A Good Week!

Me with my new companion, Elder Santos and random pictures of the city around where we live.

Hey Family!!


My week was an awesome one!! Well sort of, compañero Elder Harris had changes on Wednesday (we were both thinking that he would stay here until the end of his last change) so I got a new Comp!! YEAH! He’s really cool, his name is Elder Santos (elder holy haha) and he probably has to be my smallest companion so far! He is from Guatemala, he says that he lives 15 minutes from the temple. He likes to joke a lot so he keeps the mission fun and active. This week we were “echando fuego!” (it means “throwing fire” or doing really good) here in Jinotepe. We are going to baptize the Familia Reyes and we are going to get them married tomorrow (which reminds me I got to call the “abagado” (lawyer) to get them married). :/ But they are doing good, the kids are real excited for their parents and so am I.

Oh yeah Thanksgiving (turkey, mashed potatoes, pie mmmmmm….) man I’m going to miss that Holiday haha. I hope you have a good one! HAPPY BIRTHDAY TANNER AND MAIZEY (wow she is already a year old!!) That sounds like it will be a fun dinner/party at the house.

I did learn new things from my companion for sure and am learning a lot from the one I have now. I SO LOVE THE MISSION RIGHT NOW!!! Teaching has gone really good this week; we had 2 more families accept baptism. One family is Familia Rigoberto and the other is Familia Perez. Family Perez are doing good just neither of them went to church this Sunday and that’s the first thing they need to do to be able to get them baptize, so we will see if we can get them excited enough to go to church.

I pretty much love it here, the people, the weather, the members, my companion. The only thing I don’t like (uh oh Elder Buck’s getting negative) Is what the people say wherever we go “quiere café-quiere café mormones??” (which is, Do you want coffee, Mormons??) So one time I got fed up when one a kid said it to me and I said “quiere morir quiere morir charbalo??” (which is, Do you want to die kid??) And he got this look of fear on his face. Then I said right after “por que café hace daño” (which translates to, “because coffee can damage you”) haha Doesn’t translate well from Spanish to English, but my companion got a kick out of it. The weather here has gotten a little bit hotter this week but it’s not as humid as Managua or Puerto Cabezas, or near as many mosquitoes.

This city is a lot wealthier, I mean the city part there is the poorer out-skirt parts too. Just like the people in the Book of Mormon the poor people are easier to convert because they have learned how to be humble. We are working in the poorer areas, because a lot of the rich people have a lot of pride and don’t think they need religion or think the holy Mary will save them. I got to say, I don’t know why the Catholic religion worships Mary when the first of the ten commandments say “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me”. For I am a jealous God. The greatest commandment - Thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart and all thy mind and all thy strength. Haha that reminds me, there are a lot of Catholics here so whenever we go contacting we run into a Catholic and say “hi we are missionaries of this church etc….What church do you visit? They say “The Catholic church” and my companion says “I’m sorry” (cause he’s sorry that their Catholic haha) I don’t know if that made much sense.

We are tracting every day here, they call it contacting. The goal each day is to contact 20 people and leave them an invitation to go to our church this Sunday. I did really good with that this week, usually I get kind of nervous when I contact. But I just decided this could be the only chance they get to hear the Gospel and this is my only chance to share it with them, so I contacted 35-45 people each day which is a lot haha. My zone leaders love me for it, cause not many of the elders do contacting like their suppose to.

The members of the ward are more active and educated but it’s still kind of hard getting them to help us, cause one of our daily goals is to teach 4 people with a member in the lesson. That’s the other thing, since Elder Fallebella came here and gave a talk about the importance of baptizing whole families (which talk we couldn’t go to cause of the war in Puerto Cabezas). That’s a huge mission focus and it’s really hard to find a family where each member is interested in hearing the message of the Gospel, but I think it’s an awesome mission goal.

Haha “hay está Carly”! Got an admirer! Way to go dad, I gave a talk in church too, about missionary work that was fun! I love trying to talk in Spanish in front of people ha-ha.

I hope the holidays go good for you guys! Well that’s how my week has been! Thank you always for everything!

Love Elder Buck

Elder Buck

Elder Buck racing through the street of Jinopete, Nicaragua.

Life Is Good!

Me with my Zone...

Me playing in kiddy car...

Me inside a real transportation bus....not much more room than the kiddy car!

Dear Family,

This will be a short email, I do not have much time to write today. My new area is awesome! As of now I do not have anymore health problems. 

