New Records!!

So this month was full of stinking miracles!!! Both the mission and our zone baptized more in a month than ever before. Before the record of the mission was 234, and then this month of August we finished the month with 257 new converts to the church. In our own zone the record was 52, and this month we baptized 64!! The church is growing here in Puerto! The average attendance also went up about 70 from last month to this month! Sooo we are super happy! The Lord is truly blessing us for our work!!

Josefina and Andres got married and baptized this last week!! They are so awesome!! I was super impressed because for their whole wedding, baptism and confirmation they were totally ready and very punctual! (That never happens here!) They are the first baptism of my entire mission that we planned for 3pm and they were ready at 3pm... The only problem was that we had to wait for the other 17 people to show up that were also going to get baptized on Saturday! So yeah, we actually started at like 4pm but the service was so cool because we had 19 people getting baptized in one baptismal service! How exciting is that?

 The wedding of Andres and Josefina!

 More of the wedding.

 The baptism.

 More of the baptism.

 The whole group!

Taking care of the clothes from the baptism!

The zone after the big achievement!

The Saturday morning, like I had mentioned, we had the privilege of hearing President Nelson. He came to Managua, sadly we could not go to hear him in person but I loved hearing him anyway, for the parts that we actually had internet. :/ It was a super awesome experience and he gave an awesome talk. I personally loved how he went through and named several different topics that we all need to learn more about. Some of them were the abrahamic covenant, the fall of Adam and Eve, covenants, tithing, the atonement, family, endowments, Jesus Christ, the prophet, and the temple. I think that these are all topics that we need to study a little more to really understand the doctrine of the church better and to be better members. That is a goal of mine :) so yeah, GREAT WEEK!!!!!

 The pictures from the meeting with President Nelson.

Elder Nelson

Love you all and hope the best for you!!!
Elder Moser

Other pics this week...

Getting some cocos! :) haha This is our good friend Carlos! He is awesome!!

I LOVE PUERTO!

So this week was really awesome! For the entire zone!! To start off, this month of August, as a zone we have a goal of baptizing 50 people in the month of August. So in 4 of the 5 weeks we have achieved 40 baptisms! So we are right on track!!! But the awesome part is that we have 48 people with the goal to get baptized this weekend!! O sea, 48 people with a fecha bautismal for the 29th! SOOOOOO yeah, normally we achieve about 45% of the cision. I project that we will end up baptizing about 21 or 22 this weekend!! With that we will blow our goal out of the water!! With like 62 baptisms!! So I am excited!

After the changes FIRESIDE! Such a great zone!! This is the best zone in the entire world. Not just the mission! And i can say that with confidence!

So this week Olympia, China´s mom got baptized!! and her nephew Yasir as well! It was super cool! Olympia is super pilas! When we were on our way walking to the baptism, she was telling us about how her mom (who is like 80) was telling her she shouldn't get baptized and she just didn't care. She was like this is my goal, so I get to do what I want!! So she is doing super awesome! And she is helping China learn a lot more too!! And Yasir is awesome too!! He is giving the example for his mom and dad!! They actually have the goal to get baptized this week! So they are almost there and he got to be their example!! They are doing well also.

Baptism of Olympia

At the baptism of Yasir.

They are Josefina and Andres!! Andres is your typical Puerto civilian that just drank in his past time. But now he is free!!! We have been begging him and begging him to stop drinking and about 2 weeks ago, de repente, he just left it!!! He doesn't do it anymore!! They live in a terrible place though! So we visit a lot to help him out and now he is working really hard to get his kids out of the bad habits!! In their house, it is a common spot for a lot of drunks and gang dudes to hang out. That is one of the reasons that we know all the gang members from one barrio. And we are cool with all of them. But we are slowly but surely converting part of the house!! The problem is that the property is like 4 houses in one property, so there are still 3 corrupt places. But we are working on that! haha But we are super happy for Josefina and Andres because they are reading the Book of Mormon each day and they totally listen when we come and they turn the TV off and stop what they are doing. They are very respectful and that is not very common at all here. I love them a lot!

We are also working with a man named Steven, who used to be a drunk (imagine that) but about 6 months ago he got into a fight and lost vision in his left eye! And in that moment he stopped drinking! He has a family member, I think they are like 2nd cousins or something, and she is a super awesome member that lets us teach in her house, and almost always has Steven there waiting for us! The Sister Mercedes brings him to church too. That is how true missionary work should be!!!

