Adjusting to a no-sleep kind of life :)

Hola Hola :)

Well this week I think that I will just jump right into it! One of the highlights of the week is that I got a new suit... FOR FREE!!!! At our house, we are the ones that house all of the missionaries when a huge group is in Managua for a meeting or something and they have to stay the night. And it's the same for the missionaries that are leaving for home! They stay in our house, so anyway, one of them, and I don't know who, left a suit behind, and I claimed it!! It fits perfectly as well! The pants might be like 1 inch too long, but it fits well enough to use, so I now have two suits that I almost never wear. And to answer the question, I don't necessarily wear my suit more now that I am in the office, I just attend more meetings that require suits.

So my companion is Elder Clark for the moment, and also technically Elder Chen and Elder Maradiaga. As secretaries, we are all technically companions. And when Elder Clark leaves (which could be before the next Pday possibly) then we will be a trio. Elder Clark is super cool, and he was the financier for the last 6 months, so he has been passing all of his wisdom to me! :)

My companion Elder Clark

Elder Clark (the North American looking one haha)

Elder Chen (the more Asian looking latino that I have really seen, but from Guatamala.)

Elder Maradiaga (from Honduras)

Our schedule here in the office is really nice! We work in the office all day on Mondays. On Tuesday to Thursday, we are supposed to be in the office until 2, and then we are supposed to do our studies and get to the area by 4 or 4:30. On Friday we have Pday. And Saturday and Sunday we work in our area all day, so yes, we still have time (normally) to work in our area. When it is super busy, we have to stay in the office doing stuff until later, so sometimes we don't get to the area until pretty late. But this week we have been able to follow the schedule pretty well, because there were not a ton of things to do every day like changes week!

Our house, like I hinted at, is huge, and super nice. We are in charge of housing all of the people when they leave or just don't have a place to sleep for the night because their area is far. But we have a nice kitchen and all that good stuff. And the car is supposed to only be used for office work purposes, so when we go to the area or do things on pday, we normally aren't supposed to use the car. But with all of this nice stuff, I am constantly reminded, "With great power comes great responsibility." There is seriously a million things to do every day. Because we have a car, we get the surprise calls to do random things. But I really like serving in this position.

The study.

The bedroom/bathroom that we use.

Something that is difficult sometimes though is that we are always in charge of taking people to the airport, whether they go home early for medical or other reasons, or when they are supposed to. That wouldn't be too bad except that the flights are always scheduled super early in the morning, so we have to wake up at like 4am to do it. It is also really rare that we get to bed on time, because we are always figuring things out, sometimes having to make late night runs to the office to grab something for someone, or things like that. So basically, working in the office kind of takes priority over sleep needs... but I can sleep when I am dead! :) I like what Elder Chen and Elder Maradiaga always say(translated to english), "When you accepted the assignment to work in the office, you put your sleep on the alter of God! If you would like your sleep back, you can go ahead and call president Collado and ask him to change you, take a taxi to your new area, and get the normal amount of sleep!" haha super funny when they say it.

But also as the financier, I am in charge of buying food for the meetings that we have. Sometimes it can be a ton of food, I will attach a pic to give you an idea :) haha

  

This is an example of the quantity of food that we bought for a meeting! It was a ton... 

and it was so good!

But like I mentioned, we also get time to work in the area. This week was actually really cool. I spent the week getting to know the branch that we work in a little better, and the members as well. This is the first area I have been in where the members are really willing to work with us. I think the difference is that my Branch President in Estelí had about 20 years in his calling, and my Bishop in La Rotonda had about 10 years in his. But this Branch President here in Ducualí is super willing to work with us because he only has like 4 months in his calling. Time in a calling shouldn't play a role in your willingness to serve, but I am seeing a pattern here. Anyway, we have already seen greater success with the members.