As far as what has happened this week, Luis the man we baptised last week, did not come to church this Sunday so he was not confirmed. We went to his home and we were told he was not there.  We have another family that Elder Harris has been teaching for 6 months and they finally committed to baptism.  Elder Harris said it was because of something I said in my lesson. The family has had challenges of keeping the commandments and I asked them why? They didn't reply so I explained to them the importance of repentance and baptism. I said we need to repent as soon as we know we have done wrong because it can be too late. I asked the dad if he knew when he was going to die, and he got mad and told me I wasn't God and stormed off...He then returned to the room and said he was sorry for getting mad and that he understood what I was trying to say. The next evening my companion and I visited the home again, it was around 8 p.m. and the father was asleep so we were teaching the teenagers and mom. The dad woke up and came in and joined the lesson but sat quietly through the lesson until we were going to say the prayer. I asked hermano if he had anything he would like to say, then this is what he said, "I have been thinking about what you said, so I have repented and now I want to be baptised!!! HOW COOL IS THAT!  My companion almost cried because he has been working so long with this family.

Now for my other news like I said last week, I have so many things stolen since I got to Nicaragua that many items need to be replaced, especially my white dress shirts and white t-shirts to wear on P-day. The women use wire metal brushes to clean our clothes and she has worn big holes in two of mine. I also need new undergarments since three bottoms disappeared. (Note from Sandra: we hope he has enough to wear between washings that he does have to go native commando!)

Also send the other items I have asked for in the past posts.  Thanks for everything and I will write again next week.

Love you all,
Elder Buck

Click here to: Email Elder Buck

I Am In My New Location and Doing Better!

Thats my bishop in the middle (he's awesome) ward mission leader and the guy on the right our baptism this week (Luis)

Thats my companion Elder Harris with maria and juanita

That's me with Hermana Juanita and Maria thats where we eat is at a PANDERIA (BAKERY) its awesome and their awesome!

Thats me with some elders in my district (they still can't believe I'm the tallest missionary here ha-ha)

Thats me with a mask ha-ha

Me with my companion and zone leader Elder Burton

Catholic church (there are a lot of them)

Hello Family!

As far as my health I am a lot better! The rash has pretty much gone away but I’m still applying the cream and the powder to make it feel better.

As far as the two abscesses I had they have healed and are going away and the other one that was forming on my other leg just turned out to be a reaction and not an abscess. JUST TO BE CLEAR I’M FINE!! HERMANA FRAATZ CALLED ME SAYING I HAD SURGERY. But I didn’t have surgery and now everything is okay! They gave me a cream to put on the abcesses and way expensive pills to take out the infection and ibuprofen. I can now walk, run and do all that good stuff!

Gross! That’s what it was? A bot fly, that is so GROSS!! (Only in Nicaragua!!) They didn’t tell me anything at the hospital what it was. Ha-ha I’m so sorry, don’t worry about it now, and no more dreams about parasites Mom & Dad, dream happy dreams!

Okay I am now in Jinotepe! And yeah they have pretty much everything that I need so I will be doing some stocking up. They have a huge super market where I can buy all that medical stuff. No health issues or anything now so I’m back to work and working hard!

I still haven’t got back my large suitcase because what happened is the new Elders that came to Puerto brought my big suitcase to me but when I flew back down to Managua, to go to the hospital, I had to leave it in Puerto so now it is on the other side of the country and I will have to wait quite some time till I get that big bag again.

Hey, I don’t know if I told you this but I got some things stolen out of my big bag IMAGINE THAT! I had to originally leave it in Managua when I first flew to Puerto and it was left at the assistant’s house. Well that’s where the new missionaries sleep, and some of these missionaries are thieves so they stole 3 of my deodorants, 3 of my soap 3, undergarment bottoms??? (they are going to hell for that), 1 pair of my pants, my white gym shoes for P-day (what is a small person going to do with size 13 shoes, slap around in them like Bozo the clown?) and a book of memories, my letters and two shirts. OH man! I guess I can’t trust anyone!

I have been able to do my teaching because I’m here in JINOTEPE!!!! Yeah!! I will write more about that later... While I was recovering the past week in the mission office I would go on LDS.ORG (that website is so cool) listen to general conference talks, read and study the scriptures and sleep (cause the drugs make me super drowsy ha-ha)

Its good to hear everything is the same at home and that Carly’s doing good in school!

Well I don’t have much time for this second part but I will try and hurry...

Okay I’m here in JINOTEPE. I got here last Wednesday. The weather here is so nice and cool. My companion is Elder Harris from Ogden, Utah and he is awesome! He to will be going home in December the same time as Elder Miranda goes home. He is way obedient and a hard worker so we are doing amazing. We rent the house from non-members who are way nice and rich. We have a nice little room that we rent and it’s always cool as far as temperature.

