Hola from Esteli! I made it!

MOMMASITA,

¿Como està? I hope that all is well at home right now! I know, the first thing you want to know is why I was not able to call on Tuesday. Trust me, I seriously feel so bad about that. We got to the airport a good 3.5 hours before our flight, so the plan was to have plenty of time to call, but we had to wait for 1.5 hours to finally have workers at the desks to check our baggage!! It was so frustrating! The whole time I was thinking about how I was losing time to call. And the whole time, it did not help that I was unfortunately diseased with diarrhea. Not a fun experience! We finally made it and I went to go call to at least tell you that I had no time to talk because we were just about to board, but of course, the pay phones were out of service... basically, I just wasn't meant to call home, but I knew you were going to lose sleep over it, so I felt so bad when I couldn't. 

After that though, the flights went just fine and we got on a bus to go to the mission presidents house. As we got on, they were handing us breakfast, a McSomething from McDonalds. For those of you who don't know, I don't really like McDonalds at all, but honestly, I was so hungry I didn't even care! haha

Arriving at the Mission Home on a bus.

Me with President and Sister Collado.

 We went to the presidents house and had an initial interview where he told us who our trainer would be and where our first area was. My trainer is indeed Elder Alfaro, and he is from Costa Rica. He is a native Spanish speaker, but unfortunately (for me) he speaks very good english. This is good for when I have moments  that I need to communicate something, because I can do it in English, but the temptation to speak just English is so real. I need to learn Spanish, and speaking English is not going to help me do that...imagine that.

My new companion and trainer Elder Alfaro.

My first area is Estelì. You can go ahead and look it up on google maps. It is actually the most mild (in temp) area in the entire mission! That is perfect, except it is still so hot... and it is also one of the richest cities in Nicaragua, behind Managua. So it is definitely more up to date that other places. That being said, it is still a very poor and humble area. Just what I was expecting.

New missionary paperwork and training at the mission home.

After all of the activities at the presidents house, the trainers came and we left for the three hour bus ride for Estelì. So long, and so hot. We finally arrived, and luckily my luggage was unharmed! haha Elder Alfaro asked me if I wanted to stay and unpack, or if I wanted to head out and visit some recent converts. Trying to be the best missionary I could be, I opted to go out! That is the moment I discovered how hard it is to understand Nica Spanish... Great! Seriously they talk so fast, it is not even real, and they take out so many of the ``s`` in their words!!! Its like a whole new language! The house, if you want to call it that, is tiny tiny tiny! haha I will send pictures to follow! It is just one room that hardly fits two beds and two desks, and a bathroom. But it is actually pretty nice and up to date. We are one of the only ones in the area with semi warm water to shower with!! haha

                                     The room. To put it in perspective, I don't really fit in the bed...                                                                                   but at least we have them!! haha and a mini-fridge!

The bathroom, equipped with a functioning toilet,a warmish water shower, and a nice sink :) one of  the better ones in the zone from what i have heard. One elder was complaining because he has been using a bucket to shower the last few days...

Honestly, things have actually been super great and super different. We do so much walking and that contributes to the heat, imagine that. It will seriously take some getting used to as far as the heat goes,especially because this is the coldest area! As far as teaching people goes, it is so weird! Every person here will let you into their house and listen to you! No one denies an opportunity to hear about Christ. Now the Evangelic people here just let us in to argue,which is fine, we just let them talk, and we leave them with our testimonies and then we leave! But all of the other religious people are very open to listen! teaching them is the easy part. 

What I have discovered is that it is getting them to follow through with their commitments that is hard. Elder Alfaro taught me a phrase that everyone uses when they want to say yes to something they they aren't going to do: ``Voy a hacer todo posible`` in English meaning I will do everything possible. That basically means they aren't going to do it..I haven't gotten that much yet though. We have committed about 8 people to baptism this week. In order for people to be baptized here, they have to attend church 2 times. We only had three of those investigators at church yesterday. Elder Alfaro has informed me that when they actually come to church, they will probably be baptized, so will see if that proves to be true. If so, we will have a baptism this Saturday, July 5. That will be my first one in the mission, hopefully with many following.