One member gave us a reference and came and visited with us to a young couple with their three kids, Margina and Uriel. I only remember the little girls name, Soy. But we have only been able to teach a little to them, because Uriel has a crazy work schedule so we normally only encounter Margina with the kids. But she is totally going to go to church this Sunday, with or without her husband. She has promised us to wash the clothes on Saturday instead of Sunday so that she will have time no matter what. I am so excited and we are praying that Uriel will be able to come too!

Through our own efforts, we found this drunk man on the street one night, and decided to talk to him for a bit to see how he was doing. After a little, he agreed to let us talk to his wife, and she was a little hard hearted at first, but we were persistent. She told us about how her husband had been a heavy drinker for about 6 months now, literally drunk EVERY DAY FOR 6 MONTHS!! Craziness... But after listening for a bit, she was totally willing to have us visit to help him out of this problem and to help strengthen their marriage. Sadly he is always drunk in the evenings and that's the only time we can get to the area to work, but we were able to pass them on the the Hermanas that work in our area as well! Hopefully they will take good care of them.

Spiritual Thought:

So this week I read a talk from, Dallin H. Oaks entitled "Why do we Serve" It is such a good talk, because it talks about the reasons we do service, and what kinds of rewards we are looking for. He kind of classifies our motives for service in 6 different categories, from best to worst. The worst being service for earthly motives, and the best being service out of pure love, the pure love of Christ. I have read this talk and thought hard about my motives for my service in all aspects of my life. Afterwards, I began to think of how I could make the motives of my service more meaningful. I encourage you all to do the same after reading the talk!
https://www.lds.org/ensign/1984/11/why-do-we-serve?lang=eng

Funny Story (sort of):

So we were leaving the office building one day and Elder Clark told me he had a surprise for me, and that I had to just wait one second. Our office here in Managua is on the second floor of the building and I was feeling lazy so I wanted to take the elevator. After we entered, Elder Clark turned on some "elevator music" on the phone, and I didn't notice, so I was wondering where the elevator music was coming from! I thought maybe it was newly installed or something... but then I figured out it was just him, and we laughed....

Not my best one yet, but it is the best I've got for this week!

Love you all! And be safe this week!

Love, Elder Moser

Time to Enjoy the Air Conditioning!

Hola Hola, from Managua, Nicaragua! Church Headquarters for the Nicaragua Managua North Mission!!

Yes you heard right, I had a slight change in assignment... AGAIN! Sometimes I really think that President Collado is just playing games with me or something. I guess I will start from the beginning:

So on my pday, almost two weeks ago now, we were eating dinner at a members house, and I was washing my dishes when our cell phone rang. It was President Collado himself calling to talk to me. In that moment, he asked how I was doing, how I felt being district leader, and all that good stuff. He then told me that he had big plans for me, and that if I was willing, he wanted me to come and work in the office as the Financial Secretary of the Mission!!!!!!! What the heck?!! Of course I told him that I would, and I was sooooo excited that night! haha

So basically I still had one more week in my area with Elder Alvarado, but honestly, I hardly spent any time in the area with him, because I passed most of my time with the Financer at the time, Elder Clark, so that I could start getting some training and see how things worked right before changes and stuff. I had to learn a lot of things and stuff that apply the week before changes. So basically I was working in the office Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday all day to learn a lot, while my comp, Elder Alvarado worked with some of the other missionaries in the office in our area. All was well and I was learning just fine!

                                           One last picture with Elder Alvarado, the night I left.

 I was also working in our area a little bit, and we were working really hard with an 18 year old boy named Alexis. We have been preparing him for a little while to be baptized on what was the 13th of September, but after doing the interview, we found out that he was actually going to need an interview from President Collado. So we scheduled one for that day, the 13th, in the morning, expecting that maybe we could baptize him afterward if all was well. I was also in the office working with Elder Clark that day, so I didn't really have any idea what was going on with everything. But when it all came down to it, he was good to go as far as President was concerned, but he himself decided that he wanted to wait until the next Saturday to feel just a little more ready. So in this moment, knowing that I was leaving and knowing that he wanted me to baptize him, I initiated plan "ya me voy" or plan I am leaving. That Sunday morning before church, we passed by his house and he was outside so we talked for a bit and I told him that I was not going to be here after Sunday. He then thought about it for a second and asked if it would be ok if he was baptized that Sunday so I could do it. Obviously we accepted, got everything set up, and had his baptism after church that Sunday! Super awesome to do right as I was leaving.

