MOMBACHO

February 20, 2017

Hello Family!!

   I apologize in advance because the keyboard in this internet cafe thing is pretty awful.  We had a great week, and were fed spiritually on many occasions.

   On monday that awkward little patch on the back of my neck that my dress shirt collar covers and my t shirt doesnt got fried when we went to the laguna and that bugged me for a couple days.  But now it's just a beautiful tan.  I've definitely gotten a lot tanner already in my week and a half in Masaya.  

   The highlight of the week was Tuesday, when Elder Rasband, President Christensen (presidency of the 70), Elder Duncan, and Elder Ochoa (central america area 70s) came with their wives and spoke to the two missions in Nicaragua.  The other authorities respectively gave the majority of the time for Elder Rasband to speak and he had a great message.   He doesnt speak spanish so he had an interpreter.  He explained that he came to Nicaragua to speak to the President, Daniel Ortega and his wife.  We're hoping he's working on opening the doorway with the government so we can get a temple here.  PRAY FOR NICARAGUA!!!!  We want a temple!!!  So that was awesome.  

   We're also doing a lot better in the area.  We visited Oscar and his partner with a cool family from the ward and talked about marriage and going to church and I guess the lesson went well because they both went to church and want to get married.  Oscar's partner's name is Margarita.  Also we got a reference for a lady named Myra, who is the girlfriend of a return missionary here in Masaya.  She's really positive and went to church with her boyfriend.  We also have another part member family we're  teaching from a reference but unfortunately they weren't able to make it to church.  

   We did divisions with two of the district leaders in our zone this week and it went very well.  One was with Elder Vasquez who was in Juigalpa at the same time as me in my training.  I love the guy.  We found a ton of new investigators in the divisions but none of them turned out very positive.  

This Saturday the youth in our stake had a fundraiser where they raised money for a youth camp by cooking traditional foods from other central american countries.  They made a good attempt but it all ended up tasting like the same old nica food to me.

   Today we've had an awesome pday so far.  We took a bus up to the top of Mombacho (a dormant volcano)  We hiked around one of the craters and there was some really cool jungle stuff and the view from the top was incredible, you could see Granada, lake Nicaragua, Masaya, Volcan Masaya etc.  The top of the volcano was about 4,200 feet, which isn't high for us utahns but for Nicaragua it's super high. We were in the clouds for a while and it was probably the coldest Ive been in Nicaragua other than in my cold showers.   Then we went to papa johns (you can't get mad because I know you're at taco bandito!!)  

   So ya!!  I'm doing great!! 

Love you!

Elder Smith

ps tomorrow we have multizones