Elder Alfaro only likes to eat lunch. Being the scared trainee companion, I never questioned it much, I just went without breakfast or dinner the first few days. Finally, it was just unbearable. I told him that I needed food! We always have a lunch appointment at Hna. Ana`s house. She is a member in the ward, and we pay her c$1600 a month for lunch every day. ($1 is equal to c$25) I don't want to do the math, but if I am seeing this right, its about $2 a meal. Otherwise we just buy stuff from the shops that people run inside of their houses. We finally had the opportunity to go to the supermarket today, thank goodness for pday. I stocked up on food, but honestly mostly just snack stuff, cause we have no means of cooking anything :) I have not experienced any weird food yet, and I don't plan on it while I'm here, because all we ever get from Hna. Ana is some variation of chicken, rice and beans haha.

There is also a member  that does our laundry for us too. We pay here c$300 a month, so it is very very cheap! 

Funny story: (no intention of bashing other religions)

One day, it began raining super hard, and we just kept walking through it. I was literally soaked to the bone. Obviously E.Alfaro could tell that I was having doubts in my head, because he then said ``i wonder what the Jehovas Witnesses are doing right now.`` Obviously nothing needed to be said, but that gave me the motivation to push on. Take it how you will, but I took it to mean that they are probably sitting out under some protection from the rain. I did not want to do that, so I kept on walking.

Spiritual Thought:

I was reading in 1 Nefi because our mission president made it a goal that we read the way through the Book of Mormon while we are being trained, and I was reading about Lehi`s dream about the tree of life. I believe it is in verse 12, he talks about how when he partook of the fruit of tree of life, he was filled with great joy and he desired to share it with other people. That needs to be us, as we partake of the gospel, and the blessings it brings to our lives. We need to have that desire to share the gospel with others! We know that this is something that will bless the life of anyone who participates. Whether they are in a bad situation or not, we know that the gospel blesses all people. I encourage everyone to share the gospel with a friend any way you know how. If you are unsure, ask the missionaries for help. And if you are not a member already, start working on that. Talk to someone who is a member. Come to church and listen to the messages we have to share, and you can feel that it is true by the power of the Holy Ghost.

I hope you have had a good week and I hope all is well at home! If you have questions please ask. And if there are things that I left out, let me know and I can touch on them next week! Love you all!

Love
Elder Moser

A few more pics...

                             Probably the nicest location in all of Nicaragua.Yes, that is a Burger King                                                                        in the bottom corner, and yes, I've been there twice.

                                     Us at Burger King after playing soccer all morning long at the Church.

Don't be fooled by these pictures,next week I will have some to share  that will really portray Nicaragua a little better!

                     Just a quick picture using the computers. The places are called cybers and they have                                                  4-5 computers that you can pay to use. They are all over and super cheap too!

Goodbye CCM...Hello Nicaragua!

Mom!

To start off, I will answer some of your questions. There are 8 of us in total that will be going on the same flight to Nicaragua. The four in my district and then there are four others that arrived the same day as us, but from another district. I will probably try to call around 2 or 3 your time, if all is well. Try not to stay up for me;) 

The flood I wrote about last week was indeed all from just rain. We were all inside while it was raining/flooding so I don't know exactly how much or how heavy the rain was, but I would imagine pretty hard! haha

As far as the food goes, I have been eating a lot of peanut butter and Nutella sandwiches to get my fill of home in before I am completely cut off from any chance at normal food! Also I have had a lot of cereal for the same reason! but the real food here is still very good! I am a fan, and I'm sure I will love it in Nicaragua also, as long as it doesn't make me sick. But I'm not holding my breath ;)

Now to start the good stuff. I have had quite a great week this week! Elder Gates and I made a commitment one day that we would speak only Spanish one day this week. I believe that it was Thursday. We did really well, and we even carried it in to Friday, but we didn't do quite as well on Friday. It got a little difficult on Friday because we had to talk to a lot of people that don't speak Spanish super well. We were doing some in field orientation stuff. So as far as the Spanish goes, I feel super ready, in fact I know that I am speaking at a functional level. All I need to do is learn the endless amounts of vocabulary that there are to learn. 

Our last week of lessons went really well! or at least Elder Gates and I felt so. It is kind of hard sometimes because he and I always come out of the lessons feeling super pumped and like we did a great job, but Elder Campbell just always seems to have some problem with the lessons. I wish that we could have had lessons that pleased all three of us one day. Hopefully things will be just slightly different in the field, because it is sort of discouraging when not all three of us feel like we had a great lesson. 

It is starting to get so crowded here, I am leaving at the perfect time! We got here when there were about 300 people here at the CCM. Now there are about 600. And in a month or so, there will be about 1100. yes both 1´s and both 0´s were intended. It is already super crowded in the comedor and during gym time so I don't know what people are going to do when there is 4x the amount when I arrived! anyway, good luck!