                                                                   Baptism of Alexis

Anyway, the financer life is a super busy one. I pretty much never get to sleep......For instance, Monday was pretty normal, but really busy getting everything ready for all of the new missionaries that would be coming, and for all the ones that were leaving.- Tuesday we had to wake up at like 5 to get all the stuff ready to give breakfast to the new missionaries as they arrived in the airport, and get everything ready for them at presidents house for the meeting. It also didn't help that their luggage didn't come with them on the flight, for some reason it stayed in El salvador. So as the financer, I was in charge of going and buying the necessary supplies for them. Basically on Tuesday we were running around all day. (just to know, I still have Elder Clark with me for a little while to help me continue to train until I feel ready, then he will leave. So right now he is my comp.) We got to bed super late after getting all of the activities done and accounting for the problems that arose! Then on Wednesday, it was another day of running around and prepping things for the missionaries that were leaving. Being new in the office, I was invited to go to the farewell dinner with all of them and President and Hermana Collado. It was super cool, but also kind of weird cause all they were talking about was getting married, and getting married, and doing it soon.... hahha so the whole time I was just thinking "this doesn't apply to me yet, this doesn't apply to me yet" haha anyway, we got to bed at like 12:30 that night, and had to wake up at 3 to accompany all of the people that were leaving to the airport..... that was really cool to do on two and a half hours of sleep. But thank goodness President approved for us to sleep for like three hours when we got back at like 8 to the house. So I at least got a little nap in. (a first on the mission) haha anyway, that is an example of how busy it is....

Our pdays are on Fridays now just to let you know. Super weird. Also we have a car that we use for the secretaries, which is super cool, and necessary for all the things we have to do.

I actually got to drive the truck!! I never thought I would have the opportunity to drive in the mission, but president had a request that I had to take care of while they were all in a meeting, so I had to drive :) it was awesome! (Don't worry, the pic where I was looking away was while we were at a stoplight haha)

Anyway, sorry for the lack of spiritual experiences but I can tell one super quick. The Lord is always here to help us, but we need to always remember that it is through him that we have the opportunities to receive help. I thought for a little while that I lost a receipt that was for a lot of money, which would probably mean that I would have to repay from my pocket the money.... I was really kinda down about this, and finally I just asked in a small prayer in my heart for some help and comfort. A little later, I found the receipt in my pocket..... I felt kind of dumb, but I was also super grateful because I found a lot of comfort in that.

Love you all! Have a great week!

Elder Moser

Another pic...

A random dude that I found walking in the street with a BYU hat. He agreed to take a picture with me, and then afterward I explained that I liked his hat and that I went to that university for a year.

In A Rush!

Hola!!

So the first thing I would like to mention is that all of a sudden President Collado decided that he wanted to cut the emailing time way shorter, so now I only have less than half of the time that I had originally! I'm not a huge fan of that change to be completely honest, but I have to adapt to that one.

So as far as my week goes, it was pretty busy! We started off with an unexpected day with the assistant to the president, Elder Oliva! He called us up on Tuesday morning asking for a favor, to see if we could help him out because he didn't have a companion for the day. We were of course willing to help. His companion left for home this week finishing his mission, so we spent the first half of the day in our area working and then the second half in his area. The whole time was spent as a trio which was weird. But at the end of the day we helped the missionary that was leaving take all of his luggage to the taxi and see him off. After all was said and done, we headed back to our area and left Elder Oliva with the other assistants, and we went to dinner. After dinner, we actually got lost on the way home, not a huge deal...but it took us a while to find our way back.

