Rain

This week we got a ton of rain.

Sunday morning we woke up to rain and I guess the culture here is that if you wake up and it's raining you don't have to get out of bed. This was manifest when only about 40 or 50 people showed up for church and 0 investigators between 2 sets of missionaries. It was pretty disappointing, we normally have 130ish people and 5 or 6 investigators between both sets of missionaries. It wasn't even raining that hard.

The good news is, we were visiting with our investigators Cecilia and her daughter Flavia last night and they accepted the invitation to be baptized! We have been teaching them for 3 weeks now and they've been reading the Book of Mormon, praying, and (before last Sunday) coming to church. Their tentative date is next Saturday, the 7th of October. We also found 16 new investigators last week, which is pretty fantastic considering that to count them as a new investigator you have to sit down, have a lesson, and have plans to teach them again. Everyone tells me that I'll be leaving when my training ends, which is just 3 weeks from now, so that's exciting.  Hopefully I can get my first baptism before I go, but we'll see. If not here, for sure in my next area.

Elder Solis and Elder Watts

Today is my companion's birthday, and I bought a cake to celebrate. He's beginning to get a little trunky as he goes home in just 3 months. I sometimes remind him that 3 months is still a long time, but when you compare it to the 21 that he's completed, it sounds pretty soon. The good thing is that he still works pretty hard when he's supposed to, so I don't have any complaints. 

Love you lots!

Elder Stephen Watts

Struggles

It's been a little depressing this week as all of our investigators began to drop. Franklin, who was all ready to be baptized last Saturday got really sick. Asuzena made up a silly excuse as to why she couldn't go to church for the third week in a row. Franklin's daughter and granddaughter told us they've been reading the Book of Mormon, praying, and have been to church twice now and still haven't felt anything from the Holy Ghost. We had to explain to one inactive member that we've been working with why they were giving everyone tea at the ward activity literally two days after we taught her the word of wisdom.

But besides all of these struggles, we are still cruising out here. We just found a girl who has now read the first 5 chapters in Nephi and has prayed and felt that it is true. We were of course excited to find that Cecilia and Flavia (Daughter and granddaughter of Franklin) have been reading and praying and we promised them that their answer would come as they continue to do the things we invite them to do. I really really love missionary work!

Love you all!

Elder Stephen Watts

Here we are outside the multi-stake center/mission headquarter building in Managua.
We had a zone conference with 3 zones yesterday.

Stellar Week

It's been another stellar week here in Nicaragua, and guess what? We're baptizing! Remember Franklin, the 92 year-old that came to church last week, well he came again today, and accepted the invitation to be baptized this week. He has met all the requirements to be baptized, including giving up coffee (something he drank daily) the first time we presented the word of wisdom. His original baptism date was set for this Saturday, the only thing that would change that is his daughter, Cecilia. We began teaching Cecilia when she stumbled into church looking for her lost father who was apparently abducted by two young missionaries (refer to last week's email). She has also accepted everything, but needs to come to church "several" (which according to our mission president means 2) times and she has only come once. If she desires to get baptized alongside her father, then we'll push Franklin's baptism back a week. We'll know by the end of today what the plan is, but either way I'm pretty darn excited.

We also felt like champions when we organized FHE's for our top investigators Cecilia, Franklin, and Asuzena. All of them were able to go to the home of a member, hear a short lesson and play a game. They say a convert with a friend and a calling is likely to stay a member for life, which is our goal, and with this super-sweet ward, we are about to change lives.

Love you all!
Elder Stephen Watts

My comp and I with some other missionaries on our way to the new missionary mid-way through training meeting with the president

Tres Leches y Tres Milagros

Tres Leches is a popular cake here that is wayy tasty that I ate on my birthday. It has no other significance to this week's update, I just thought it gave me a cool title. Now I have the pleasure to tell you about the tres milagros (three miracles). First, a little recap; my companion was mandated 5-8 days of complete rest for his knee injury. Thus, we haven't really been able to do a ton of missionary work. We worked half of the day last Tuesday, and worked half of the day yesterday. Besides that, we've left the house to go to church, the ward activity, the weekly district meeting, and to eat. That's it. We even had our food brought to us two of the days. But, we know that God blesses us according to our works, and our desires, and while we felt that we should abide by strict obedience to the doctor's orders, we strongly desired to be working.

The half day that we had on Tuesday we spent telling everyone we knew about the ward activity that would take place on Saturday. On Thursday, we had divisions, and I went out with one of the zone leaders, and asked if we could spend another half day in my area before going to his, so that we could remind everyone of the ward activity. The activity was a special missionary movie night, where everyone was supposed to bring a friend who wasn't a member to a showing of the Restoration. We arrived, and one by one, so did many of the ward members. I got really excited when one of the ward members showed up with people that I didn't recognize, but it turns out they just bought their extendend family. None of our investigators showed up. I took a little solice in the fact that the zone leaders also failed to bring investigators to the activity, but I still felt like a failure. We started the movie without a single non-member, nor inactive member present. Then half-way through (note that the start time of the movie was 4, yet we didn't start until 4:45, so now we're talking about the time the activity was supposed to be wrapping up), my favorite investigator, Asuzena walked in with her kids. After the movie finished, the ward mission leader invited some of the members to bear their testimonies and the spirit was so strong. Along with many others, our investigator began to tear up. She told us that she would love to see the part of the movie that she missed and continue learning about Christ's church from us.

Miracle number two: We began teaching this week a man who is 92 years old. I guess he's close enough to the grave that the veil is a little thin for him, because he can't see well enough to read, nor walk well enough to get to church which is just 4 blocks away, but he said that he knows the church is true. We invited him to pray for the strength to walk to church and he did. When I returned to visit him with the ZL, he had forgotten what time church started. We reminded him that it was 9 in the morning, and that we would pass by his house that morning. When we passed by his house, we were excited to find that he was ready to go. It took us 35 minutes to walk those 4 blocks, and while we weren't exactly on time, we were in time for the sacrament. Shortly thereafter, his daughter showed up thinking her dad had wandered off due to old age. We invited her to stay for Gospel Principles class and she did. It was awesome. We have passed by his house whenever occasion permits to read the Book of Mormon to him, so that he can know by the power of the Holy Ghost that it is true.

Miracle number three: we began working again yesterday for a half day, and my companion said his leg didn't hurt one bit. The day before he felt it begin to hurt walking home from lunch. By our obedience to the doctor's (and our ZL's) orders, we witnessed the blessing of a miraculously healed leg of my companion. It doesn't even bother him to run.

Love you all!
Elder Stephen Watts

The custom here is to egg people on their birthdays. Keep in mind that this experience was extremely gross and our house still smells like raw eggs.​