Cambios como si fuera un sueño.

Dear family and friends,

I think this was the craziest/hardest/most fun/most depressing/stressful/exciting/short week of my entire life!!

Craziest: So this week we have been recuperating from some different things from last week, as well as doing about a million things for this week. Because we moved houses, we had a ton of stuff (and still have) just laying around in random places. We have not had time to organize anything in the house due to the other 876453994 things we have to do...So basically going into changes in these conditions was a recipe for craziness!!!

Hardest: I don't think I have every had a week as challenging as this in my entire life. I have had some really hard times in my life, or at least things that I would consider hard, like doing 15 push ups or running 1/2 a mile. But this was for sure the hardest time of my entire life (so far). It felt as though it was challenging in all aspects: physical, spiritual, mentally, socially. I always felt like there was something I needed to be doing, so I felt like when I was wasting like 30 seconds I was going to fail in doing something else. My memory (if any of you know my memory, it already stank), is really terrible right now due to lack of sleep. If I don't write something down that someone tells me, it is gone from my head in about 17 seconds, to be pretty exact. So that is really tough....

Most Fun: So amidst all of the craziness, changes are actually really fun when you are in the office. The most fun part is to be in the mission home with all of the new missionaries watching them be all nervous! It reminds me of my first day, when I found out that Managua was hotter than Heck, and that I really was not very good at Spanish and I could have learned a ton more in the CCM. But anyway, the best part is when they all come in and they present the trainers one by one to their new comps. It is such a happy time! And super fun!

Pics that Elder Barker took of me during changes. This was my first time without the help of elder Clark...

Most depressing: So this week we did not get to go to the area for even 5 seconds. :( That has honestly been super hard on me. I just want to be able to help out with our investigators to overcome their doubts and stuff so that they can take the important step of baptism and change their lives!! But it is hard to do that when you can't even be in the area.
Also on another depressing note, two missionaries went home this week that were not supposed to go home yet, for reasons that I don't even know. It was really sad to have to see them off.

Stressful: So when we have changes like this, all of the people that have no place to live in Managua that have to stay overnight get to stay in our house!!! Woohoo partaaaaay! But no... the problem is that we had to be in the office or doing something else every day from early until late, so we aren't in the house to keep an eye on them. For that, it is stressful, because we have yet to find the key for our room, so we could not lock it. And that means that they all had access to all of our stuff while we weren't even there. As much as I would love to put complete trust in the missionaries, Latinos have this culture of "sharing". But for them it means you "lend it to them for life". I don't like that culture, so I was stressed for those few days, aside from eeeeeeverything else, that I was going to come back to find something missing. Luckily so far I have yet to not find anything.

Exciting: When you are really using almost the full potential of every day, things tend to get exciting! Just to give an example of how crazy things are, it all started on Saturday night! We got to bed at 11:00 pm and woke up at 5:00 am! But wait it gets worse :) On Sunday night, we got to bed at about 12:00 pm and woke up at 6:30 am. Not too bad there. On Monday night, we got to bed at 12:30 am and woke up at about 3:15 am. I didn't feel like sleeping anyway. ;) On Tuesday night we went to bed at about 11:30 pm and woke up at 5:30 am. And finally on Wednesday night, we went to bed at 11:00 pm and woke up again at about 3:30 am :) Just the excitingness of being in charge of taking people to the airport for early morning flights, but also having a fair amount of things to still do before the next day when it hits that "9 o'clock". I remember when I got to go to bed at 10:30 and wake up at 6:30. Those days were nice, but I think it's better to get less, you really get to use the days more efficiently! And I am getting older quicker!!! haha At this rate I might gain a year or two of extra "awake time" while on the mission! :)

Short: Well when you are doing a million things at a million miles per hour for a million people, you tend to look back and wonder where your day went. The hardest part of it all is that to get from the mission office to the main chapel that we use in Managua, it takes about 50 minutes with traffic. Without traffic it is possible to get there in half the time. But the only time there is not traffic in Managua is in the middle of the night, like from 1:00 am to about 4:00 am. Anywhere outside of that, it takes like double the time to get somewhere! haha but point being, these past two weeks literally felt like one day. Probs cause I hardly slept!

So apart from all of that, I would just like to say that when we are trying to do our best and giving full effort to be the best we can be, God will take care of us. He totally gave us a pretty big blessing this week, and that was that Ronald came to church with his wife this last Sunday. We had not really visited him one bit the entire week last week, but we passed by Sunday morning and he had already made his house more secure and he showed up to church with us!!!! So keep giving it 100%, and don't dwell on the things you did wrong, or the things you weren't able to do today, just move on and get better. Appreciate the things you were able to do in the day, even if they weren't on you to-do list!


