Rain & Elders

New rash for the week! Cause - AXE deoderant spray.

I am still alive and kicking!

Pictures of Virgin Mary abound.

Elder Buck with Elder Schnettle and Elder Yates, the mission president assistants who flew in last week to spend a day with us. It is nice to visit with others who speak English.

Hola Familia Buck

That’s good to hear that you guys had another good week, ooooh that’s still pretty warm in Arizona, I hope it cools down here too ha-ha. That will never happen :P

That sounded like fun going to hear Scott and his band play. I remember going and listening to them they were pretty good. Yeah about that picture website you made for me dad, thank you, I look at it when ever I can I haven’t been able to look at it recently cause I don’t have time but when I do its so cool to be able to see all those family pictures.

This week has been good, time is starting to fly, were almost finished with this change and my companion goes home in 3 months HE IS SO TRUNKY!!! Sometimes work isn’t very good, cause he says when he sitting their in lessons he usually can’t teach that good cause he’s thinking about home. The weather has been hot and humid and rainy like always, it’s actually kind of depressing when it rains cause first we have to go out in the rain and second we get so muddy, my pant legs are covered with mud sometimes. But other then that it’s good. The rainiest season right now is in the winter. I’m sure they have somewhere we can buy a jacket but I’m just too lazy to look for one ha-ha.

This week actually was kind of hard, Monday night I wasn’t feeling good and couldn’t breathe so I thought I was going to have another lung attack. We came home and I didn’t want to go to sleep cause we were suppose to still be working so I studied Preparing for Salvation which is cool. Then I went to bed even though I was still having a hard time breathing and a super bad headache. The next morning I woke up with an unbelievable painful headache and a fever. I stayed in bed and pretty much slept all day then when night came wasn’t tired and I couldn’t go to sleep, so I stayed up till 4 a.m. reading the Book of Mormon. Every time I read it before bed I fall asleep, but this time I didn’t. I started in Alma Chapter 1 and read all the way to Alma Chapter 49 that was so cool. Ammon is my favorite missionary example, I think that it is so cool how faithful he and all the sons of Mosiah are. When I think about me and my situation (I’M A BABY HAHA) because I don’t get stoned, or spit upon, or cast into prison and beaten and starved. SO WHY DO I WHINE haha??!! That actually helped me out a lot to understand that I don’t have it so hard.

It is kind of hard living with four other Elders. The other Gringo Elder Augustin is cool and so is my companion too. But Elder Solorzano, Ical, and Corrazco I still don’t know them very well. Elder Carrazco is just a straight-up-punk, every time I walk by him he shoulders me and tells me his going to stab me with a knife while I’m sleeping, he’s always has a bad attitude and is ruder then heck! I know I’m in another country/culture so things are going to be a different, but I try to help him, sometimes he will be cool and let me teach him a song on the guitar but usually goes back to his bad attitude after. I talked to my companion and asked him to talk to Carrazco and tell him to start acting like a missionary, stop calling me gringo, start calling me Elder and to chill. He is always yelling or screaming or making some kind of noise. Now Elder Ical is acting just like him and it’s so annoying haha. Then there is Elder Solorzano he´s a cool Elder and does everything he´s suppose to. He just doesn´t like me I try to talk to him but he doesn’t talk back haha I don’t know….other then that were doing alright. They can pretty dang annoying though.

No the family we have been teaching never got their birth certificate there suppose to get it today but they haven’t yet. And their attitudes have totally changed and seem to not care anymore and didn’t go to church, even when I passed by their house that morning and they said yes they would. Dang I need to step it up I still hardly know anyone in my area, or the name of places or individual names. BUT Juan the young man we were teaching did get baptized this week so that was good.

As far as cleaning the church I don’t know what we can do, I tried to do something about it and even talked about in my talk the other Sunday when I was suppose to be talking about enduring to the end. Where’s that scripture in D&C that says the spirit can’t dwell in a dirty room or we need a house of order.

Wow that is some pretty big changes in the home ward I hope everything goes good with that. I got a letter from Grandma Eliason too!!! Tell I LOVE HER!!! I’m not able to write back I never have time so right now this is all I can do. My Spanish still needs improving, we lack the study materials but I’m doing what I can. Today I’m going to buy a book so I can learn the Miskito language better.Well I love you all and thank you for all of your love and support!!

Con cariño y mucho amor

Elder Buck

Leading and Guiding Members

Elder Buck & Elder Miranda teaching investigators.

Eating better food here!

New ailment for the week? Rash of some sort?

