A Good Week

Hello Family!

I’m glad you enjoyed my pictures and video! I won’t be able to download more photos or videos because I don’t have my camera today but I will try to get some for next week. This week it has been raining every day....I don’t like the rain ha-ha. Only in Arizona I like the rain. Here when it rains it gets so cold and wet!

This week I have some pretty good stories ha-ha.

First I want to apologize for sending crappy letters home for a while, I have been pretty discouraged, but now I have my focus back and I’m probably working harder now then I ever had (or trying to at least).

Well last Monday was pretty good. We are suppose to have Family Home Evenings with other people but no one wanted the missionaries over, so my companion and I did tracking… trying to look for new people to teach and we found five.

Tuesday was one of those mas o menos kind of days. It was good just a hard day. We went to all the members’ house that are in our area and visited them to see how they are doing. Lots, for right now...have the normal problems, but for the majority of them it has to do with member obedience. No one is trying. They are giving up. The leaders of the church, down to the mission presidents, and us as missionaries are their only examples for right now. We passed by every single member and taught them some really good lessons to encourage them to give us a reference and out of the 28 members we taught we didn’t get one reference. So for Tuesday we spent it looking all day for new people to teach.

Wednesday My District Leader and I went on divisions together to go encourage and help out members because he has more time here than I do and he knows them better. While we were doing that the assistants called us and told him he has emergency changes, so we went back to the house and packed up all of his stuff because he had to be in his new area in Managua in less then 3 hours. Then his companion, who is new (but a hard worker), was with me and my companion for the rest of the day until 7 pm that night when his companion (Elder Lebaron) came. Now that we have E. Lebaron we are also doing a lot better as a district. He is a really good kid and was in my last zone in Bello Horizante.

Thursday During the morning from 10am -Noon we do our weekly planning. The water has been out for two days in our area and the zone leaders called us and told us that the sisters were going to come to our house to take showers cuz we have a water reservoir that collects the rain we shower in. (freezing cold ice water) So we had to leave the house. During that time my companion and I went to teach some people until lunch time. After lunch we went tracking in a part of our area that we have never been before and we found a cool family that had a little bit of knowledge about the Mormons (unfortunately, the bad knowledge of Mormons, multiple wives, etc) So we answered all of their questions and doubts. Then they wanted to know why we are called Mormons and I explained it’s a nick name that we received from the Book of Mormon. Then the guy (Gudiel) posed an awesome question. "What were our ancestors doing here in the America’s when the bible was being written?" I loved that question and then it lead me to talk a bit about the Book of Mormon and were it comes from and of whom it testifies. Then we left them with the invitation to pray to God and ask if it is true and a baptismal date.

After that we went to Rudy’s house who is going to be baptized this week along with his brother Erwin and they seem to be doing really well right now. They are really cool kids.

Then after that we went to one of our most positive investigators named Juan Pablo and taught him more about the Book of Mormon and he HAS ALREADY PRAYED AND KNOWS THE BOOK OF MORMON IS TRUE!!!! He will be baptized this Tuesday.

Friday we went to Rudy’s house at 11am. He twisted his ankle in soccer and has it wrapped up but won’t let it stop him from being baptized he says. We taught him tithing and Word of Wisdom. Then after lunch we went to town because I had to go to the bank and take some money out of my account… I have no money. My companion and I went super far to visit some people. We taught a woman a powerful lesson on the restoration, that could’ve converted this ‘until death to us part catholic’ but her brother came home late in the lesson and persuaded her that we are a false church. so......

Saturday was just a pretty slow day not much happening. Our Best investigator Franklin introduced his friend Franklin to the gospel and invited him over for the next discussion with us so that was really cool cuz his friend was really excited and accepted baptism too.

Sunday We were suppose to have what’s called a Mormon Battalion where all the young men and women help us find inactive members, but that wasn’t very successful. Out of all the 28 kids that said they would come there were only 2 so we worked our butts off for the rest of that day trying to get all our Recent Converts and investigators to church. None of our Recent Converts have a friend in the church because all the church members have problems and don’t want to fellowship the converts. So that was a bummer...At church we had an attendance of 83 members and last week was 65, so it was a little bit better. I had one member I was depending on to bring one of our investigators who is a really good friend with this person, but the freaking member didn’t even feel like going to church that day so neither came.

After church we had a district counsel and the leaders of the district came and just chewed out the branch so it was pretty useless. My companion and I left church and it started pouring rain. We got soaked to the bone, but we had a visit that we had to go to so off we went in the rain. We got to visit only (Jessica) her husband (Levi) was on an errand. We visited with them two days before and they were really interested in the church. Levi is a pastor of a church so when we got to their house the second time they just had a bunch of crap to say to us. I asked them if they prayed to know if our previous message was true? I taught them a very powerful spiritual lesson about the restoration that left me almost in tears and them with guilt. I taught him everything he needs to know about the Priesthood and now he knows he doesn’t have the priesthood authority to baptize. He was mad at first but then I think he opened his heart and he told me he will "think about praying to know if it’s true" I only hope he does.

Later that night, we went to eat at a comedor which is pretty much like a hole-in-the-wall fast food restaurant. While we were eating inside the little house, a car drove up with really loud music playing and the guy that was driving was drunk. While he was ordering food he looked in the door and saw us sitting there. He yelled something at me but I just ignored him. Then about 5 seconds later my companion said he went back to his car and pulled out a baseball bat. When I turned around to look at him, he (the drunk) waved me over to him, soI got up and walked over to him. He was all mad and and fuming (breathing deeply with anger ha-ha) and stinky with beer breathe. He came up to my chin and was a pretty big guy probably in his thirties.

Then he said, "You like baseball?"
I was like "Yeah?"
Then he said, "You want to play?"
I said, "Yeah, where are we going to play at?"
"Right here!" he said, and raised up the bat.
I asked him, "You got a ball?"
That kind of made him mad but it also distract him enough so I had time to pick up the bar stool behind me to defend myself…incase he starts swinging. Then two strangers came up and broke us up.
He was yelling a everyone,  "Get away from me, keep your space from me!" He then got in his car and skid away.

My companion told me after he left in his car, that when he first looked at us eating he was sizing us up and that’s when he went and got his bat out of his car. I talked about it with the other Elders who later came to our house to see what happened and we had a good laugh about it. Just a drunk looking to pick a fight with someone!  That is about it for my adventures here in Nicaragua for the week.

I’m glad to hear everyone is doing well and Carly is working hard on pointless math out lines. I love you all and am doing a lot better as far as health and spiritually. I KNOW I CAN DO HARD THINGS!!!

Love
Elder Buck