Written by Elder Brigham Rush,
in the Provo Missionary Training Center of The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints. He is assigned to the Nicaragua Managua North
Mission, speaking Spanish.Hey all!
So if you were wondering, I'm doing a lot better this week.
I'm picking up the language fast and we are getting a little bit more
work done. But I just want to share this story before I say anything.
The Bane of my existence -
So
on Tuesday I finally got a pillow delivered to me by the wonderful
senior missionaries. I love them they are the best. Before I was just
sleeping on my towel every night. But anyways, that day we went on
splits with the Zone Leaders and Tuesday was just an awesome day. Wednesday we
woke up and I had to go get tested for parasites (I don't have any by the
way, woohoo!) because I've had some serious problems since I've got here. Turns out its just that my body isn't used to eating rice and beans
every meal.
Okay, so here's the bad part. I was living life,
happy that I didn't have parasites, and we just went grocery shopping in
the nice part of town which was awesome. I even bought some fruity
pebbles to remind me of home. I finally felt like I could make it past
these next 2 years until we got back to the house and discovered that we
had fleas. FLEAS!!!!!! Literally the worst thing that has ever happened
to me. I can't sleep at night because I'm so paranoid. But today for P
day I spent the whole day mopping every thing in my house with
insecticide. They say that will work. Pray for me.
So
let me get into my missionary life a little bit. Our area is 2 little
towns called Lucida and Sor Maria. They don't have any running water and
its pretty much a bunch of jungle shacks, which is awesome. Every person
here believes in God, which is awesome, but also challenging. Most of
the time when we contact, we ask the person "do you believe in God?" and
the answer is "Of course! Everyone Believes in God!"
One of
the best things I saw all week was yesterday, it started raining crazy
hard, like hurricane level stuff. And instead of going inside, everyone
sprinted out of their house to get their water barrels in place to catch
the water so they can use it! It was quite a sight to see, it just
shows you how awesome the people are here.
Our
Branch, (actually called a nucleus, which is a pre branch) consisting
of around 30 people held in the nucleus presidents house. Our job is
to convert that into a ward with 100 members so we can get a chapel
built in our area and our district will become the Stake of Matagalpa!
It sounds like a lot of work, but there's around 40 non active people
alone that live in the town, so our job this whole week has just been
reactivating. which is kind of sad because that means no baptisms, but
its missionary work all the same!
2 of the members we
recently activated is a around 45 year old woman named Genada, who lives
with her 85 year old Mother, Juana. I love Juana so much. She is
missing her left leg, and all her teeth, and I can never understand her,
but she was very happy when we came by and told her about the new
branch that was just down the road from her house. She is confined to
her wheelchair, which is a plastic lawn chair with wheels. And we go get
her on Sundays and push her to the church at 8 am.
Another
one of our Investigators is named Juan (very common name here) and he
owns a cow and pig farm right next to the city dump. He owns 83 pigs and
around 20 cows on a little plot of rocky land! He loves visiting with
us and teaching us about his farm though. He's a good friend of mine at
this point.
Another great thing about this country is the
Shirts they wear. Not 1 person here speaks English (except one man I met
the other day from Seattle, which was awesome) and they all wear shirts
with English words or phrases on them of which only I can understand.
So that brightens my day a little, its kind of like my own inside joke. I
saw a 40 year old man walking down the street the other day wearing a
shirt that said "I traded my sister for video games".
My best
friend here in Matagalpa is named Elder Alofipo. He's from Highland Utah
so maybe some of you out there know him. He's been out here for 3 months
so we can kind of relate.
Here's something awesome, at the end of this change I will be over 1/8th done with my mission. Wow time is flying.
I
want to end by saying that God does answer prayers! If you need help or
are having a hard time in your life, I would encourage you to pray to
your Heavenly Father. Remember, faith without works is dead. Always do
everything that you can, and count on God to make up the difference. I
have a strong testimony of this and I know its true, because I live it
every day.
Another thing. The number 1 thing that I've learned here is how to be happy as a missionary. 3 main points that came to me were
1. Prayer
Always ask God for help and trust in him
2.Work
Never think about yourself and get lost in the work - President Hinckley
3.Always be learning
Even
when your sitting at the bus stop or waiting for lunch, be practicing
or learning something. Read a book or contact someone.
These are principles that apply directly to my life. I'll leave it up to you to try to translate that into a normal life hahaha.
I
love it here even though its hard! This church is true and we are doing
the Lord's work to bring happiness to the people of Nicaragua!
I love you all!
- Elder Rush
Welcome to Nicaragua! (August 8, 2016)
Week 3 in Nicaragua (August 22, 2016)