Elder Buck & company.

Elder Buck at home.

Hola Familia Buck!

It’s good to hear that everyone is happy and doing well. My stomach does feel better I’m not throwing up anymore. That’s good you guys were busy this week and that there is still work to do. How is the golf business doing, many golfers?? It’s good to hear you are still doing food storage Mom that’s such a blessing to be able to have that. Freezing fifty bags of corn, that is a lot of corn, yum yum… that sounded like a fun family activity. The ward luau sounded fun. Yeah go MOM!!!! Hula hula!

This week has been long and so much stuff happened I can’t remember all that I did. The beginning of the week we had the president assistants come and visit us so that was cool. Elder Yates is from Utah and the other Elder Schnettle is from Chile and was my companions, companion here in the mission and in the MTC (I wonder if I will be companions with Elder Titus again that would be so cool!) Elder Yates was so excited and he was so cool but they had to leave the next day

We really haven’t done much this week now that I think about it, this week we have 4 baptisms coming up. Juan who is 16 he is really cool and wants to serve a mission but at first didn’t want to get baptize until 6 months later, now wants to be baptized ASAP. We have to teach him and give him all the lessons so that’s awesome. Then there is Ariel, Delsia and Wilbur who is the brother of Delsia. First we have to get Ariel and Delsia married, which is kind of hard because she doesn’t even have a birth certificate so we gave her money so that she can get a copy of one. Ariel definitely is ready to be a member, wants to be baptized and change his life. So that’s awesome!! He used to be in the Army so he was in situations where he had to kill people but wants to put all of that behind him.

Then I got to know my Branch President a lot better Presidente Ramsin, he is awesome and I was on divisions with him a lot this week. He is so dedicated to his calling. He was called branch president right after the hurricane hit and it’s really difficult because the members at the time were inactive. But since then, the branch has grown so much they have had to split it into three branches. Bilwi (my area), Loma Verde (Elder Carrasco and Elder Agustin´s area), and Puerto Cabezas (Elder Solorzano and Elder Ical´s Area). Right now our branch attendance is low, and we don’t have any dedicated priesthood holders so things there are pretty tough. Elder Miranda and I are doing the best we can to get more priesthood and help the members now, so we have been on division’s a lot for that.

We don’t really have any new investigators right now, so we are working with the recent converts and less actives so that they will keep coming to church. It’s a lot different here; we have a really nice church and it was just built in January and it’s already trashed because no one takes care of it. The bathrooms are so gross, there are plumbing problem and sometimes the toilets over flow and who gets to clean the bathrooms? WE DO!!! Yeah!!!!! Ha-ha. We pretty much do everything here, which I don’t understand, and the members don’t do anything. The members and even the leaders rely on us a ton they will come to me and ask me what to do; I have never felt like a leader before, I LIKE IT!!!

Thank you for everything, all of you are in my prayers too, and thank you for that talk from the apostles, that was awesome. I love you all!

Elder Buck

What a Beautiful Place!

Elder Buck and Fonzie in Nicaragua

Check out the big turtle!

The girls are from the branch, the one is named Sandra, like mom's name.

Hello my Family!!!

Hey I got the package you sent, thank you for everything! How is everyone! I’m doing awesome!!Yeah my companion is from Santiago Chile and is awesome, he is the district leader and is just an all around nice guy. He has been out on his mission for 20 months. Presidente Fraatz has a lot of confidence in him because he was his assistant when I first got here in Nicaragua, so he lets him travel alone. He is here in this area really to help the leaders of the church, they need training and guidance. We get along awesome and we are working hard when we can work, because he is in a lot of meetings to help out the ward, I am on divisions a lot with just a member.

I love the people here they are so nice! Teaching this week was really hard, we did have a lot of lessons. But the family we are working with, Ariel and Delsia, we are trying to get them married but she doesn’t have her birth certificate, so were going to try to get that.. (But you know what is gross, he is 26 years old and a really cool nice guy but she’s only 15, today is her birthday, and they already have a baby named Justin...) But that’s actually normal here so that’s just some of the other things I’ve got to get over.

The language Miskito is actually not getting easier but it’s something I really need to learn because some people can’t even speak Spanish and only Miskito so I can’t even communicate with them! I have been praying not so much to seek answers, but to just thanking Heavenly Father for all the opportunities I have during the day to teach, and for the spirit, and I feel good after!

