Dragon Fruit in the Rain Forest

Since I ran out of time for the blog last week, I figured I'd go ahead an write it first thing this week. 

We've had the opportunity to work with some pretty incredible investigators recently. First, I want to tell you about Claudia. She met the missionaries for the first time months ago. She was very Catholic at the time, but agreed to begin reading the Book of Mormon. Her book is probably the most beautiful book I've seen. Every page has highlighter and pen markings, along with 2-6 sticky notes with things she liked and questions she had. She is currently in the book of Helaman. She decided to be baptized this Saturday :) I can't wait. We've been meeting with her nearly every day for the past few weeks, and she might be about the coolest investigator of all time here in Nicaragua. 

Last week, we met a man named Oscar and taught him about the Restoration and Book of Mormon and in 1 week, he read up until the book of Ether! Crazy how white the field is :)

We had a Zone meeting last Tuesday and President presented a new plan of action for missionary work here that consists of working almost solely with partial families and member references. When we presented the plan to the ward, we received an over-abundance of references for inactive families that are incomplete (some family members never baptized). I'm pretty excited to get working with them. Reactivating and baptizing at the same time sounds pretty great, huh?

Also, we were told that a good thing to do would be to start playing basketball and soccer with the youth and our investigators, so I get to ball 3 days a week :D

Today, we taxied, hiked, hitchhiked, and hiked some more to do some rain forest adventuring.  Attached are some mountain views from this gorgeous area and some monkeys we found. The fruit we're enjoying (that we found) is Pitaya or Dragon Fruit. Wayy good. The butterfly had about a foot-long wingspan, and its wings were bright blue inside.

Love you all!
Elder Stephen Watts

Halloween

Hey all,

I really don't have time for a blog this week, just know that I love you all. This area's continued to be quite the challenge for me, but it's been a good refinement of my faith. This week went wayy smoother than the last and I'm looking forward to an even better week next week! Here's a photo of my district, I'm hoping somehow Mom can get a hold of the picture taken of the whole zone at our Halloween Party earlier this morning. 

Much Love!
Elder Stephen Watts

Zone Picture

Who am I to train a new missionary?

It has been a crazy week here in La Concepción, and full of challenges. First of all, the area is giant! If you check out google maps, my area stretches from San Carlos to Rigoberto Lopez Perez, and from 19 de Julio to Pikin Guerrero. I'm still pretty lost, and the buses only run along the highway, everywhere else we have to take a taxi. My companion, being brand new, is still learning how to teach, and doesn't have a vast knowledge of the doctrine yet. Our bishop told me that he hasn't been able to trust missionaries in the past, and that our mission president is crazy for putting two missionaries with such little experience in the same area. My first time meeting him consisted of him reprimanding us as if he was our mission president or something. He refuses to give missionaries keys to the chapel, and we are not invited to ward council. In my old area, going door to door was a perfectly valid method of finding new investigators. Here, it is much harder to enter a house that way, and we are forced to work through member references almost exclusively. Needless to say, I've had the privilege to wonder, "who am I to train a new missionary, in an unfamiliar area, without much experience, nor fluency in Spanish?"

The cool thing is, all this wondering has been an incredible testimony building experience. I reflected once again on how my mission president told me that I was chosen before even coming to the Earth to be a missionary here in Nicaragua. Throughout my life, I've been prepared to excel in this calling in so many ways, from Spanish ability to gospel knowledge, maturity to firmness of testimony, I came into this mission ready to preach. Thus, I do not doubt that I can be an effective trainer and senior companion here, despite my limited time in the mission.

We had an absolutely beautiful baptism last Sunday, but we also had the privilege of draining the font Saturday when a different almost-convert went AWOL. How the mission has its ups and downs! My companion and I have been getting along really well, and we have a few quality investigators to be excited about. Can't wait to tell you more about 'em when I have more time!

Love,
Elder Stephen Watts

La Concepción

Hello from La Concepción!

Today was exchanges, and I was sent out here to a small town called La Concepción, in the Masatepe zone. I absolutely love everything I've been hearing about my new area: It's not hot. They've baptized every week so far this month, and we have two baptisms lined up for this week. The house is way fancy. We have someone that cleans the house for us. Someone washes our clothes for us. We are served breakfast and lunch daily, and dinner 5 days a week. It's not hot. It's not dusty. Everything is cheaper here. It's absolutely gorgeous! (My last area was pretty much slums). Did I mention that it isn't hot? Blessings. 

