Cody's Mission Blog: May 11, 2016

Hello Family!!

Talking on Sunday was great! It´s always sad it has to end but hey, Christmas is almost upon us right?

So I don´t really remember everything I told you when we talked on Sunday so I´ll just start from the beginning and I imagine I´ll be forgiven if I repeat something.

At church on Sunday we brought 6 people. It was great because four of them were completely new people that we had contacted last week. It´s always great to get someone for the first time and not have them just lie to you and make up ridiculous excuses. The only problem with that is it means that only two people that we were already teaching went, Silvio and Lillibell (we learned last week her name is Lillibell and not Lissabeth. That´s what happens when latinos give their kids american names, they can´t pronounce them). Lillibell has now gone three times to church in a row but not without a bit of encouragement and pushing and prodding. But we´re working with her and her partner. She lacks a lot on the part of keeping certain commandments but please pray for her so she can be worthy to get baptized. Silvio came and it was his birthday. He wasn´t going to come but we got him to go and then go to his birthday party in Masaya after church. He really does want an answer to his prayers and he has a lot of faith. Pleas pray for him that he can receive his answer this week. He´s to the point where as soon as he receives his answer he wants to get baptized so if it comes before Saturday, we´ll have a baptism on Saturday. So please pray also that he´ll be able to recognize the answer when it does come also.

One person that came to church was Daniela, the daughter of the really cool family we found (the one that thought Joseph Smith was black). She went even though she´s a really big baptist expecting that her mom was going to show up and meet us but something happened and she couldn´t come which was very disappointing but Daniela enjoyed church. Also a lady named Kenia came and brought her niece. Kenia is really cool and sincere. Next week I think she´s going to bring her 2 year old and 5 year old so it could be a bit of a jungle in there but it´s ok. The sad thing is that the niece she brought on Sunday lives pretty far away and already left. She was just here visiting. The other new person is a lady named Oneida. She is cool and was a bit of a miracle. We were calling her in the morning and she had left the house to run an errand. And when someone tells you that in Nicaragua it´s usually a stupid excuse and they stay out for a long time to not have to go to church. But she said she´d call us at 8:55 when she got home, so we figured she´d probably never call and we were a bit sad. So we rented a taxi in the morning that was just going bang bang bang from the church to an investigators house back to the church to drop them off to another investigator etc. So at 8:55 I get a call from her and she said she was just walking out of her house to go to church so we just said stay right there and we´ll be there in two minutes in a taxi. It was such an awesome, atypical thing for a nica to do.

Something sad that happened yesterday: We passed a group of like 4 12 year old kids as we were leaving the area at night and they just walked past. And then like 10 seconds later I felt a sharp pain on my elbow where a rock the size of my fist hit me. The stupid punks were throwing rocks at us! They missed on the rest of their throws but it really just made me sad that that´s the way these kids end up after being on the streets so early in life. It´s just super sad. It took a lot of restraint to just walk away and not say anything.

For Pday today we didn´t really do anything. We ran some errands. Ate at McDonalds (I had a mcdouble with a junior mcpollo in the middle of the two patty´s. in combo with an ice cream sundae. I´m eating like a king out here. Then I took a nap. It was much needed.

Well I love you! Have fun in these times without weddings coming up or anything where you can relax a bit!

Love,

Elder Smith