Cody's Mission Blog: August 10, 2016

Hello family,

We had a good week. Good job mom on getting the package here just in time and for the awesome stuff in it. The ties and pics were awesome and the candy and food wasn't half-bad. I loved it. We also celebrated by burning shirts and buying a papa John´s pizza. And Dr. Pepper. And Doritos. And chips and queso. It turned out pretty dang fun. We also found a small tarantula and fried it with our bug spray and lighter flame thrower.

For those that read the blog: Don't worry about my parasites. The meds kicked in and within a day they were gone completely and the symptoms was just a bit of diarrhea. I can now proudly say that I´m parasite free.

Today is the last day of Managua's Santo Domingo celebration and a lot of Managua is closed for it. They just parade the saint through the streets while everyone gets drunk. I literally counted over 100 alcohol vendors getting ready on one section of street.

Zeneida is really cool. She went to church on Sunday and is very excited for her baptism on the 20th. Also we had a really guy show up to church on Sunday named Carlos. A few months ago the missionaries just invited him to church and on Sunday morning he woke up and, "something woke up inside of him" and he knew he had to go to church to see what it was like. The only problem is that in priesthood a couple members started talking about some stuff that is definitely not church doctrine and I think might of left a bit of a bad impression. Fortunately when all was said and done he said he had a good experience in church and wants to come back this week. Aaron was out of town and couldn't come and Oliver had to work so they didn't go. Aaron did pass his baptismal interview and is ready to be baptized but he´s still not 100% sure he wants to. So we´ll do everything we can to help him be ready for this Saturday. Please pray for him!! Also Mercedes, who is ready for baptism but can´t get permission, didn't get permission from either of her parents. Please continue praying that they can soften their hearts and let her get baptized. If not, we´ll have to wait until she turns 18 in December and no longer needs parental permission. We struggled finding new people this week.

We've been teaching Rosa and Coco about the temple and they're really excited to go but they're concerned they won´t be able to save enough money in one year for them to take the trip out to Honduras. We broke down how much they´d have to save every week to save up enough money to be ready in one year and then we had a really spiritual experience. The spirit told me to promise them that if they remained faithful in the church and always paid their tithing that they'd be able to save sufficient money in the one year to go to the temple together in Honduras. It was one of the first times in my life I felt like the spirit was actually talking through me and that I wasn't the one actually talking. It´s a feeling I´d like to have a lot more. It was a big testimony builder for me that us missionaries are here more than anything to be a means by which the spirit can teach people.

Elder Petty has a hurt knee and will be out for about a week resting it so he can't work in the area. I'll probably be working mostly with priests this week while Elder Petty stays at a member´s house. Yesterday I worked a bit with the mission leader and then with a 16 yr old priest named Norman. He´s pretty cool and I think I´ll be working with him for several days. Hopefully this will help him want to serve a mission later because right now I don´t think he´s too excited for it. Please pray for Elder Petty that his knee can get better so he can get back out and work.

We finally have a senior couple that´s coming in the end of October. If the guy is going to be financial sec like Elder Beals was then I´ll probably have to be in the office until he comes and still have to train him for 6 weeks. I had kind of thought I´d be getting out of here in the beginning of October. It´s obviously still undecided but that would be very difficult if I was in the office for 11 months of my mission. The current record for a single missionary in the last 3 years is 8.5 months which I´m already on track to beat.

Love you!!

Have a great week!

Elder Smith