This week in my studies I read in Mormon 9:6 and I really love it because it talks about Repentance. But if you actually pay attention, it doesn't say repentance one time. It just talks about turning yourself to the Lord. When we commit an error in our lives, what we are really doing is turning ourselves away from the Lord. Repentance is the action of turning back to face the Lord! If we aren't facing the Lord we will never reach him! So we must always face the Lord as much as we can to progress more and more! I love looking at repentance in that way!

Love You All!!!
Elder Moser

PS This week, we are going to have a visit to Nicaragua from one of the "big dogs"!! Elder Nelson is coming!!! BUT here´s the catch! The zone Puerto Cabezas doesn't get to go.  Because I guess that he is going to Managua on Saturday and it would be "too expensive" for all of us to fly out there for it! I guess we aren't loved enough! :( I am kinda sad about that one to be honest....

More pics this week...

We found the actual outskirts of puerto!!! We have started working in a new part of puerto and this is what it is like :)

Cool little places!!

Doing some long jumps!!

With the compa.

On divisions with Elder Baltimore...watching the baseball game!

And playing by the beach!

With the lunch appointment family! Frank, baby, me, Jeff and Jose!

Continuing in the barber business. She had no clue what was gonna hit her!

Sunday night chillin'  :)

We Preach of Christ

What a great week!!! Although we saw trials among all of the great times this week, the misión is just an awesome experience always!!

On a sad note, for the momento. Adan left for the sea. And just so you know, that is super common here because people just leave all the time to go work. And when they go, they are out in the ocean for like 12-15 days..... so he will be out of the picture for a little while. But when we left him, he was doing awesome and he loves the church and everything. So we are just praying that he can have a safe trip (because that job really isn't all that safe) and that he will be strong against the many temptations of drugs and alcohol in the sea. That is something really sad about here. Almost all of the men that work in the sea spend much of the money that they make on Joyita, the drink of the devil. I hate it so much because it is the absolute number one obstacle in the work here in Puerto!!!  But we work our way around it. Almost all the members of the church here were heavy drinkers before their conversión. So that is testimony that they can change. I mean Julio, Henry, Jierson, all of them were drinkers but they turned their lives around.

But on some great news, China´s mother is basically all ready for baptism!! We are kind of just waiting for the date to come! She understands so well when we teach her, and when we ask questions she can always respond so deeply!! That is so uncommon for many people here! So I just love teaching her because she learns so well! And she is being a great example for her children. Something cool is that her two older kids were baptized 5 years ago, and when we found them, they were all inactive! So when we baptized China, they started to come with the mom and now Olympia wants to be baptized too! She brings the whole family to church! It is so awesome!!

So it really isn't only the sea that causes people to travel!  People also go to communities. For instance, Waspam, Siuna, Rosita, Bonanza. Those are all communities where people just go to live and the weird part is there is no telling when or why people will just pick up and leave to go live in a community. But it happens all the time. We have a couple that left to the communities a while back, and have plans to come back Thursday so that they can just pick right back up where they were and get baptized on Saturday!! So we are hoping that they can make it here safely!! So yeah, people here just leave out of no where!! Sometimes it is so frustrating!!!!

I also wanted to share a small thought this week! There is a recent convert that I have gotten kind of close to from another area whose name is Erick. And he is super cool!! But last week he was getting a bit shaky in his testimony because he felt like in the church, not many people preached of Christ. Especially in their testimonies, he really didn't like that everyone was saying that they knew that this church was true (like I mentioned last week). It got me thinking about how much we preach that Christ directs this church, that we follow his guide, through the prophet. I know that Christ directs this church through a prophet in these days, and that he also directs the missionary work. We need to always preach of Christ in all that we say and do. Our examples are just as loud, if not louder, than out words! We need to be representatives of Christ in all that we do and say. Not representatives of a "true organization of people" but of our Savior.

Love you!

Elder Moser

Pics this week...

Playing some ninja on p-day!

The District: Puerto Cabezas

More of the district :)

Hiding out from a typical 30 second super heavy rain storm.

