Week 2 in Nicaragua

May 3, 2009

HI FAMILY & FRIENDS:

It is week two here in Nicaragua and things are awesome!! I’m now known as "Daddy’s Boy" sorry for making you worry about my health. [Stu call the Mission Home to see what the mission was doing to protect the missionary’s in Nicaragua against Swine Flu. Obviously the missionary grapevine is working well as most of the mission knows about the phone call too] I’m fine! My stomach was hurting from getting use to eating rice and beans every day and every meal "Yum"!! I’m good, my health is good as far as I know I get the occasional diarrhea which is normal here. I drink purified water whenever I can and if it isn’t good I have my filtered water bottle. As far as the swine flu here I don’t think we have it but I heard it’s in Arizona that’s kind of scary!

Everything is good this week - pretty crazy but good! Spanish is coming pretty quickly now I’m starting to understand where the words are separated in sentences but that’s about it! As far as my clothes and food we don’t have a maid, just a ward member who we pay monthly to buy food and clean clothes. She’s really a nice lady and her name is Gladice.

Oh man, there is so much to tell...it is really really poor were I'm at. Everyone’s home floors are dirt and their houses are really opened to let the air circulate cuz they have no AC. The buses ha-ha those are a different adventure each time you get on one. There are like 50 more people riding on a bus over the maximum. They are small, I have to bow my head to climb in the bus and half the time I can’t sit in the seats because my legs are too long ha-ha. But that’s usually how we get around is on the bus.

I had my first baptism! But it didn’t go so well...the man’s name is Carlos and I didn’t feel he was ready to baptise but my companion said he was when we interviewed him. Anyway I baptized him 1, 2, 3, 4, .....12 times because every time I would dunk him in the water he would freak out and his body wouldn’t be fully immersed ha-ha!! It was crazy...so then my companion was like "here let me do it" and he forces him under but Carlos knocks my companion over as he was putting him into the water!! We all got pretty wet! We went to his house the next day to take him to church to be confirmed and he didn’t want to go to church...so that was sad.
The areas here are muy peligroso which means dangerous people are always coming up to me asking for money or just yelling at me and my companion as we walk by. This one area is the worst where we are teaching this awesome family, the Salguera family. On the way there was a gang and they came up to my companion and were yelling in his face, saying if we come in their territory again they will jump us and take our stuff, so we have to take a really long route around to get to this families house now but it’s worth it.

Other then that everything is awesome, I love it here. The families do struggle in staying active but they still have that desire. I just want to let you all know I’m safe and having an awesome time and thank you all so much for your letters and emails. Tell everyone else [friends] I’m sorry I can’t write them back personally [mission president rule], but it’s awesome you have a blog set up so they can read how I’m doing. I love you all and hope you are all well and don’t get that FLU its "NO BUENO"!?! Ha-ha

Love,

Elder Buck