Wednesday, we had a meeting that started at 7:30 in the morning with a general authority. A member of the 70, elder Alonso came and taught us a little bit. He was really great, and really motivated me to work a lot harder and try always to be better. He also taught us a new way to contact: "Hello, we are missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and we are here to prepare people to receive a baptism in the only true church on the face of the earth." After putting it into practice, it has actually proved to be pretty useful. He was really great to listen to. I think he is also part of the reason that President felt he should cut the email time. He influenced that change just a bit I think, so I don't know how I feel about that ;)

On Thursday we had an activity where other missionaries came to help us in our area for a little while. Eight missionaries came from Puerto Cabezas, an area in the mission, for the meeting on Thursday that they had, and afterward they came to our area and we had an open house sort of thing at the church! It turned out pretty well and 22 people got a tour of the building in a span of about an hour! We were also planning on visiting all of these people, after taking down their directions and phone numbers, but a problem arose with that one. Basically our mission leader here is not the best. He was put in charge of that part of the activity, to write down the names and directions and such, but he did it in such a manner that I think it can only be interpreted with the Urim and Thumum (if you don't know what those are ask your local missionaries ;) ) so basically we only profited a little from that activity.

Our mission leader in the ward is almost never willing to help us which is a real problem, because missionary work without the members is soooooooo hard. He doesn't even go to church himself hardly. We asked him why he wasn't at church this week and he responded that he had to go play tennis..... and when we did the activity on Thursday, aside from messing up badly with the list of people, he also brought a bunch of books that he wanted to sell....

I was on divisions with My zone leader Elder Clark, and we had a sort of funny but frustrating experience on Sunday morning. We were in his area and we were passing by to help an investigator get up and ready for church. We then passed by again, about an hour later and talked to the lady that was sitting in the front room. We asked if we could talk to Rafael, and she said that he wasn't there, that he had left the day before.... Then I said "that's interesting, because he was just here an hour ago." So she responded saying that he didn't want anyone to come in, that they would just bother him. We said we only wanted to come in to say hi and that was all. She said we couldn't come in because the dog would bite us, so we asked her to show us the dog. She called for the dog and nothing ever showed up. There was a surprising lack of dog. So to justify, she told us that Rafael was sick and couldn't have any visitors. Elder Clark asked what he had, and she said only that he was sick, and that he was in the hospital for the 15 days previous. Then elder Clark said that was impossible because he was in church the week before. After that she just told us that she wanted us to leave, so we respected that. Frustrating that we caught her in several lies in a matter of about 10 minutes.

Spiritual Thought:
DON'T LIE, BE HONEST!

Love you all and have a great week!!!

Elder Moser

pics this week...

I bought a new bag, but I didn't think about how it would stain my shirt if it got wet...Ooops!

We made some pupusas for p-day today. Super awesome!

Don't judge us, we are the only Elders in our district...

Random photos from Hno. Barker at the meeting.

Emergency Change...

Hola Hola!

I think that the only appropriate way to start this email is with yet another sarcastic funny story. After another day of working with members out there in good old Estelì, I got home at about 6 to study and what not because we didn't have anybody to work with. After about an hour of studying, I received a call from the zone leader, Elder Alvarado. He informed me that I was going to have emergency changes!!!! What the heck?! But honestly I hardly understood a word when he told me so I told him to tell my compa too and when it finally got explained to me, there was a little more than I bargained for!

I got transferred to Managua, the capital to be District Leader and to train someone who started their training this change.........what the heck..... I didn't even finish training. I still haven't either!!!! Super crazy, I still hardly even believe it right now as I am writing it. Anyway its true, but the weird thing is that they didn't change Rodriguez, who is the one with the medical problem of sorts. So yes, I had to pack up that night, and get everything ready to come here to Managua! And now I am a district leader that hasn't even finished his time of being trained....Anyway, my new compa is Elder Alvarado, and he has less than a month in the mission. haha yeah for reals. He is also from El Salvador, and he is a recent convert of almost exactly one year (a little more). He is super excited to do the work, as am I, because we're both newbies. The only difference is that I have 6 weeks more than him.

