Cody's Mission Blog: This is weird

October 10, 2016

Hello family!! Happy birthday yesterday mom!

Well... a lot has changed haha. I'm not in the office anymore obviously.

My new area is Las Palmas, which is just like two wards to the North of San Judas, still in Managua. My new companion is Elder Evans. I'm finishing his training. He got to Nicaragua last change. I'm a ZL now in Zona Managua so I'm learning a lot about my responsiibilities and stuff very quickly.

Elder Evans is from Fresno california and studied at Arizona State University for a year before coming out. He's actually like a month older than me. He's awesome! I couldn't have asked for a better son. His spanish is pretty dang good for the time he has on the mission and he works really hard to improve it, he doesn't have any fear or anything of teaching, he just goes for it and it's awesome. We get along really well.

The area is a bit of a tough one. It's pretty hard to get people to let you into their houses and teach them but the members and ward here are awesome! They love giving us references and helping us out. Las Palmas is actually the first ward and chapel that was made here in Nicaragua. The chapel is really big (it's been rebuilt already since the first one that was constructed) and has AC (hallelujia (sp?)) We have some investigators... A bunch that sucked yesterday and wouldn't go to church and then a really cool guy named Guillermo and his two kids, Katerine (age 19) and Guillermo Jr (11) that comes to church on his own every Sunday. Unfortunately we can't teach them during the week due to a home situation but they study the pamphlets we leave during the week and we also teach them in the church on Sundays. The two kids have a fecha for the 22nd and the dad will be a bit later. The ward meets at 10 and another ward meets in the same building at 8. I'm happy we get to go at 10 and not 8:) For how great the ward is it's pretty small, only 60 people were in church on Sunday.

The house is really good for a normal missionary house. It's just me and Elder Evans in there so it's a lot quieter than I'm used to. The food isn't nearly as good haha. I'm back to rice and beans and meat, and I'm remembering very quickly that I don't like rice anymore. But I still like beans. It's not a big deal that I don't have a hot shower anymore because now that there's no AC either a cold shower is very refreshing. And it's really not even that cold. We live on the same property as some pretty well off members. We pay them to make our lunch and they usually just throw in breakfast most mornings as a treat. I've also noticed that I'm way more hungry now that I'm actively working so much more every day instead of sitting in front of a computer or going everywhere in a taxi. For dinner I'm pretty much still on the same chips and coke routine I've enjoyed my whole mission. You can't beat it.

Today for Pday the zone got together in a restaurant in my area and we had lunch. I just got burgers, fries, onion rings, and ice cream. The onion rings were the best part.

Tomorrow we have interviews with President Brown which I'm looking forward to. President Brown is awesome.

I'm sure I left out some sort of vital information so make sure you just respond with some specific questions so I can fill you in.

Well, have a great week!

Love you!

Elder Smith