We eat at a member’s house, they own a bakery so we can have whatever kind of sweets, cakes, breads we want, OH I LOVE IT!!! AND I LOVE THE PEOPLE HERE!!!! Absolutely love them they are so nice here and I just love how the buildings look it’s so cool! I will take and send more pictures next week, I’m scared to send stuff on this computer I think it has a virus.

But we have had one baptism named Luis its kind of sad (he is a little slow) He is normal, just lacks education. But he had a problem with drinking coffee but supposedly for a whole week he stopped drinking but the morning of the day on his baptism, supposedly he “accidently” drank coffee. So we talked to the zone leaders got him interviewed and baptized him. This guy I don’t even know, I have only been to his house twice so I let my companion and the zone leaders make the call. But the next day he didn’t go to church till the end of sacrament meeting so he wasn’t confirmed, so were going to see what’s up with this guy and see if he is worthy still.

BUT I’M HAPPY, I’M HEALTHY, AND I’M HAVING FUN SERVING THE LORD ONCE AGAIN!! Thank you for all your prayers and love and am back to work and doing the best I can and giving it my all!! I love you all Mom, Dad, Tanner family, Carver family, Carly and all of my friends and family!!!

Elder Buck

Elder Buck would appreciate a short note from all of you, please Email McCoy Now By Clicking Here

Back to the Hospital Again!

Hello Family!!

Yeah I’m glad I was able to see a Doctor in Managua too! The fungus has gone down a lot but now I have another surprise. I had an abscess on my right leg right behind my knee cap. (Brother Tryon knows about those and also talk to him about sending "panalog" to me; I hear that works really well for an anti-biotic) When I went to the hospital the doctor said it was just a bug bite, but then it got bigger and purple and black and super infected. So when I went to the doctors to go get it checked out they took me straight to the Emergency Room. And I had for sure, an almost Joseph Smith experience. Okay here they don’t have anesthesia to inject to take away the pain so what they did is had me take of my pants, and lay down on the operating bed on my stomach. Then they went to town…..first they took a blade and made an incision in my leg at the infected part and the missionary that was with me said blood and puss just spurted everywhere. Then they took syringes and started injecting anti-bacterial killer into my leg and it hurt so badly!!! They had to have done it 12 times. Then the just started squeezing out all the puss and blood and squeezing and squeezing. (IT HURT SO FREAKING BAD!!!) Then they took tweezers and “oh lucky me” pulled out 3 larva of some kind of insect and a little black ball (how fun!!) Then they just squeezed out the rest of the infection.

Well so after that operation I couldn’t walk because the infection is on my tendon and the back part of my leg. So they told me I wouldn’t be going to my area until two weeks, when I will be able to walk right. So that day I didn’t walk much. Well I went back today and did the same thing again and that hurt twice as bad. While I was there it turns out I had two more abscesses; one forming on my left arm on my forearm, and the other on my other leg practically in the same spot as the other. So today they also operated on my arm and that hurt really bad too (what do you know!!) I have all these other bug bites so I can’t wait to see what those turn into.

Yeah, that was good to get out last week and teach again, it is true, the spiritual feelings were not as frequent in Puerto. I’m way excited to go out to the field again but I got to wait 2 weeks till I’m able to. That’s good that the families got together again. (Amanda, whatever happened I don’t know, but please just do as Christ would and forgive and forget, don’t hold burdens that’s what Satan wants us to do. I love you all Carver, Amanda, my nieces and nephew, I hope you work things out.)

Right now I don’t know much about the new area I will be serving because I haven’t gone yet ha-ha. But I heard it’s an awesome area and I’m super excited to go! It’s not to far from Managua I don’t think. My companion is Elder Harris from Utah, he will be going home in December, but I hope I do have a great and successful change with him too.

I heard about Ammon´s mission call that’s so AWESOME!!! Yeah, I heard Monson´s doing well, stinks how the mission rules are strict and we can’t email each other. Ha-ha

Okay so I was thinking if you were to send something for Christmas. New undergarments, they don’t have any my size here, cool tie, socks, and a photo of the Mom, Dad & Carly, plus Carver and Tanner’s families!!!! Thanks!!! I don’t know what we will be doing as far as Christmas. Where we go? What we do? I would think we go to the mission home but I’m not sure. As far as the member candy service project I’m good with it, thanks for offering.

