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

Alright guys this week was fairly chill until Wednesday, when we had a meeting in Managua with Presidente. (Managua is 2.5 hours away) http://wikitravel.org/en/Chinandega  We rode the bus. Those rides are hot, and they are long, but they are also fun. The Nicaraguan's play American music from the 70's a lot. This meeting was definitely a game changer. Thursday we worked in our area, then Friday we had another meeting with Presidente in Estela. Two zones attended this meeting, Chinandega and Chinandega Oeste. We were taught a few things then split apart for intercambios. Every person switched companions for the day and were given specific goals to acomplish. I went to Corinto with Elder Cedeño for the day. We did not complete all of the goals, but we managed to accomplish a great amount of things in very little amount of time. I was given many opportunities to practice my teaching skills. I love intercambios because they give me the chance to try different ways of teaching, and learn from other missionaires. We also managed to reactivate a drug addict from Divino. He has been having alot of trouble with crack, marijuana, and cigarettes, but now he is back on track and preparing for a mission. This week he has made a great amount of progress. He is reading in El Libro de Mormon, going to church, going to church activities, looking for a job, and working with us almost everyday. On Friday, Elder Reese met with one of this man's smoking friends. We taught him on Saturday and Sunday as well. The lesson on Sunday was very powerful. It began a little choppy, and he was a little offensive.  But, as the lesson progressed, and as his family joined us his whole attitude changed. By the end of the lesson he was set on changing his life and bringing his family with him. We set a date to marry and baptize their family. The spirit was very strong in the lesson. I know that this change is only possible because the Restored Gospel Of Jesus Christ is real. Anybody can change and reach their fullest potential in this life if they are willing to follow the pure teachings of Christ.
Thats it for me this week Love you guys!!!!

Photo of Elder Reese holding soda in a bag.

They sell soda and drinks in bags in Nicaragua. The table to the left is our desk.  Notice our closet in the background.

They get rid of their garbage differently down here, so the message on this wall is most ironic.

Don't throw garbage.  Don't be a pig.

More goofy photos in tiny vehicles.

Bueno!!!! Hey guys, another week in Nicaragua has come and gone. This week we did not do divisions often. I spent the night in Corinto friday night. I worked with Elder Martinez, a killer Guatemalan. We talked  to some awesome people and set baptismal dates. For dinner, we ate pizza at a local pizzeria. The pizza of Corinto is famous, and I testify of its quality. Tripadvisor page Corinto Pizza Restaurant  The pizza down here does not have pizza sauce, so they squirt flavored ketchup on top. I am not the biggest fan of this type of pizza but it's alright. The next morning Elder Reese and I drove back to Chinandega where we split up again. I went with Elder Perkes to some town in the middle of nowhere, while Reese went with Elder Chen to Divino Niño. The town Perkes and I visited was very poor, and very very small. They only had wells and maybe 2 or 3 pulperias (stores). Divino has 2 or 3 on every street. Anyway, we drove around with a very patient cab driver for a while to find our investigator. We ended up going off-road.  The taxi was not in good shape, nor built for
off-roading so it got a little sketchy. In our area  Elder Reese and I found more than just a few converts who never come to church. Also, we reactivated a member who has problems with drugs and smoking. We have him commited to go on a mission and are actively helping him turn his life around. So far, he has gone on divisions at least twice in the last week.

Lunch Seta and Family
Elder Scaggs & Elder Smith
The wonderful lady in the middle feeds them lunch and dinner!

OH!  we also managed to bring most of our lunch seta´s family to church. Her name is Hermana Sandra, and she is a member but rarely attends church. Her oldest daughter is a member as well, but we are working with her whole family. Honestly, in just the past two weeks, we, especially Elder Reese, have made a difference in their lives. On Wednesday, Elder Reese highlighted a few points in the church magazine ...the liahona... and gave them to the two youngest daughters. Of course, we intend to baptize their family, but more importantly we want to strengthen them and give them the security that we have. I know that the Gospel will enhance their lives totalmente.

Photo from Google Chat on Mother's Day
This was outside the lunch seta's house!

 Also, we talked with our families this week. I thoroughly enjoyed the time I had to talk with them. I have little to no time in Nicaragua, but with the little time I have, I realized that families are the only things we really have in this life. Everything comes and goes, but families don't. Enjoy your time with the fam guys !!!!!!!!
Your Boy Down in Nicaragua