Yeah mosquitoes (the real insects) are horrible here, they bite like crazy, we have “Off-spray” and a coil thing that you light the end with a lighter and it smokes and the smoke supposedly keeps them away, but we get bit like crazy. We are eating sea food and its awesome we have fish, crab, shrimp, lobster, and turtle with rice and beans always ha-ha. For breakfast I usually make eggs with bread or cold cereal with powder milk: P (not a fan of powdered milk!) No we don’t really have access to fruits and vegetables that’s actually a little bit more dangerous to eat that here because I only want to eat something I can peel to feel safe, so I eat a lot of coconut ha-ha.

The people in Managua were so much poorer than they are here, things are a lot more expensive to buy here and the houses are built better because there are hurricanes. Yeah, our neighbor she washes all our clothes by hand and that is kind of hard cuz I usually don’t get my clothes back until 2 to 5 days later. She doesn’t have a washer or dryer so she hangs our clothes outside but it rains everyday so the clothes never really dry out. Yes it is so cold when it rains cuz we are right by the ocean and its always raining in the morning and our bathroom shower has freezing cold water. I will have to buy something to keep me warm ha-ha.

I will try to get a picture of the beach and surroundings, it is a beautiful place. Well I hope that was all the questions I was suppose to answer....Thanks for the pioneer story, that’s how I like to think about my mission too. I love this mission, all the experiences I am having and all the good I’m doing to help others. I love you all!

Haysabe

Elder Buck

Love My New Area!

Hello Family!

Yeah I love this area! Oh my gosh, I think this is the same area that Bro. Tryon came through when he was in Central America. THAT IS SO AWESOME! Yeah, I’m learning a little bit of Miskito it’s really hard because a lot of the people here can only speak in Miskito but no Español ha-ha. I have like a vocabulary of 15 words that I can kind of communicate with. It’s so cool it’s like almost Africa here except tropical.

My clothes and items I couldn’t bring with me to this location will stay in the Mission President assistants house. That kind of stinks cuz all of the missionaries, that are new, stay there and they just leave the suitcases on the floor so anyone can go through my stuff because I don’t have a lock on my suitcase. No that cannot send any of my extra clothes because it’s to far away and it cost to much so I’m going to have to wear a lot of the same clothes again. Which is nasty!!! But everyone here smells anyway ha-ha.

I’ve got to say its pretty cool living with four other Elders I don’t really know them very good except Elder Augustin from Utah. One of the Elder’s is pretty much opposite of what a missionary should be and we try to help him but he doesn’t care so we just let him do whatever. We actually don’t have that much time to study let alone study with our own companions. There’s only one shower and sometimes there’s no water so we have to use buckets of freezing ice cold water.

No we don’t track together, all four of us split up into our companions and we have different areas that we work so we don’t track in the same area. This area is huge and where we live is like the four corners of the states. One road goes to one area and the other road to another so it’s pretty cool. We all eat breakfast in the house and buy are own food for that. We eat lunch and dinner at member’s houses and its always different cuz we don’t pay for a cook like we did in Managua, so the member’s invite us to eat with them. Sometimes the food is interesting ha-ha.

There’s a lot of sea food like lobster, crab, and fish and then there’s beans and rice always. But I had turtle and that was pretty dang good but I feel bad eating it cuz turtles are cool! Their the huge ones here too so its actually a tortoise we eat and sometimes the people sell them after they kill them. They take off the head and shell and throw out the shell, but put the head and body meat in a wheel barrow and sell them. Whoever wants whatever part to eat, they cut off that part with a machete, weigh and sell it ha-ha.

Riding a bike is so AWESOME!!! I love it. It was cool to be able to see the Rizo Family be baptized, they are doing well too. In our branch there is like 130 people and right now only 80 are coming to church and we hardly have leaders so it’s pretty hard keeping everything in order.
Yeah Algebra 2 good luck Carly with that! (but I know you will do good your smarter them me :/) Glad to hear you got to go the cinders and it sounds like a completely different group of kids went this time. Tyler Lamb, I miss that kid, hope everything is good for him and everyone is inviting him to do fun stuff with them.

YEAH TELL GRANDMA I’M SO SORRY I DON’T GET TO WRITE BACK TO HER AND I LOVE HER!!!! The mail here is really screwed up and it costs a ton to mail anything but I will see what I can do. But I have all her letters! I have not got the package with contacts yet, supposedly I will get it this Thursday but we will see. I thank you all for everything and love you all very much I hope the rest of the family is good and you guys get along so we wont be fighting and we can be able to live in heaven for eternity. But mom and dad thank you really for everything.

Love your Missionary
Elder Buck