Love you all!!!
Elder Moser

Pics this week...

                     Just a giant branch that fell off the tree in front of our house. No big deal.....

                       The 6 of us missionaries that all work in the same branch! now were just four.                                       President took the sisters out of the area!

                    We made this whiteboard to help us keep better organized our investigators and what we                      have taught all in one big place!

Moving Day

Hola family and friends!

So this was easily the busiest week of my entire mission, and it only gets busier and crazier from here...
Saturday and Sunday were pretty normal for us. We got to spend plenty of time in the area and get everyone ready for church. As far as new investigators, none really turned out to be too positive...YET (we will work on that when we have time). But as far as Bertha and her family go, it was a great weekend!! We taught her again about Joseph Smith and the restoration to help her and her family understand it more in concrete, and it was a pretty good lesson. But the cool part with her was that on Sunday morning we passed by the house to make sure she was awake and getting ready for church. After she answered the door, we told her we would meet her at the church, because we felt like she needed to go on her own without us dragging her there. When we got to church, she wasn't there, and for all of sacrament meeting I was very disappointed. But then we went into Sunday school and there she was, sitting there with her daughters!! She apologized and asked me to forgive her, because they had fallen back asleep! But when they woke up, she realized and got her daughters and came with them on their own to catch the last 2 hours! Now we just have to help her not feel ashamed for accepting the truth and being baptized. She is really worried about how her mom and sister will react if she does it, so she keeps putting excuses in the way when we talk about baptism.

As far as Ronald goes, we were expecting to have him at church as well, but when his wife and daughter arrived on Sunday (already members), he was not with them. Later we found out the they did not want to leave the house alone without anyone there to "guard" it. So we pulled out the scripture 1 Nephi 17:51, "And now, if the Lord has such great power, and has wrought so many miracles among the children of men, how is it that he cannot instruct me, that I should build a ship?," and changed the application by saying "do you not think that God has the power to protect your house?". We didn't quiiiiite get the results we were hoping for, but we did accept an opportunity to serve. Tomorrow we are going to help them make one of their doors a little more safe so that they can leave the house alone and come to church as a family. But on the bright side, they are totally praying as a couple, and reading the Book of Mormon as a couple! It is the ideal situation to help him progress! So that was the weekend.

So this week we had a meeting on Tuesday, and like all meetings, I had to get all the food ready for it, so the majority of Monday was preparing for that meeting, and getting a couple of office related things done also.

I guess there is some rule that the secretaries can only stay in a house for 1 year and then they have to move houses to avoid major damages to a house. So the time to be out of the house we were in was in three days. So we got to do that this week also. We found a house last week, got the paperwork signed on Monday, and I decided that on Wednesday we would move. So after the meeting Tuesday, we headed to the house to get everything ready and organized to move out. We hired someone to help us on Wednesday, and even though it took us all day, we got it done. Oh, and I hardly slept Tuesday and Wednesday night, I was up until like 1 or 1:30 getting everything ready, and arranging everything in the new house...so I'm super tired! :) If the stuff I am saying doesn't make sense, that's why. So anyway, then we spent Thursday catching up on things in the office, because we really haven't been in the office much for the last two weeks.

To say things shortly, Monday was spent preparing for the meeting Tuesday. Tuesday after the meeting was spent getting ready to move Wednesday. Wednesday was spent moving houses. And Thursday was all day in the office. If you carefully analyze this small schedule of my week, you will notice that we haven't even been to the area this week... which really stinks.

I would like to say it will get easier after this week, but it won't. We have changes this upcoming week, and it is going to be pretty crazy, because it is my first time doing it without Elder Clark leading me around. So this will be a great adventure :D
Anyway in the moment I am stinking tired, so I can't really think very well................
Bye Bye haha

Love,
Elder Moser

Pics this week...

                                                   Everything all packed up in the house!

                        Sorry for the lack of exciting pictures, but this really dominated the week....

The End of the World Leads to Many Miracles

Hola familia!

So basically this week was so stinkin crazy!! Just a little foreshadowing, the signs of the second coming are increasing here in Nicaragua. I'm not going to oblige anyone, but make sure you're prepared..... haha, I don't even know how to start.

