Puro Chontales

Compañero 

Familia y Amigos,

How is everthing going?  Things are going super good here in Juigalpa, Chontales.  This area of Nicaragua is kind of the cowboy center, so it has been a little interesting. 

This week they had a huge party where everyone came from everywhere with their horses and there were rodeos and stuff all week.  There were also a lot of parties, and the main place they had them was a couple of blocks away from our house.  It was pretty crazy walking home every day, but the craziest thing that they did was during the rodeos.  They pretty much had a rodeo going all week long, but the most interesting part is that in the arena thing, they threw a bunch of drunk people in and then would let the bull out.  Obviously some of the people did not have the coordination to get out of the way and got trampled, but it just didn’t make sense to me why they would let people in like that.

This week wasn’t that great, and we lost a lot of time in the area so it kind of suffered.  Monday night me and my companion went and worked with the Hermanas in their area.  I was supposed to do an interview but the lady hid, and the husband isn’t supportive so it didn’t work out.

Tuesday was one of the 3 days I worked in the area.  We went out to this family super far away that had been going to church.  The head of the household doesn’t want to give up smoking, and the kids won’t really do it without the father, so we kind of had to drop them.  We had given him so many chances.  The worst part is that the family (like 7 people) were the people that we had for baptism this month, so we kind of are going to take a hit.  They are super far and probably won’t be going to church after baptism anyway so we will survive.  We have an investigator that is the older brother of a convert and he is doing well, so we are working with him for September.

On Wednesday we just contacted more.  My companion started having a little pain on Monday, and it got worse on this day.  We called the nurse and she told us we had to go to the hospital on Thursday.

So on Thursday we took the 3 hour bus to Managua and went to the hospital.  We stopped and had a nice lunch, and then went to the cita (appointment).  Things went well, but Hna. Russell called us and told us that we had to stay the night.  I was planning on going to Boaco on Friday, so that killed the plans there, and it meant that we would be losing another day in the area.  We went and worked with the APs in their area and then stayed the night with them.  It all went well, and we went to the cita the next morning.  We found out there wasn’t really anything we could do so we went back to the area and got home late on Friday.

On Saturday we just tried to get some new people and commit everyone to come to church.  We found a couple of cool people but like always, everyone says yes until Sunday comes around.  Sunday was successful, we got the 12 people to church and have a couple of new people progressing.  The zone is doing well, and we are trying to find as many investigators ready to progress towards baptism as possible!

Thanks for all of your prayers, and I hope you all have a good week!

Elder Hanson

Pizza