Packing up my stuff has really made it real, and I am now so anxious to get out of the protection of the CCM! Don't get me wrong, my time here was great, but I'm ready to go! I'm ready to see the place I will serve, to get to know the people and culture I will be surrounded by. I don't really feel too nervous right now, it is really weird. I think I am just too excited! 

Thanks for the pictures. The triplets are absolutely the cutest ever. 

Love you!

Elder Moser

Lots of pics this week...Enjoy!

                                       Me soaked in the rain... I let someone borrow my umbrella earlier                                                                              and they hadn't returned it yet... They did return it later though :)

                                                          Me with my favorite teacher!! Hno. Silva!

                                                                Me with Hno. Silva and Hno. León

                                                                      The group with Hno. Silva

                                              Esteban! the coolest chef worker in the comedor!!

With Hno. Sainz

With Hno. Kemish Martinez

With Hno. Mosiah Martinez

Hno. Contreras

With Hno. (Pavo) Palma. Did I explain the story about pavonearse?

With the Branch Presidency

President Tenorio! the best branch president in the CCM!

Our companionship shadows! Haha

Hno. Montez. I love him so much and he is such a spiritual soul!!

                                             The song that Elder Gates and I took part in writing!                                                    Too many inside jokes in one song...I will have to explain after the mission! :)

Hola from Mexico...Week 5!

Dear Mamma!

So this was a very interesting week. Last Tuesday night, the night of my Pday after I emailed, we had a devotional as usual. But this one was not really a typical one. First, and really just kind of a side note, Elder Eric Mika (my favorite player on the BYU basketball team) gave the opening prayer for this devotional, because it was being streamed from Provo live. Second, and really the main focus point, the auditorium where devotionals are held here, flooded. Around 20 minutes into the devotional, the district leader from the other district in our zone got up and went over to talk to President Pratt. We happened to be sitting front row at this devotional, and I wondered what in the world could be so important that this elder needed to talk to President Pratt in the middle of a devotional, but then I look to the right and I see water literally gushing underneath the two doors in the front of the auditorium. This is really hard to describe without any kind of visual or anything, but water continued to gush in from underneath these doors for the rest of the 40 minutes that we had left of the devotional. The front 4 rows had to be moved to the back( that included me) to keep from being swept away in the rushing water in the front of the auditorium. Then a bunch of workers showed up and started brooming the water from where it was coming in to another exit on the other side of the building. If this didn't make sense, you should probably just ask me in 2 years when I get back cause there's no better way to describe it in person. Anyway, not only was the auditorium flooded, but literally all of the streets were flooded also. I think it might be more appropriate to refer to them as rivers at that particular moment... haha anyway, that was a really funny and actually really fun experience! 

This week, we actually taught our first REAL investigator!! This doesn't normally happen, but our teacher, Hno. Silva had us all write letters to his cousin who lives here and she agreed to come and let us talk to her for a little bit on Saturday! It was honestly a super scary experience, because it was actually real. But we taught her all together as a district (all 7 of us) and it turned out to be really good! There were a lot of things that we were able to learn from it, but overall, I think that we did very good, and I know that the spirit was present and I know that she definitely felt something in that room! It would be really cool to hear if anything ever came from that! 

That is really all of the noteworthy experiences I have had this week. Things are really just becoming a big routine here at the CCM, and I am becoming really really anxious to get out into Nicaragua and teach more REAL investigators! As always, Spanish is getting easier and easier, but it is hard to keep myself always speaking just Spanish because my whole district can speak perfect English, so naturally we speak English. Were working on it though! I just really hope that I have a trainer that only speaks Spanish. That is like the one thing I need that I think will finally make me completely comfortable with the language! I have my fingers crossed!

I hope that everything is going well around there! I guess I don't really have a whole lot to say, because I am just so anxious to get to Nicaragua! Good Luck! Te amo!

Love
Elder Moser

PS some informational things, I will be emailing on Monday next week because I leave early Tuesday morning. I haven't gotten all of my information yet, but I'll keep you guys updated as best I can! love you

PPS just feel as though I should proclaim to all the fathers out there, Happy Belated Fathers Day! Hope it was a good one!

Pics for the week...

                                     View from the roof of the Thomas S. Monson Building.                                                                          A location only known by a select few, me being one of them :)

                          One of the workers at the comedor, he has become one of our favorites.                                                                   He helped us learn a traba lingua (tongue twister)

                                                        First hair cut as a missionary!!

