What's up Guys?  Elder Lopez and I killed it this week. Throughout the week we worked with the family of Santa Maria. Santa Maria is not a member but his wife is. We taught his three kids, and their grandpa, Hermano Mariano baptized them on Saturday.

  Hermano Santa Maria has told us that he will get baptized later. Right now he is easing his way off cigarretes. Everyone wants to wait to act, and salvation can't wait, so  we will try to put a baptismal date with him this week. On Tuesday we had inter changes with the elders from Momotombo. Elder Gibbs and I went to Momotombo, while Elder Spence stayed in La Paz Centro with my companion Elder Lopez. Momotombo was awesome.

There area is flat, has a lot of sand, is hot, and had a giant volcano. We took some killer pics by the volcano.

After a lesson, we passed by an iguana vendor. He had 3 fairly big iguanas ready to be sold. We bought the biggest one for 80 cordobas, and took it to a friend's house to cook it for us. Oh man!!!!!!!!!!!! Iguana is so dope guys!!!!! On Wednesday, Lopez and I were walking back from a members house when we found a boa crawling a cross the road!!! Super dope!!!!. Other than that not much else happened.
I'll see you guys next week !!!!!!

July 13th

This is my new comp Elder Lopez. He is from Honduras and he has one change more than me, so we are figuring things out together.  It rained on Wednesday so we busted out the jackets, Frog Togs are dope for hot weather but not with this kind of rain.  I don't have a ton of time this week but I'll fit in as much as I can. This week Elder Lopez and I worked a ton!!!! Unfortunately, before changes all the investigators in the Paz fell, including all the baptismal dates. Elder Lopez had high goals, and I am working on setting high goals so we went to work finding. Everyday we contacted 10 or 15 people while teaching less actives and recent converts. Tuesday, we found an older man and committed him to baptism in the contact. He is cool but we don't think he will last, he mostly just nods and says yes. Through members, we found the family of Santa Maria. Santa Maria is not a member, but his wife is a less active and their kids are not members either. We have worked a lot with them this week, and right now their three kids are preparing for baptism.  The father needs a little more time to get things in order, but he wants to get baptized. 

One of the recent converts of Elder Lopez lives on a farm way off in the distance, so we we walked there through mud puddles and forests.  It was cool, and it reminded me of the Lost World!!! We went there with mission leader, his name is Hermano Abel.  We also found an older lady who has stopped attending churches because she is confused by all the different doctrines. With the message of the restoration, we feel like she will progress, she only needs to go to church. On Saturday, Elder Lopez and I fasted to bring people to church, find people, and commit people to baptism. On Saturday we committed the family of Santa Maria to baptism, and on Sunday we brought 4 investigators to church, and the members brought 3 investigators to church for us.

We ate lunch at a members house on Sunday.  We ate beans with cream eggs and tortilla,  and then afterwords we ate some mango with salt and lime it was so dope!!!!!!
This week we plan work closely with the members. This week we also had the opportunity to work with members from the stake who are return missionaries, they were really cool. I worked with Hermano Pablo. We found some awesome people.

In the center of Leon there is a big cathedral, I think its the biggest in Nicaragua, but the lion is outside the cathedral, right by it there is a place called jugoso and they sell batidos.  They are so good oh my man!!! a lil expensive but dope !!!!

 I got a sick Nica bag for cheap!!! The pic with me and the bag is my area,  Most of it is paved with stone, but other parts are dirt and dust.     It's really windy here so its super fresh !!

These are the kids of our lunch ceta. She cooks lunch for us. They love to play Subwaysurfers like Hayden and Alex. Our lunch ceta is nice, She cooks a lot of rice though.... when I started I didn't mind, but now I'm hating rice. We eat it every single day.  We also eat a lot of dope juices made out of fresh exotic fruit   In the night we ate at a Fritanga...a vender of fried food. We all ate fat plates of chicken and fried platanos. It was super dope with a lil bit of coke!!!!!!!!!!!





To finish off the week we ate steak in Leon with Elder Dessauer and his comp Elder Torres!!!!!!!!! Oh man it was dope!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Steak in Leon

The big volcano is Momtombo, there are a ton of volcanoes in Nicaragua!!!!

Love you guys!!!!!!!!!!

Question:  Did you get your birthday package yet?

