Hola from Esteli! July 7, 2014

Mother!!!

Wow what a week!!! haha Well since you asked about my companion I guess I will start there... Elder Alfaro is from Costa Rica, and he his from a family of I believe his parents and two other brothers. One of his brothers finished serving here about 1 year ago or so. Yes he has a brother who served in the same exact mission as him before he got here! Anyway, he is only 18 years old... but he looks like he is like 28 or something! He is pretty new in the mission, he has only been out for just over three months. Yeah, that means that he had just finished being trained and then he immediately started training me! He is a very good missionary and knows how to teach the people here in Nicaragua, with more basic stuff and easy to understand examples. His only problem is that he has a hard time waking up and staying awake in the mornings and during study time, but I have learned to get used to that and not let it affect me too much! We have been getting along super well so far, and as more time passes, we have been getting more and more comfortable talking to each other and just joking around and stuff. He learned English from playing video games and watching tv with English subtitles. Although I feel as though there is more to it, cause his English is very good.

My spanish is a different story! I feel like I am super proficient at speaking, but the listening and understanding is still quite the struggle. Obviously I will continue to get better and better with time, but I really want to be able to understand easily. I just need to work on more vocabulary to keep getting better.

The food, as I briefly mentioned last week is all from one lady. Well, she makes us lunch every day, and it is pretty consistent: rice and beans and some sort of something with chicken. haha but it is really good, and as aunt Lori suggested, I think that she is good at cooking to help the white missionaries to not get sick! So that is really comforting. When I want to eat dinner or breakfast, it is basically just snacks or something from a "pulperìa" which is a small shop with a random assortment of food and snacks and bread. Ill take a picture of one sometime to help you visualize.

I got some physical mail this week! so that was super fun. I think that it was here before I got here, but I didn't know how to check for mail or anything, so I just got it from the zone leaders after they traveled to Managua for something.

I had my first experience with exchanges this week, and that was quite the experience, because I did it twice! The first time was with one of the Zone leaders who is new in the area as well. His name is Elder Fanger. We are both white, and our Spanish is about the same level (although he has been out for almost 8 months) so it made for an interesting day. He came to my area, so it was a real test of how well I remembered my area, because I no longer had Elder Alfaro there to guide me around. Surprisingly, we didn't even get lost all day. Our lessons went really well, and we even found some new investigators! Missionary work isn't as hard as it seems..... sort of :) All went well with Elder Fanger, and then on Friday, we had another day of exchanges and I was with Elder Jacobsen for the day. He is a freshie out in the mission with me. We were in the MTC together, but he was in another district. With his Spanish being close to mine as well, it made for some interesting lessons, but we made it through the day rather well, and I think that we're better for it! haha

Sadly none of the investigators that we have went to church on Sunday, but that is ok, we will just have to work harder this week to do better!

Highlight of the week: I HAD MY FIRST BAPTISM IN THE MISSION!!

It was super cool! Gabriel Jr. is 15 years old and he is in a family of recent converts. It was really easy to teach him, because they all love us and so we would visit their house all the time, and they are all super good faithful converts. So he was super willing to follow in their footsteps! He is the oldest child in the family, and when it came time to see who would baptize him, he asked me to do it! I guess his dad didn't really feel ready to perform a baptism, although he has the priesthood. So I gladly accepted this invitation to baptize him!

It was such a cool experience, but I was super nervous, because it was my first baptism, and it was in Spanish... but I did fine of course!

  First Baptism!!! super exciting! This is Gabriel Jr. 

                           Gabriel Jr. and all of his family and cousins and stuff that live in the area.

Funny story: I had my first ``nacatamale`` this week. Basically, it looks a lot like a tamale. I was really enjoying this food, and then they decide to inform me that this meal is not the bomb, but it is ``a bomb``, meaning that this food would for sure give me diarrhea, unless I was from Central America. I reluctantly continued to eat this meal while they sat there and laughed about the troubles that I was going to have. Little did they know that there are rumors that I have been adopted, and I think this was the ultimate test to discover that these are not rumors. Without going into too much detail, lets just say I have been feeling pretty solid since I got here in Nicaragua, and that nacatamale didn't change that ;) PS I think I really am adopted...

                             This was my experience with the nacatamale. All is well, and the unfortunate                                occurance in Jeremiah 4:19 did not come to pass in the life of Elder Moser ;)

Spiritual thought:

This week, we were talking to a concerned member. she was really feeling kind of bad because she felt like people were judging her family and her because she has a tattoo and she doesn't have a father to her kids around. We assured her that there is no such thing as the perfect family, and that as long as she is doing the things that she can to grow closer to God, it doesn't matter what other people think. I want to share the same message with everyone else. There is no such thing as the perfect family. All of us have our trials and they are all different. We are not here to judge other people or be judged by other people. The only judge that matters in the end is God, and he is going to know what things we have repented of. The opinions of others will not affect God`s view of us, so don't judge others and don't let other`s judgements of you affect you.

Love you all and hope you have a good week!

Elder Moser

A couple more pics...

                            This is more commonly what a normal street in my area looks like. Basically                                 the houses are completely different from one another and they are all vary small.

                             Found this gem under a bridge in a little stream in our area. If you can't tell                                                                     what it is, that would be what a dog skeleton looks like...