It's pretty apparent that the missionary that I am replacing is a pretty powerful missionary because he was in the middle of training and was assigned to be zone leader, despite never being district leader. Also because he's baptized every week for the past while. Well, since he left to be zone leader, and I am taking his place, I get to finish training a six week old missionary. His name is Elder Henriquez and he is from El Salvador. I am way excited to be his companion because he is way excited about missionary work. He seems confident in his ability to teach and I believe him. It's going to be a pretty fun change! 

 
I was pretty sad to leave La Trinidad though. When I got to the area, my trainer informed me that he didn't have a single investigator. Three weeks later, still no luck. Then, I got a new trainer, and he taught me how missionary work really should look, and little by little we regained the trust of the members, found golden investigators, and changed the area. We ended that area's 6 month baptism drought and I left behind 3 treasured investigators that should be baptized before the end of the month. It's pretty crazy what the Lord will do if you put your trust in him, and work with all your might. Now, I'm going to have to learn how to work an area that is having success, which, for the moment seems like a whole new rodeo.

I have a ton of really cool photos, but in the craziness of changes and all, I don't have my camera with me right now, so you'll have to wait until next week. 

Love you all!
Elder Stephen Watts

Martha was baptized soon after I left

Flavia's mom, Cecilia, and Flavia's boyfriend were also baptized after I left

These members helped us teach a bunch

These members washed our clothes

These members fed us lunch each day.

Tropical Storm Nate

Beginning last Wednesday evening, and continuing through until Friday were intense rains and lightnings unlike anything I have ever before witnessed. Trees, shacks, and telephone poles toppled and streets turned to rivers. The stretch of road that led from our home to the larger part of our area required about a half mile wade through calf-deep and sometimes knee-deep water. We lost power for the latter-half of Thursday, but, for the most part, we were able to continue our missionary labors. Later, I found out that we were getting a small portion of Hurricane Nate. It was a ton of water for your poor Nevada native. 

Shortly after God baptized the entire city, I had the privilege of witnessing someone that I found and taught take the step of baptism. Those of you that have been keeping up with the blog know that I've been teaching Cecilia and her daughter Flavia for a while now. We were hoping that they could both be baptized last week, but, despite our best efforts, only Flavia was brave enough to accept. Initially, I thought that it would be a problem if we decided to baptize one without the other, but they were both content with being baptized on different days, so we went ahead with it. The service was beautiful and the young women were so excited to teach Flavia all about personal progress and early morning seminary. Later, Cecilia told us that she really did want to be baptized, but not now. We're doing everything we can to help her realize that her problems will work out easier and better if she just gets baptized, but for now, she's not budging.

 
Love you all!
Elder Stephen Watts

P.S. Sorry for not having photo documentation of the storm.

A Conference Miracle

Hey All!

I figure I don't have to write much since I am sending more photo's than usual. In the collection are pictures from today's adventure to the lake, the national palace, and the cathedral in Managua, as well as the White Missionaries Watching Conference in English party. The conference was broadcast from a stake-center sized chapel here in Sandino. Of the 12 missionaries that attended, 7 were American and we were able to watch conference in English in one of the classrooms. We ate food the whole time. It was a party. 

So, I know I've talked about them before, but I'll continue to give the run-down each time I talk about an investigator to jog your guys' memories. We have been teaching Cecilia and her daughter Flavia for about a month now. They have been to church twice and received all of the lessons, but have been afraid to accept baptism. We've been spending a lot of time at their house trying to resolve whatever doubts or fears they might have so that they can receive this blessing. We challenged them to bring whatever questions or doubts they might have to conference and see if by the voice of the prophets or by the voice of the Holy Ghost they wouldn't receive their answers. They attended two sessions of conference and said they know that the speakers were speaking with the power of God. While they never told us what questions they brought to the conference, they did say that they did indeed find answers to all of them. Crazy how that works! I thought that was surely enough for them to accept baptism, yet only the daughter Flavia said she feels she should be baptized. Cecilia is still afraid of something, though she said that if Flavia was having a baptismal interview this Thursday, she might as well have one, too. I'm hoping and praying that she can conquer this fear so that she can be baptized along with Flavia this weekend. Nevertheless, I can see an incredible increase in their testimonies after viewing the prophets speak, and to me, that alone is a miracle.

Love you all!
Elder Stephen Watts

Watching General Conference

P-day at Lake Managua (Lago Xolotlán)

with Elder Solis

The National Palace

Cathedral

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