Answer:  Thanks mom, and no I have not.  We get packages every two or three weeks!! Honestly though I don't need a ton of packages it's pretty expensive.  I only really need photos!!!! but thank you so much the packages are dope I just don't want to cost you guys a ton of money!!! 

July 6th La Paz Centro

What is up guys!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't have a ton to say this week. Elder Dunford and I finished our change strong. We filled our area with fechas. Unfortunately, we had changes and I left for Leon. I am in La paz Centro with Elder Lopez. I am excited though. He is from El Salvador and we are going to kill it this change. He has already started helping me with my Spanish.

He has been out for 7 months and Leon is just as hot. But, where I am at is pretty fresh because there is a lot of wind.  My old companion is going to train and the rest of my amigos are going to stay in Chinandega.

I have big hopes for this change. I plan to kick all the fears I had before and start fresh. For my birthday Dunford and I bought ice cream and peanut butter with raptors!!!!! Oh man it was perfect, and on top of all of that, in our lunch seta's house the family was watching the perfect storm......

Birthday Meal

We might have glanced a few times. Oh man it was a great week. Sorry I don't have much for you guys this week.  I think you're the best Hayden!!! And Alex too oh my gosh I miss you two guys so much man!!! I will keep you guys better informed this week love you!!!!!!!!!!!

Soup with Little Crabs

No Birthday Package Yet
Comment:  We got a Jurassic World photo from the theatre and we will be sending it tomorrow.
Response:   Holy cow no way!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh man!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh I'm so pumped thank you so much!!!!!!!!

Question:  Did you get the video we sent for your birthday? (I made a 32 second video and sent it with his email letter this week.  It had photos of friends and members in out ward.)
Answer:  Oh my gosh that was so dope!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh wow thank you so much I love it all.  The pics were perfect thank you so much for putting that together for me.  Mom you did a killer job on the video it was so awesome and the music was perfect thank you so much.

GTG mom much ruv have  a killer week !!!

June 29th La Florida

OH MAN!!!! This week was fantastic, though it started off a lil rough. Monday we taught a fresh set of investigators. They had a beautiful family of 4 and loved our message, but when we invited them to church  They told us it was the most important thing in the world to put in a latrine and they only had time Sunday. I said "its fine we understand". Later on my companion and I were talking, and we realized that we should be more direct and determined with the people we are teaching. El dia de reposo is a commandment of God and putting in a latrine could be postponed for 3 hours. After that we started rocking again. We found a lot of awesome people and placed 4 or 5 baptismal goals for people. The truth is, most will give up, but the dedicated will stay and that's what we want. Dunford has taught me that to baptize you need to find, and to find you need to work with members and contact people. This week we helped three people get baptized. The first person was 13 years old,and his name is Manuel. His parents are of 2 different religions, but we met him 3 or 4 weeks ago and he told us that he wanted to be a mormon and go on a mission. We had full support from his family. They even woke him up for church for us. We have had some great times with Manuel. The second `person is named Milton. He is a little older than Manuel, about 17 years old, but they are both much taller than Dunford and I. Both his parents live in Spain and his sister takes care of his 5 brothers. He spends most of his time with the family next door who are members. This family is the family of Bethxi our recent convert.

Milton does not talk much but he has plenty of support from the family of Bethxi and Walter the recent convert of Dunford and Spencer. Our third person is named Daynerzi. She is part of the extended family of Bethxi. We had a great amount of support from the family and we are working to reactivate parts of the family as well. Now with the crazy stuff this week. We had divisions Tuesday. I stayed in the area with Elder Gustafson from El Realejo. Elder Gustafson is the man. His teaching skills are very very good. He taught about the book of mormon with one of the families we are teaching, and it was the best speech i have ever heard. He included the family, used examples, and by the end I could see that the family could understand and feel the spirit. Later on in the week we met with a very rich, very friendly man, who lives in our area. His name is ___ and I have never spoken with him sober. The first time I met him he was wearing cowboy boots and being followed by  his servant. He brought him beer and followed in one of ___'s taxi.  _____ always gives us a big hug and likes to snuggle with my face, he also buys us juice Gatorade and snacks. I really don't believe we will baptize him but I think he would be the best convert ever!!! He reminds me of a Nicaraguan Doc Holiday. Anyway thats it for this week.
Love you guys!!!!!

Question:  Did you get your birthday package?
I did not get the package yet, but thank you in advance.

