I fell asleep at a restaurant.

Hello!

I hope everyone has had a great week. This week was a great week for me because we were able to work with a lot of new investigators and be in our area a lot more. We put another baptismal date this week with a guy who is named Javier. Javier is about 45 years old and has a wife and 3 kids. The missionaries who were in our area before had visited with the 2 daughters of Javier a few times, but stopped going by because the daughters never went to church. My companion and I decided to go over there the other day to get to know them. We found out that about two weeks ago Javier's wife had to move to Panama to work. Supposedly, she goes to Panama every few years for about a year or two at a time in order to earn money with family members there and send it back to Nicaragua. Javier has been searching for a job for a long time, but hasn't been able to find one, because the job situation is pretty difficult here. Well, we started talking to him and he seems to be a little lonely. His children still live at home, but are gone pretty much all the time, so he basically just sits in his house all day with nothing to do! Elder Rivera and I got to know him a little bit and then taught a really spiritual lesson about how much his Father in Heaven loves him and watches over him. We talked about the restoration of the gospel and gave him a Book of Mormon. He accepted a baptismal date for the 10th of November.  He also says he is excited to come to church with us on Sunda,y so we are going to stop by his house and walk with him to church!

Pedro and Virginia didn't come to church last Sunday. It has been very frustrating! They know the Church is true, because they have already both received answers to their prayers. Every week, they commit to coming, but then some little thing always pops up and they end up not coming. We have been talking with a member family that lives in our area, and they are going to come visit the family with us in order to fellowship them a little more. We are hoping that if Pedro and Virginia have someone that they already know in church it will make them feel a little more comfortable about coming.

We have found A LOT of new investigators to start teaching and we are excited to work with them all.

 

To answer a few questions:

There are 161 missionaries in the mission. 33 sister missionaries and 128 Elders. There is also one older couple serving in the mission.

I have been able to take 2 of my past companions to the airport: Elder Salguero and Elder Rose. It was interesting to be the person who got to order my their tickets and send them home!

What is the weirdest thing I've seen in Managua? I don't even know how to answer that. I see something weird every single day. Yesterday, I did divisions with Elder Miller who is in the district, so that I could do the baptismal interview of one of his investigators.  While I was in his area, a drunk guy came up to us and started talking. He was about 5 feet tall, and 110 pounds. He introduced his self as "Rambo." When we asked him why his name was Rambo, he said it was because he is VERY VERY dangerous. He also introduced us to his two biceps, which he referred to as his pet cobras. He made a hiss sound as he flexed his biceps for us. We told him to go home and stop drinking and invited him to church on Sunday.  (haha.)  The list of weird things that I've seen could go on for days. But I sure do love the Nicaraguan people. :)

 

Gotta go! Love you all. Until next week,  

Elder Parrish

The lady that cleans the office had a birthday.