Cody's Mission Blog: September 28, 2015

Hello everyone!

Crazy that its been another week. crazy.

You're all welcome for the wonderful email I sent last week, I figured a lot of detail would be good. Thank you for all the emails, it's definitely weird not getting letters every day like the mtc but its ok because now I'm doing real work. But please forgive me if any emails in the future aren't as good as last weeks. just know that Im trying.

Anyway...

This week was good. President Russell had a meeting with the ZLs and our mission goal for baptisms this year is now 2300 and we only have like 1700ish so far so we've got a lot of work to do. Our area goal for baptisms this month is 7, our zone goal is 46. luckily our area has two sets of missionaries: me, hanson, vasquez, naopoto. Both of our baptisms fell this week, Daryl (i spelled her name wrong last week) drank coffee and Daisy had some problems as well but both look like they'll be baptized in october still but not this week because of conference. So keep praying for them. An hombre named Miguel Angel came to church last week and we started teaching him this week. he said he couldn't come to church this week but then he showed up anyway. So now he already has the three times at church that he needs to be baptized so hes likely to be baptized the 17th. Elders Naupoto and Vasquez also have some strong investigators but i don't really know them. We also have an investogator named Yessenia and she's pretty good, she came to church which is a big step but she's living with someone and isn't married. We haven't been able to meet her partner yet so her future will depend greatly on how it goes teaching the law of chastity...

These Nicaraguenses are typically very friendly and nice but they're also liars. Luckily it's fairly easy to tell when they're lying. They're biggest flaw is that they say yes to everything. This explains how we can get like three or four (some days like 6) fetchas (baptismal dates) with people every day and only end up with like four people at church. We go around on sundays to everyone who said they'd go to church and their families open the door and say they aren't home even though we can hear them. But oh well, it is what it is. It's important that you're very direct and bold with the people. If you're not direct the people will never do anything. We do a lot of persuading (especially on sundays).

The spanish is definitely tough. I'm definitely getting better every day but it's still pretty rough. I just need to remember that it's not just going to come in two weeks. Most people say it takes 3 to 6 months to get it so I just need to be patient and keep working hard. I'm better at understanding spanish during lessons because of my missionary vocabulary but on the street when there's less context it's harder. I did manage to get my hair cut today the way I wanted, and they only cut one mole.

It rained every other day this week pretty much (still every day that I wear my less sturdy shoes) but the streak might end today knock on wood because im wearing those shoes and theres no clouds. Man today was hot... it's always hot here but Im getting a little more used to it. oh well

Good job with the mountain biking Peyton, it sounds like you're getting very brave. Hopefully you'll get some sort of scar from your crash (you're welcome now people are going to start calling asking if you're ok). Good luck hunting dad, it seems like cheating to not use a bow in Red Cloud... but that's ok I guess you didn't use a bow for the fanny pack bull.

Love you all

Love Elder Smith

ill try to answer some questions

im staying healthy, this week hasnt been very bad on the bowels, but i definitely can't trust a fart at this point. spanish is frustrating. We just have a faucet thing and an oven and stove and fridge but we never cook anything we just eat cereal and junk food for breakfast and sometimes dinner. We live in a little house, ill send some pics. The clothes were nice and smelled good and were white and ironed but my garments smelled kind of weird so im not sure what she did. We pay her like 300 cordobas a month which is like 12 bucks. We pay our lunch cita 1200 a month. We get 4600 cords (cordobas) a month. honestly the lady that does our clothes is pretty rich and has the only washing machine ive seen. not many people have a machine. we have a little church building, you could see it if you went onto interactive maps on the lds website. i dont have a great pic of it. people wear street clothes to church a lot, some dresses. guys usually have a white shirt and jeans. The branch president never wears slacks. Definitely different than utah haha. thanks for loving bo. We can watch sessions of conf on sat if we bring investigators. i don't know if any will come. it honestly depends if we can convince them to show up to bring them because commitments mean nothing to these people. Thanks for all your details you always send, if i don't respond to them please forgive me but don't stop sending them. I always know the scores of the byu and utah games about as they happen because missionaries ask people to look it up on their phones and then the word spreads like wildfire since every companionship has a phone. Its just like byu to show some promise just to choke and start sucking again. I'm guessing utah did so well against oregon because they probably didn't let clay touch the ball. Good job on candy crush mom, just remember that the level im on is the level of death and in like two months i couldn't pass it. best of luck though, im cheering for you. We're surrounded by mountains but they're kind of far away. Not like in utah for sure.and they're not very tall. a lot of days theres a ton of thunder up in the mountains but never reaches us. im never really in the main part of juigalpa, just in the neighborhoods but id say that some places seem relatively prosperous but a lot of places definitely arent'. They're very very poor here but generally people are happy with what they have. When it rains they stay dry and they usually have a bed/cot to sleep on.

mom, i thought about your birthday last week but Elder Hanson told me it takes like three weeks for mail to get home so i didn't send anything because it wouldve gotten there after your bday anyway. and i don't even know where or how to send mail. So im very sorry but ill send you a special email next week. Happy early Birthday!!!