Now, I’m replying to Dad’s letter. Okay I’m sorry for the news and my health is not sounding too good, but I’m getting the best treatment here in Nicaragua so hopefully it’s enough. I just have to learn to endure trials “the road to salvation, first it may be something like going through the Garden of Gethsemane” and if that’s suppose to mean physical illness, I don’t know, but I do know Heavenly Father is watching over me, and whatever happen…happens. Right now I’m doing the best I can to stay healthy ha-ha but its not really working. I’m really trying to stay healthy but I don’t have all the resources like I do in the states. Something I didn’t have for a long time in Puerto was bug repellent so that first month I got eaten alive. I am doing the best to stay healthy, but remember I am in a third world country and the third poorest country in the world, so there is not much I can do and not many resources.

I will defiantly send you photos of Jinotepe when I get there, I’m way excited to go, and it’s going to be awesome. My Spanish is good, some people think I am from Nicaragua because my accent is pretty good ha-ha. It’s AWESOME!!! I can understand people and try each day to improve but there is a ton I still have to learn.

Okay so about the phone call home at Christmas, what exactly do you want me to do?? As far as I know yes I am able to talk to you on the internet but I don’t know how this Google communication thing works?? But don’t worry about sending a head set, almost every cyber has one. I will also try to get a safe address close to me to have things sent if possible.

As far as your comment in the last paragraph I need to ask President first before seeking out professional medical help, it’s just how it works here. If he says no and tells me just to get over it and keep on working that’s what I need to do. They almost sent me to Jinotepe with that fungus and the abscess starting to form on the back of my leg, but luckily they didn’t, so I’m okay.

I love you all and thank you for your letters, I was thinking of extending my mission after 24 months, but with that I would like your input.

De le pues, nos vemos Con cariño y mucho amor
Elder Buck

Note from Sandra: I looked up Central America insect bites with larva and the closest match to what McCoy described is from the Human Bot Fly. If you want some fun video’s and articles on that gross subject, just Google the internet. If it this a bot fly larva, once they are removed the affected area heals and the victim is usually okay afterwards. FUN TIMES IN NICARAGUA, everyone pray McCoy gets out alive!!!

Treatment and Waiting To Heal

Hello Family!

Okay, I just want to let you know I’m fine. The rash was in fact a fungus, it was eating away my skin and it hurt so much. I went to the hospital in Managua and got it checked out and the doctor gave me some cream and powder to put on it and so far it’s okay. The rash is not really going away yet, it ate away my skin and so the fleshy membrane part now needs to heal and its super sensitive. (I practically cry every time I take a shower) He also said I need to rest for four days and wear shorts. That’s not really possible, because I’m assigned to the mission assistants, I’m always walking around and I have to wear my mission clothes.

While I am down here in Managua, I am staying with the President’s Assistants. During the day I am in the mission office all day and that’s not really to fun. I would like to go to the field and start working again. Yesterday I went with Elder Barret, who is in charge of the Mission finances, and we went to his area and taught a family. I forgot how nice it was to be able to teach and feel the spirit and how awesome that family was! The people here in Managua are very different compared to the people in Puerto Cabezas. They listen a lot better!

I do have another health problem which makes it difficult for me to walk and that is why I’m still here with the Assistants. I had a bug bite on the back of my leg right behind my knee on the tendon. When I showed the doctor he just told me it will go away but it’s been three days and it’s still swollen and sore. I just showed Hermana Fraatz, she is so nice and cares about the missionaries so she gave me this anti-inflammatory cream to put on so we will see how that works. I have to heal a little before I can go to my new area but I do know where I am going. I’m going to Jinotepe. I’m excited, my companion is named Elder Harris, he’s is English speaking. But I made a commitment to never talk English only Spanish with him so that will be good.

GRANDMA LEFT ME HER PIANO?! WOW….Well if it’s in good condition then I definitely want it. But how would you get it down to Arizona?? I’m glad to hear everything is fine at home!! Are you all HAPPY???

Okay, as far as candy or craving or things I want to receive for Christmas. Well, I like Butterfinger’s that’s my favorite then, skittles, starburst, airheads, snickers (so surprise me haha) As far as clothes, they have a distribution center here so undergarments and that stuff I will manage. Um…like I said… really don’t worry about sending gifts.

As far as Christmas handouts to the people in the area I will be serving in, that’s a good idea about little candy canes with a message in Spanish about Christ. I was thinking of doing something like that too, but don’t worry I got an idea of what I can do.

Okay the power chord to the electric piano and the pedal I put in a box marked music/guitar stuff in the storage shed. OH IF YOU CAN (because there are guitars here we can play) SEND ME THAT LITTLE BLUE FENDER BOOK WITH ALL THE GUITAR CHORDS IN IT!

Also I’m writing today (Saturday) because today is the assistants P-DAY but I will also be writing Monday so try to reply to this letter so I have someone to write. Ha-ha THANKS!!

Love Elder Buck