Week of Success!!

No, we didn’t have any baptisms... BUT we did find a few new families to teach and they are progressing awesomely!! Ok so I received a package this week from Aunt Teresa and Uncle Jon. It contained a letter wishing me a Merry Christmas!! A peanut butter cup Christmas tree, a candy cane full of M&Ms and a bag of Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix!! The M&Ms didn’t make it too well and were a little melted all over the inside of the bag and the Peanut Butter Cup wasn’t in the shape of a Christmas tree either. So I licked the inside of the package clean and separated plastic from peanut butter cup and enjoyed every bit of it!! And I plan of making the cookies at a house of one of our families tonight and I plan on taking photos so be ready to see those next week! Thanks so much Larson Clan!! I'll try to find time to send you a letter this week! or an email but I don’t know your email... SO! Maybe you could help me with that! I also got about 18 letters!! 4 real letters and 14 DearElders. A few of them were sent to me when I was leaving the MTC and I just got them so it was funny to read letters that were a little old. :) And a lot of the DearElders were the forwarded letters of Elder Larson in Tokyo Japan. He seems to be having a blast on the other side of the world!! I pray for him to have success in his labors in the work of the Lord. Of the real letters I received, I got 2 from Aunt Ginger, one of which is her Stake conference notes (which I hope she copied because there were very insightful), and the other is a Valentine Letter! I didn’t think I would get it this early!! Well, Happy Valentine’s Day Gingo!!! Love you!! I also got a letter from Stephanie Jensen and Mileaha Boldt!! I will try to respond to all sometime this week!

Now for the weekly update!! So we had 11 people some to church this week!! Almost the same as last week but at least it is 2 digits! But the best part is that we had a family and an investigator that we are teaching come! 3 people who are now members in the church! That is the first time that has happened since I have been in La Dalia!! But we didn’t have any recent converts show up.... That’s the hard part, getting people to keep coming. But we had success this week and we are super excited to have some baptisms soon, hopefully. So we haven’t had a chance to visit F y A since last week. So we don’t know how they are doing or what. And they haven’t showed up to church for the past 2 Sundays. But we didn’t find a few new families, like I said, that we are teaching now. The family that came to church on Sunday is super cool! They are F y R and their little boy Al. We found them while contacting in a neighborhood that is somewhat rich. They answered the door and invited us in. We talked to them for a little bit and asked us to come back another day to talk to them some more. So we have been visiting them for the past 2 weeks and we will be inviting them to be baptized pretty soon. They don’t go to any other churches and really liked the meeting on Sunday. They really liked the idea of the Plan of Salvation and being together forever! So we are super excited to have them! The other person that came to church, her name is D. She has been visiting with the Missionaries for 2 years now and just told us the other night that she wants to be baptized and work on becoming a better person in this life. She came to church because she really likes the messages that are shared and she loves the feeling. But she has a little problem. Her boyfriend right now, who she wants to marry, is married to another person. He isn’t with her anymore but in order for her to get baptized; he needs to get a divorce so he can get married to her. This may take a lot longer than we like because we want them to be baptized as a family so we need to talk to him and get him excited to be baptized as well but he is always working. WORK WORK WORK, this is the one thing that is the hardest to work around here in La Dalia. Everyone works, especially the Men. They are either working with their own jobs, like a shop or shoe store or whatever or they are off harvesting coffee beans. And here, a day off work doesn’t really exist. So people work every single day. This is why it is so hard to find families during the day because they aren’t together. They are during the night but by then, it’s too late for us to be teaching people. We also found a family, D y D with their 2 little kids. They live in the same type of house as F y A and I think it may be a little smaller. But they were being taught by the missionaries that were here before us but when we visited them the first day here in La Dalia, they wanted time to think and to take a break from the missionaries. But the other day, we were passing by and Dan called us over and we talked to them and now they are really positive!! Although Dan was a little drunk when we talked to him, we used it to our advantage and made some commitments with him that we followed up on when he was sober. They are progressing well, but Dan works a lot and it’s hard to find them when they are together to teach a lesson. Another family, R y S, we found them while contacting on the edge of La Dalia. They live at the top of this really muddy hill so it was a struggle getting to the house, especially when it was raining. They don’t go to any churches and are really interested in the church, we invited them to be baptized but they said that they want to now more and actually go to church before they commit to that. They weren’t able to go this past Sunday because they go out of town on Sundays to sell stuff in another city. So it might be a little difficult to get them to come to church but we will figure something out. Even though we had a little bit of failure with some of our other families, we are super excited that we had success with some of them! The work here in La Dalia is moving, slowly, but it’s moving!! I’m so grateful for the chance to be here in Nicaragua, La Dalia and to be among the people that I have the change to change.

“A missionary leaves his family for 2 years so that other families can be together forever!”

¡¡¡Les Amo!!!

ELDER DAUGHERTY