                                                   A quick pic with the new compa. He's cool!

My new house is actually smaller than the place I lived in in Estelì! haha and it's kind of worse conditions too.....so that should be interesting. I also no longer have hot water.... that is sometimes good sometimes bad. Sometimes it is nice to shower with cold water haha.

                                                   The New Crib. Nice big room, and don't you worry,                                                                                                      the giant cockroach in the shower was included free ;)

The new area is humongous, I don't even know how to spell it its so big. It is really weird right now, because I don't know the area at all, and Elder Alvarado doesn't know the area super well either, so we are learning together to get to know the area, to train, and to get better. I almost imagine it like the times of Joseph Smith when the various people had to go on missions with some companion into a land that neither of them knew... maybe a little exaggerated. In my district, we are the only elders, and then there are three companionships of hermanas... its kind of interesting. haha

As far as things in Managua, it is super big, super busy, pretty up to date, but worst of all, it is really hot hot hot! And it isn't even the hottest area in the mission. To explain a little better, after my first day of work here on Wednesday, I was super super itchy by the end of the day and didn't really know why. At the end of the day I checked and found out that I literally had hives all over my body. ALL OVER MY BODY!!!! I think that I had some sort of allergic reaction to my sweat! Weird.

Oh also, random side note, the majority of my clothes are still in Esteli, because when I got the call that I was going to have to leave, it was Tuesday night, and the laundry appointment lady was literally in the middle of doing my laundry.... so everything was soaking wet!!! I hope I can get that somehow some way.... Just kidding I will probably get it this week. There are meetings here in Managua all the time so someone is going to bring it with them sooner or later.

We have been working really hard to get to know the area and the members this week. We used a ward list to encounter some of the members, and through our efforts, we found a lot of less actives. Basically everyone in the ward could be considered less active though. There are 264 people on the ward list, but the normal attendance at church is like 70 or 80. I am going to change that though! haha The leaders of the ward here are a lot more willing to help us than they were in Esteli. That will be nice!

Oh, here our lunch appointment is not all that we have!! We have dinner also!!! EVERY DAY! it is already planned in the schedule, so that is pretty cool. I just have to be careful because I will probably gain some weight here in this area.

                                   The Mountain of food that really had no flavor..... it was an interesting lunch

Being district leader, I have my different responsibilities, but one of them is to conduct interviews. I have received 0 training on how to be district leader, but I am figuring it out along the way. I had my first baptismal interview for some of the hermanas in the district, so that was pretty cool, and I think everything went well... haha

Funny Story:

So when we got to a house of one of the recent converts here, they told us that they had a new pet turtle, and they got it after it fell out of the sky while it was raining. Clearly this was some huge joke right?! Turtles don't just fall out of the sky when it rains, like it is raining turtles or something.... So we brought it up in another situation sort of making fun of the people more or less, but the bishop of the ward told us that it's true!!!! Here when it rains, turtles and fish fall from the sky, but just little ones. They proceeded to explain the basic science of it, but I believed it. It is still really weird to think about...

                                                               The turtle that fell from the sky...

Spiritual Thought:

So I finished the Book of Mormon this week for the first time on the mission. That was super exciting, and looking back on it, I learned so many things that I had never learned in my time reading it in the past. So my spiritual thought is this. The Book of Mormon is amazing. You can read it however many times you want and you will always learn something new, or receive new personal revelation! Don't ever think that you have read it enough times! haha Sooooo read the Book of Mormon :)

Love you all, and be safe this week!

Elder Moser

Pics this week...

                                          Some interesting statue garden thing that we found                                                                                           in our adventures of trying not to get lost :)

                            Some cool statue thing that they have here in the middle of the city!                                                                            I thought it was cool, so I took some pics :)

                          My lunch today, p-day. Yes they literally have everything here in Managua.