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