                                                      Companionship haircut time!!

                                Snuck a selfie with President and Sister Pratt in the background!

Hola from Mexico...Week 4!

Momma!!

Great to hear from you, and to hear how everything is going! Again, it is really great to get pictures, I really enjoy seeing how things are going! I have been really lucky with the weather here in Mexico so far! It has been very mild and the combination of that and my short sleeve shirts has been just dandy! :)

The days are seriously flying by here and I don't know if I like that or not. I think it is good because I am really antsy to get out and start teaching, but at the same time, I really want to use every minute I have to make sure I am as fully prepared as I can be! It's also pretty difficult sometimes because I am pretty tired a lot, but I try not to let that get in the way too much. I think I can blame that on the fact that I really started my mission with only 2 hours of sleep. That was probably my worst decision. haha but not to worry, everything is going quite smoothly!

We got to go to the Temple today!! It was super cool, and you guys know how much I love seeing temples. Although it was kind of sad that we did not get to go through (because it is closed for renovations.) I really love temples...inside and out!

 I still really appreciated the fact that we got to go to the visitors center! They also have a really cool visitors center here, so that was a plus! I think I like it a little better than Salt Lake's visitors centers?? Just maybe!

We got a new district in our branch this week, so that was pretty exciting. And also, three friends from BYU arrived on that same day, but none of them are in my branch. Elder Brady, Elder Montierth, and Elder Peery. But you probably wouldnt know them ;) Anyway, it was kind of fun to be the older and wiser missionaries for our new district, and no longer the ones that are the little babies! haha

But on that same note, many people who I got kind of close with also left this week. That includes the old district that was in our branch. We had a really good last week and I really enjoyed helping them with Spanish. Not only them, but I really got even closer with a few latinos! Elder Sanchez was the one that I got closest with, because when I would wear my sign that says "solo hablo español," he would always try to trick me by speaking a little bit of english and seeing if I could understand him. (I hope that wasn't confusing.) Basically, he would speak English randomly with me in the comedor or something and if I seemed to understand him, he would get all excited and say "cayo en mi trampa!" which means that I fell into his trap. Anyway, I really got super close to him, and it was kind of sad to say goodbye! The other latino that we got close to was Elder Cruz. He would sit with us at all of our meals and he would always play this game where you put something up for trade that you don't want, and then you play rock. paper, scissors, and the loser has to take it. A lot of times, he would put his tray of food up for the game when he was finished and I lost a couple times, so I would have to go put it away for him. haha they were two super great guys and they gave us great opportunities to practice our Spanish.

Me with Elder Sanchez and Elder Cruz

Elder Sanchez, Elder Gates, me and Elder Cruz

Elder Cruz, me and Elder Romero

Speaking of Spanish, I really am so happy with how well I have been learning and how easy it seems to be! I love learning Spanish, and although sometimes it is rather difficult to stay focused all day, I can really see my progression every day. Along with that, I have really discovered how helpful it was that I took Spanish in high school, because basically all of the grammar concepts just come right back to me as I learn them here! Along with that, teaching the gospel in Spanish is just becoming so much more natural and it is super exciting.

That being said, I did have a really discouraging day. We were doing a fake teaching scenario, and I was just starting to say something but my teacher stopped me and told me I shouldn't say that yet. This seemed to happen at least three times, and honestly it was kind of discouraging and made me feel a little less capable. But I got over it pretty quick, because that morning we watched a video,as if our teacher knew we were going to need it later that day, and I would like to share the message... 

It talked about accepting criticism and letting it serve as a guide to build us up. It showed a plant that was not producing fruit, so the gardener pruned it down very low, and the plant seemed to be "crying"(bear with me). The plant asked why the gardener had pruned it down so much, and the gardener said that he wanted to help it to have another chance to produce fruit. The plant then grew and produced fruit, and when the gardener came out to check, the plant said "thank you for loving me enough to hurt me." I had to say the same thing when I was starting to feel discouraged. In our lives, Heavenly Father is the Gardener, and at times he will cut us down, but it is only because He knows our true potential and what we can really become and what we can produce. We need to accept this criticism and tell God, " thank you for loving me enough to hurt me."

I love you all so much and I hope you are all doing well!

Love

Elder Moser

Chokis are absolutely the best thing ever created in this life. Don't even ask about how they compare to Chips Ahoy, because they don't, they are so much better :)

                                            Yes, it exists. Costco pizza at the Comedor! haha