sur- South
Note: Arriba, Abajo, and A Lago switch meanings depending on what city, but that's how it is here in Sandino.
Here's how it works: Pick a landmark, legit someone once said, desde el gran arbol (from the big tree). Then explain how many blocks in each direction you need to go. When you get to your street and your block, you say medio cuadras (half a block) and specify the color of your house.
If I was to give the address for our home it would be something like this:
From the intersection of I-80 and 4th street, two blocks toward the lake, one block North, half a block downhill. White House.