I will begin with the recuperation from conference. So basically we came upon Saturday, our one full day to work in the area all week. I had a personal goal to find a bunch of new families and investigators to bring to church, and we found probably three families that seemed pretty positive. So we helped them through the day to commit well so that they would feel the need to go to church. As we set out on Sunday morning to bring people to church, the first little family that we had committed decided to leave the house early that morning. The second house that we visited is an investigator named Ronald, and he is the wife of a member of the branch. His wife said that sadly he had to help his sister with an errand that she called about that morning, so we started to get a little discouraged. As we continued, people began to say the same stuff, that they weren't home and what not, until we arrived to the last house. I was praying for someone and when we got to the house of Bertha, she was basically already ready to go!!!! It was such a miracle because we had decided that morning that if she didn't attend that Sunday, we would have to leave her and hope she was more ready for other missionaries in the future. But that wasn't the only miracle. Upon arrival at the church, Ronald was there with his wife!!! It was such a spirits booster!!!! So that was Miracle numbers 1 and 2.

On Monday, as normal, we were in the office all day, and unfortunately, we had a ton to do all day so we were even kept here in the office a little late. Elder Maradiaga had been working on some stuff with President earlier in the day and President left his chair out in his area of the office, so at about 10 at night, he said, hey look President gave me his chair!!! So I said that I wanted to sit in it for a bit, so I went out there and just as I was literally about to sit down, Elder Maradiaga stops me saying "wait wait wait!!!!! There´s an earthquake!!!!" I paused for a bit, and saw the big printer start to shake, and indeed, the earth was quaking! hahaha I was enjoying my first ever earthquake when he said that we should probably run downstairs and out to the parking lot, so I agreed (reluctantly (just kidding)). It was all really quite funny actually. I don't think that it was a coincidence, the timing of it all. I don't think I will be trying to sit in Presidents chair anytime soon. And just so you know, it was not anything huge, so everything is just fine. No damage done. But that is sign number one.

On Wednesday I had the opportunity to do this really cool thing for interchanges for the day between my zone and another zone in the mission. We all got together and changed assignments for the day, and companions according to what President chose. I was a Zone Leader for the day, and I was comps with an Elder Compton, from Utah. So what was so great about this experience was that Elder Clark and Elder Chen were having a baptism that night (another awesome story) so we worked all day to get my investigators to come to the baptism and take part in the spirit of the baptismal service. Our major hope was Bertha and her daughters. We passed by, and sadly, Bertha's mom was having medical issues, so she couldn't come, nor her daughters. So we tried to find other people that wanted to come, but there was really no luck. We got to the service, and what do you know?!?! Bertha and her daughters were there!!! It was such a miracle! They loved it too, and they are totally going to get baptized! Bertha even gave the closing prayer at the service, and in the prayer asked Heavenly Father to help her be able to have an experience like that!!! Miracle number 3!

The baptism on Wednesday was for Marina, Jose, and Heber. I am pretty sure I talked about them before, or at least Marina. But they are the ones that I found with Elder Clark one night when I was buying a snack at a little shop on the street. Elder Clark talked to this 15 year old boy, Jose, and he invited us to his house and we shared a message with them, one thing led to another, and I got changed... :/ but they followed up teaching them and they got baptized! I even got to do the baptismal interviews for all of them! I was seriously sooo stinking happy to see them be baptized and hear their powerful testimonies that they shared after they were baptized! I love the church!! Miracle number 4!!

I am so stinking happy for them. Marina Jose and Heber. The one that baptized them (the really tall black guy) is the branch president. He is from Bluefieds, a city on the atlantic coast where they speak this weird dialect of English. So he also speaks English! Its super cool

A dead bird inviting us in the entryway of the baptismal font :) Classy.

So last night, we were out working in the area, and it started to rain. Now rain has been pretty normal here every day, so we decided to just start working through it. But then it got harder and harder. So we took refuge under a little patio roof at a pulperia (street store) with some other people. This storm was seriously the biggest rainstorm I have ever seen in my entire life. And outside the pulperia porch, I am not even exaggerating, for about an hour the entire street was flooded about 8 inches deep. THE ENTIRE STREET, FROM ONE SIDEWALK TO THE OTHER!!!! It is really hard to describe the intensity of this storm through words, But just imagine that city in Italy that doesn't really have roads, it is all just little river canals and they travel in boats to get from place to place. Yes that was Managua, Nicaragua for about an hour last night. We took advantage of the time we were stuck there and got to know a guy that was also hiding out from the rain. He is totally pumped to come to church and learn more, and we are going to talk to his whole family tomorrow too!! So that would be sign number 2 and miracle number 5!