I managed to get 4 pics off in the storm.

Witness to a drunken brawl!

This week was really an interesting one!! And I loved it!!

Soooo one of the things that I really want to share was a pretty interesting experience we had on Saturday! I saw a really intense gang fight!  And it was mid day! That was the weird part that kind of caught us off guard. We had literally just gotten to a members house when there was a ton of yelling and a huge group of dudes like between 21-27. They were all super drunk like 85% of the men here in Puerto. Soooo as you can imagine they were just like drunk people and got into a huge fight. The member was explaining that they were from two different barrios and something happened so now they were fighting. And the fight was happening like 30 feet away from us the whole time. Then they all started to run but one guy fell down and that was the end for him. Three other guys came up and started kicking him and jumping in the air and giving him some nice kangaroo kicks to the gut and head and all. It was pretty sad because they all thought they were so cool. But they were all just wasted. One of the other interesting parts is that about three of the people in the entire gang fight are ex-investigators that we were teaching about 2 weeks ago :) hahahah now you can probably guess why we left them.

But on a super cool note... when I was on divisions with an Elder on Tuesday this week, we contacted this man named Adan, and he was really pretty cool. He told us about how he was a drug addict but really wanted to change and had already left it for like 1 week or so. And how he really wanted to look for God. And anyway, we sadly kind of put him in second plan for the rest of the week until on Saturday we were close by and we decided to pay him a visit. When we had arrived he was so happy. He machetied us for not coming on Wednesday or Thursday. But he told us that he has been waiting each day for us to come. And that he had read the pamphlet of the restoration three times while waiting! That was freaking awesome! haha it is rare that they read one page in a pamphlet! But he read the whooole thing three times!  So he is really awesome and  he has a goal for the 22nd and if he keeps going strong and learning with the enthusiasm he has now, he will do it for sure!!

Lastly I want to share something that I have been thinking about a lot lately! It is basically the sincerity of our words! I thought of two major examples. One example is in prayer. Think to yourself, How often do I start my prayers exactly with "Dear Heavenly Father, we thank thee for this day". I do it too. But do we mean it, or is it just a filler of space that is really just a vain repetition? Another example I thought of is when we share our testimonies. Many many many people say "I would like to bear my testimony that I know this church is true........" Do I actually know that this church is true or do I just say that because it is a memorized way to begin my testimony. This is something that lately I have been working on. I try to make sure that everything I am saying is from the heart, especially in my prayers or in my testimony. Heavenly Father loves to hear from us, but when we are doing it out of love and from the heart. If we just say words in a testimony, we won't have the Spirit to back us up and testify. So I wanted to invite all to make an effort as I have.

Love You ALL!!!
Elder Moser

Sorry for the lack of pics. But this is at Jierson´s barber shop! We got our hair cut there this morning!

The true hunter eats his prey!

Yes, you better believe it! One of the highlights of the week? We ate the rooster!!! Finally! We caught it, and ate it!! Our food appointment told us that if we could catch the Rooster that she has, we could kill it and eat it. So after practicing for all that time that we did, We caught it, several times (the kids kept releasing it each day we would catch it) and then we finally killed it and ate it!

That was really one of the best parts of the week! But we also got to baptize China!! hahah that's what we call her. We actually had some other people preparing but they want to do it later so that they can do it with the rest of their family now. The rest of the family also accepted a date to get baptized. So it was a good little service for China this week! She is such a smart little girl! She really learned so much, and could explain very well some of the principles that we had taught, like repentance. She knew better what that was than most of the 35 year olds here! haha Anyway good times there.

At the baptism with China and her family and friends!!! YAY!

But yeah, other than that it was a week full of some trials, but we are going to get through it. Sometimes I am reminded a lot here about how important it is to keep your Word! I would really love it if people weren't so flaky some times. But it happens and I can't change them so I have to be more patient :) YAYAYYAY patience, I love it. I am really getting better I think. I hope at least. I am really trying hard! :) I don't have much else to share. But I want you all to be more patient! Yay patience.

P.S. I think it is really awesome how similar Guatemala and Nicaragua are. It looks like you guys are having a lot of fun!! The culture looks the exact same as it is here haha! maybe it is a bit different, but that is pretty cool to see some pics!! hahah

Love you!

Elder Moser