Question:  How was the birthday video we sent?
Hey mom thank you so much for making that video I loved it!!!! I like the grandpa pic when he pretended to be me!!!  Any kind of picture is amazing and thank you for the spiritual note you gave me!!!!!

Question:  Did you get the camping shower in your last package?
Yeah I got the camping shower. We will try it out this week. Elder Dunford will kill for a warm shower.  I don"t need a birthday present, the best thing you could do is send me photos.  That's all I really need. The truth is you guys are awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!! For my birthday our lunch ceta will make a cake!!!

June 21st Elder Dunford and Elder Scaggs La Florida

What is up guys!!!!! This week went pretty well we dropped some people who were not progressing and others who did not want to change for the better. We also picked up some new, crazy awesome people. In the beginning of the week we spoke with the family of E. He and his mom are members but the father and the two siblings are not. We taught a small lesson on Tuesday and this week we hope to set a baptismal goal with them. They sell milk and make all different kinds of cream for a living. We also began teaching a fairly large family, and are helping them prepare for marriage and baptism. Right now the father is working to kick his smoking habit and overall everyone is learning to build good spiritual habits. We also started teaching a small family with two parents and a little girl but they have not come to church and the father works a lot. We hope to prepare them for their baptismal date, but at this point it is not very sure. We do have 3 youngins preparing for baptism, they have gone to church multiple times and are keeping the commitments we give to them. One of them has the name of Manuel de Jesus. He is 13 years old and taller than both Elder Dunford and I. Both his parents are of different religions but want Manuel to attend some kind of church. Manuel has told his parents multiple times that he wants to be a Mormon and a missionary as well. He is progressing rapidly and we have faith that he will keep being dope!!!!!. The other two are about the same age as Manuel.  One of them is named Milton he is 17 years old and the other is named Daynersi. They are progressing fast as well. This week I learned that to be a missionary you gotta love your area. I will be honest I think about my home a lot.  Unfortunately, when I am thinking of home I am not thinking of the people. When this happens my teaching skills and language skills just suck!!!! People nod and smile but they don't care because I don't care. When I am focused, the words just flow the lesson rolls smoothly, and I feel love for the people we are serving. It takes a lot of work guys, it is not easy, but it is very very worth it. Like I said before I want to learn how to love the people of my area, I want to learn how to be dedicated to the work. We will see how things go this week I'Il keep you guys posted!!!!!

June 15th Elder Dunford and Scaggs La Florida

Alright guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this week was more crazy than the other ones!!!!. I'll begin with all the good things. Elder Dunford and I threw some serious fire in La Pedro this week. We placed some baptismal dates and arranged some marriages. We also contacted a great amount of new but very positive families. We also found a handful of ancient inactivos!!!!!!! Unfortunantely not all of the inactives want to listen nor go to church some just don't even talk, it's all good though. On 

Friday we had a pretty killer activity with three zones, Chinandega, Chinandega Oeste, and Leon. We all gathered in our chapel in Chinandega. We had inter cambios with all three zones. I was partnered up with Elder Baldwin. Elder Baldwin was the comp of Elder Reese in the CCM so we have talked before and when we were paired up we were pretty excited. We worked in my area and we went ham!!!!!!!. We had 11 lessons in total and almost placed 4 fechas. In the end we placed two fechas but we were pretty grateful for those! With the help of Elder Baldwin we made some serious advances in our area. I am super grateful for the them I had to work with Elder Baldwin. He teaches with the spirit and he really cares about the people. He is also very patient which is a necessity when working with me. Also my Spanish is getting better and better every single day. Before I could not read the scriptures without my english translations, but now I can read them more or less with ease with the help of a dictionary. Also, I can understand a great amount of what people are saying to us. I'm not perfect by any means. I still need a lot of help but I'm at the point where the more effort I put into my studies the more I will get out. Before I was literally trying to survive! 

Aftermath of Food Poisoning

Now for the bad news (mom no worries) Wednesday I about died of food poisoning nica style. In the night I didn't feel to well. Our lunch ceta gave us 4 tacos. I only ate 3 and I could barely get them down. When we got back to the house I could barley stand. We managed to plan. Afterwords I went to bed and woke up around 11 and just let loose in the toilet (I broke my no puke streak of 7 years). I had 4 or five sessions of vomit during the night. When I woke up I felt much better but could barely walk, but the sickness continued with diarrhea.I could not work that day and ended up sleeping the whole day. Now I'm feeling great but I have vowed never to eat fish in Nicaragua again!! This week was awesome though!!!! I learned a lot and made a ton of progress. Right now I think about the people much much more than my family and my home. By the end of this change I hope to be dedicated to the work. I've learned that being dedicated isn't weird. Once you become dedicated to the work you start having fun and the work becomes less of work and more of a game,  it becomes fun. Any way love you guys your boy in Nicaragua!!!!!!!!!! 

