EARTHQUAKE!

January 4, 2016

I guess the exciting part of the week was that on the morning of New Years Eve at like 5 AM there was a category 5.6 earthquake centered right here in Masatepe.  And the only person in all of Masatepe and the surrounding towns to sleep through it was...........  me.  Yep I was mad.  Right when it ended Elder Nave woke me up and was like dude, that was a sick earthquake.  Apparently it was going on for like 3 or 4 minutes and he didn't wake me up.  But there wasn't any damage or anything in Masatepe that I know of.  Apparently there are just a ton of earthquakes all the time in Nicaragua.

So ya it´s definitely been a good week.  We´ve been working hard teaching Anyel, Henry, and familia Arias.  Anyel is soooo amazing.  We never teach him anything.  He just already knows everything and is one step ahead of us.  Maybe we can get him this week when we teach him lesson 5 (priesthood, temples etc.).  Henry is really cool too but not quite as cool.  His girlfriend is giving him a lot of nudges to do his homework and everything but he does it willingly.  The nudges don´t hurt though. Family Arias is going well.  We already baptized Alfredo and Victoria and now we´re focusing on Dominga (age 13) and Erika (age 9).  We´re also focusing on Mera the mom and Leopoldina the Grandma but they aren't progressing quite as fast.  We also focused really hard on Carolina to get her confirmed this week.

  So some people have asked about what happens on New Years Eve in Nicaragua...  Basically it´s a lot like Christmas Eve.  Everyone gets super drunk and then at midnight they go absolutely crazy with fireworks.  The fireworks here are way more about noise than the fire.  At midnight it was soooo loud.  Also everyone eats rice and chicken in an orange sauce and gets together and most people do a piñata.  It´s quite a party.

This week familia Arias gave us some weird food.  I ate cow tongue earlier this week.  I thought it tasted a bit weird and figured it was some animal I don´t usually eat like goat or something but nope, she told me after that it was cow tongue.  It was ok but not that great.  Also yesterday they gave us pig head meat.  I have no idea what part of the head it was but I got lucky I think because I just got a solid chunk of meat.  Other people got like ears and other interesting stuff.  The head meat was also ok but not great.  Meat here just isn´t the same.  Not so trustworthy either.

We had a pretty dang good Sunday here.  We got 8 people to church.  But not Carolina.  She went on a surprise trip to Granada on Saturday night and didn't come home until after church.  If she doesn´t get confirmed this week she´ll have to get rebaptized.  In the morning we got Reina and sent her to church.  She is an investigator that goes to church a lot but has some obstacles in the way so she can´t get baptized for a bit.  We went to familia Areas and Erika and Dominga came (as well as Alfredo and Victoria).  So there were three investigators in church that we brought.  Anyel showed up on his own.  Henry showed up with his girlfriend. And the members just brought three other people that we´re going to teach this week.  Sorry I don´t really know them yet.

So on Saturday will be the baptisms of Anyel and Henry.  Please be sure to pray for Anyel, Henry, Carolina, Familia Arias, and Jonathan (went with member to church this week)

Love,

Elder Smith

For breakfast we made tajadas and maduro which is fried platano (plantain in english I think)  Tajadas are made with hard platano and maduro with soft platanos

Oreo with fried platano