Anyway, the church is true, and to be able to see it change the lives of people to gain a testimony of the truth is worth everything in this world. To have played a part in the conversion of Marina, Jose and Heber has made me the happiest I have ever felt in my whole life so far. Seriously they have such strong testimonies, and I know that they are going to be great members in the church and keep building their testimonies too! I love the church sooo much!!! I encourage all to feel this happiness by helping others find the truth. Just share it with everyone!

Love You All!!!

Elder Moser

Other pics this week..

We had to move these couches from the mission home to the senior couple home. We decided that we had to try them out before we could move them to make sure they were safe ;)

The View from the house of the Senior couples house.

We are with Elder Barker, one of the senior couple.

With great power comes great responsibility. Choose wisely, do you want the power? haha

I got your package!!! Thank you so much!!! And I'm a fan of the pic of the Virgin Mary on there,   she kept it safe in transit :)

Super Pday...NOT!

Hola familia,

Sooo basically today we had this really complex schedule lined up because we had an extra little assignment to do on our pday today. I scheduled a car service for Hermana Collado´s car today without thinking about how it was pday, so we went through with it anyway. After all was said and done, we finished there after basically all day with a few other things we had to take care of, at 5:00.... Which leaves us with like nooooo time... Woooohooooo! haha Best pday yet...NOT! But it is sort of my fault, soooooo whoooopsie.

Anyway this week was a real emotional rollercoaster and I really wish I had more time to write about it. Since I know that you are really wondering about conference, it was really good but also really disappointing. The week before, we had like hardly any time in the area like I mentioned, but as we looked back on all of the people that we had committed to conference, it was actually quite a bit. We enjoyed Saturday of conference, and didn't have any investigators because we didn't really plan ahead to invite any, we mainly focused on Sunday. I got to watch it in English on Saturday because we didn't have any investigators so that was kind of nice I guess.....

Then came Sunday morning, where we had planned out this foolproof path so that we could pass  all of our investigators in the morning and help them remember about conference. Without fail, every house told us that either someone was sick and they couldn't go this week, or that no one was home. So...we had 0 investigators at church. That was really hard. Then I was there, really disanimated and in walks Elder Rodriguez (he had transfers to Managua a little while back) and I talked to him for a bit. He tells me about how he has 15 investigators there to watch the Sunday morning session!!!! I was really impressed and happy for him, but then I thought about it and got really depressed... He kind of saw that and tried to tell me that it wasn't my fault that no one wanted to come, and that I shouldn't blame myself, and that is totally true. But for some reason, I just got emotional (embarrassing) right there in the church building for the whole building to see. I don't really know why, I think it was just because I wanted to be having more success. But after a bit, I remembered that I had only had about 8 hours total all week in the area to work. So all I need to do is make it so that I can have more time in the area and I will have more success. Anyway, I watched the Sunday session in Spanish. With the mix of being really down, and not to mention suuuuper tired, with the constant sound of crying babies and Nicaraguans that can't pay attention for more that 5 minutes without getting distracted, I wasn't able to pay attention super well on Sunday. But I did catch most of the really important stuff for me!

My favorite talk was from Elder Bednar. It is so true that we are really here as missionaries sharing something that has blessed our lives so much. I loved how he talked directly to the investigators (that I didn't have in the church) about how missionaries and members are so enthusiastic and persistent in sharing because they know that it will bless the lives of their brothers and sisters around the world. I totally changed my way of teaching after hearing that talk. I now try to focus my teaching a lot more in helping them understand the blessings that they can have through the gospel, the blessings that I have had! It has really made me love the work a lot more too! It makes me want to ditch the office duties a lot and head out to work in the area.
Sadly that didn't really happen this week... It was another busy one in the office :/ but I'll figure things out.

Anyway got to go!!

Love, Elder Moser

Buying Solo

Hola, hola!

Sooo this week was absolutely a crazy one...
To start, I will answer a couple of your questions. I will just tell a little more about Elder Clark! He is super funny, and we are super weird together. He is from Idaho and Utah and also a little bit Arizona. He has moved a ton. His family is huge, 11 in total, and he is the 2nd to youngest of the 9 children. Anyway, he is really cool!

Elder Clark being a goober haha..an Idaho hick!