June 8th

Elder Reese  Bethxi  Elder Scaggs

Hey guys just finished another week in Nicaragua!!!!!!! This week was a little on the crazy side. We started strong with menos activos and investigators. We placed baptismal dates and even ended the week with a baptism. The baptism we held on Saturday was for a young girl named Bethxi. Her family is menos activo but we reactivated them and taught their youngest daughter. She is very smart and picked up the lessons very fast. We also managed to reactivate a different family and bring 5 investigators to church. Now time for the crazy stuff. On Thursday Elder Dunford had just finished a baptismal interview and we were preparing to go back to our area when a white dude stopped us. He spoke english and he was from america. We taught him a little about our religion. Elder Dunford and I had a little trouble doing that in english. When we finished explaining he took over and began preaching to us about the hebrew name of Jesus and how he was sent from God to change the world. He said all religions were from man and that the whole world are sinners. During the lecture two girls walked by and he immediately turned to them and flirted with them. He asked if they were going to the gym and showed them his guns. He was a really weird dude.

The craziest part about the week was Saturday. The day started pretty relaxed, very hot like always, but around 6 it started to pour...then flood. we were up to our shins in water. All the streets we completely flooded. It was like walking through a river. We did not give up. We searched for people to teach. After practically swimming we stopped at a local investigators house and had the opportunity to meet her husband. We taught him that we do not worship Joseph Smith and a little bit about prophets. The Experience was very cool. After words we took a taxi home. Throughout the whole experience huge bolts of lightning were crashing all around us!!!! very fun Very crazy !!!! That's it from me this week guys love you!!!!!!

Bueno this week I finished my second change in Nicaragua, and I also finished my training. We began the week with a birthday party for a recent convert. We played games, laughed alot and took some crazy pictures. We also had the opportunity to listen to a live mariachi band.

They played 10 or 12 songs for us, and even made a custom song for Anayansi the Recent Convert.

 Later in the week we met up with our Pilas (super positive, energetic, pumped) family in Divino who are investigating the church. We taught them the Restoration, and they loved it. They had a lot of questions and we were able to answer all of them. The father has stopped smoking and drinking and is working with his neighbor to stop smoking as well.




On Wednesday, we had a meeting in Managua with Elder Duncan, a really important leader in the church. He spent a few hours teaching the entire mission, including Presidente and his wife, the plan for Central America and more specifically Nicaragua. From this point forward, missionaries will not be baptizing new memebers. All baptisms will be done by the youth or other memebers of the church. Also, we were told to stop contacting without members. We were taught that if we use menos activos, and other memebers to find people we will have more success and the ward members will grow spiritually as well. I saw the effects immediatley. The people we find with members are ready for the gospel and the members who teach with us learn as well. On Thursday we did divisions with the elders from Corinto. I led a lesson with an inverstigator in Divino. This man has 3 kids and his girlfriend left to guatemala and closed all communication. He is raising 2 of the three kids by himself in a small tin shack. He drinks as a distraction but wants to stop.

Hermanas Santilas & Leon, Elders Pozuelos, Perkes, Reese, and Scaggs

We taught him the gospel of Jesus Christ. At the end I extended the invitation to be baptized. He said, he wanted to learn more before he made any commitments. I felt a little dumb afterwords because I was not thinking of the investigator. I only extended the invitation because that was the routine. Missionary work is not a routine. We need to constantly be listening to the spirit, ready to act on the promptings we receive. Friday we brought Henry and Jessica to a baptism. They loved it and felt the spirit very strongly. Afterwords they invited us to eat Nacatamales.  Nacatamales are green tamales with all sorts of meat and vegetables. Dad Mom Hayden and Alex you guys would love them!!!!!! Unfortunatley we also had changes this week. Right now I am with Elder Dunford en La Florida but my area is called la Pedro. Elder Dunford is awesome we are going to do some serious damage in Chianandega with these next 6 weeks. Love you guys have a good week .
Your boy in Nicaragua