As far as the Spanish is coming, it is definitely better. I was really improving a ton with my comps that could only speak Spanish especially. Elder Clark and I always said we would only speak Spanish to each other, and then 30 seconds later we would realize that we were speaking English again. It was pretty rough. But overall, I feel super comfortable speaking. A good way to measure if you feel comfortable with Spanish yet is to talk to a latino in Spanish over the phone. That is the absolute hardest way to understand when they speak. But I am totally improving in that haha.

The food situation in the office is kind of a weird one. To be honest, we eat a lot at places like McDonalds and Subway, because when we are running around buying things or on errands, we really don't have much time. But also, there is a place right next to the Office Building that we also go to a lot that is pretty cheap Nicaraguan food, so it is almost like having a lunch appointment every day. But we don't have any breakfast or dinner appointments. In the mornings, I usually make some oatmeal or eat some cereal, or have a bagel. It's pretty easy to have access to food like that here in Managua!

My morning oatmeal!

So our investigator Margina actually ended up coming to church on Sunday, which was pretty nice! But after the first hour, she told us that she had to leave, so we said we would stop by later that day. We did just that and upon arriving, we saw over the fence (because I am pretty tall here) that her and her husband were home. She came to open the gate out front and said, "to be sincere, I don't want to come anymore. I promised that I would come today, so I did, but we have our church." So then we asked if her husband was home(already knowing that he was of course) and she said that he wasn't, that he was out working.... I withheld the smart remark about how we had seen him over the fence and just said, "ok, thank you and bye." haha that was a tough one for me.

But on a brighter note, Marina also came to the church with us. I don't remember if i have talked about her, but we were teaching her and her two grandchildren, who are 14 and 15. They are super receptive! We also started teaching her daughter in law a bit. Anyway, only she came to church, but she totally loved it, and she and the grandkids are totally coming to General Conference!!! Sadly, there was a little change this week.

So President Collado asked this week if I was ready to take it solo yet on Monday, and I decided that I was ready enough, so we gathered together all in his office and he told us that Elder Maradiaga would be my new comp, and that Elder Chén and Elder Clark would be comps. So I have yet another new comp! haha If anyone else was keeping track, I have had 7 now :) That is more than some people have in their whole mission...So anyway, with that change we also changed our investigators. Elder Clark still works in the area, he is just with Elder Chen now. So they took the investigators that we had, and we took the ones that E. Maradiaga and E. Chen had. But this week has been super busy too.... We have two of the busiest responsibilities in the mission (just putting it out there) and now we have to organize our time well enough to get both of our responsibilities done as one companionship! I have already seen how hard it is going to be! Because a lot of my responsibilities are out of the office running around, and basically all of the responsibilities of Elder Maradiaga are in the office.... So it has been hard so far, but we are working on planning better the things that we have to do so that we can get to work in the area more during the week. So sadly with the lack of time we have had in the area, we have not been able to find almost anyone to teach. It is kind of sad, but we will change that soon!

We had a super cool zone meeting this week where we worked on committing to church in a more loving way, and at the end we did a really cool commitment to being more obedient. Elder Clark and Elder Chen (our zone leaders) made a Title of liberty for the zone that we all signed to be more obedient, so that was really fun and got everyone excited!

Our Zone Title of Liberty

Lastly, this morning we visited what they call a Paca. It is basically a thrift store of thrift stores, which means that thrift stores donate the clothes that never really get sold, to these places like this. So we found a bunch of church books in English and I took a picture. We also found a bag of like 30 ties that cost about 80 cents total. Sure a lot of them are worn and tattered maybe, but they'll make great gifts to people here that don't have ties!! haha

The random church books that they have for about 20 cents a piece. 

I didn't buy those ones though...

My new ties :) I am so happy about that one!

For real it is like Christmas for a missionary to get something like that! 

Funny Story: 

So I think the tiredness is getting to my speaking abilities. We were in Quiznos buying lunch for a meeting and as we were leaving I said "donde podemos exitar." (trying to say where can we exit) For those of you that don't speak Spanish, exitar does not mean to exit, salir means to exit. For those that do speak Spanish, you might find a little more meaning behind this accident, something that I learned after it was explained to me. Needless to say, I don't think I will be making that mistake again...

Spiritual Thought:
The importance of planning is real! haha I think in home life too! Not just as a missionary. We could waste soo much time doing nothing if we do not plan very well. So I would advise you to maybe plan a little better, so you can have extra time in your life to meet/visit the missionaries and help them teach other people with your extra time :)

Love you all!!

Elder Moser

A couple more pics from this week...