3 May 10 email

Mon, May 3, 2010 at 1:37 PM

Hola familia.

Thanks for the emails and the pictures, they were really cool. This last week we didn´t get our goal of six but we did get one. I will tell that story later. So in this exchange Elder Perez and I were able to baptize 15 people. Next month we are planning on 20. We have 4 positive families that all live in the Champas. One of the fathers of the families is a carpenter. We found him when he was outside finishing up one of his works. It looked really cool and I wish I had my camera with me. It had a bunch of flowers, grapes, and birds on it. The Champas is my favorite place to go here in Tezoatega because it it is more fort-like I guess and the people even more nice over there. I will have to get you some pictures.

I forgot to answer your question last week Dad about the volcanoes. We do have volcanoes steaming away and 1 one of them just went active actually like 2 weeks ago. One Elder was telling me if it does go that were going with it too, but I´m not worried about that because the Lord protects his servants.

We did have storms all this week. The first night was bad. I had just woke up and the rain came down causing the electricity to go out. So I no longer had my life line of the fan blowing air on me and it is flashing like crazy outside. Well I guess we have mosquitos in that lime and avocado tree above us and they swooped down into our room for cover. So to keep the mosquitos from biting me I wrap up in my sheets in the heat which was a bad idea. In the end I just let the mosquitos chew on me all night haha. It was funny though because the electricity would go on and off all night and you can hear everyone going "ahhh" when it went out and cheer "yahh" when it came back on and then back off again in 5 seconds.

We did more service again out in the Finca with the machete kids. This time we were de-roofing this big ol´house. It was that clay stuff that Grandma and Grandpa Ochs have on their house. Well I was up there for 4 hours straight in the sun throwing the clay down to my comp in the shade. I remembered sunscreen on my face but not my arms and legs. They got pretty toasted. I don´t know if I had told you how we sweat weird here in Nicaragua. Your skin doesn´t just get glisteny but your pores actually sweat individual sweat pools. Well with my sunburn, I started to sweat under the skin and it formed sweat bubbles. At first I thought they were blisters until I touched them and sweat came out. It is kind of nasty sounding but weird.

One of the cool things this week was that 3 people thought I was from Guatemala and my comp was from the United States. I don´t know why but they thought that.

I forgot to mention my first week here that I met Elder Thorpe here from Wendy and Evan´s ward down in Southern California. She told me to look for him while here and we met among all the craziness in the streets of Managua. He was coming for the exchanges and some how we got into the same Taxi. A small world I quess.

Sorry if all of this is confusing without spacing between paragraphs but it takes up less space. This last week a bunch of dentists came here to Nicaragua to do dental work for future missionaries, one of them being the dad of Elder Kunz in the MTC. Well there were 4 kids from our ward that went and got all 4 of their molars pulled. The next day we met them in the street and they looked so funny. It reminded me of my experience but they didn´t have all of the comforts I did. Like my Mom bringing me pudding and apple sauce, Thanks Mom.

I also found another toilet in our apartment this last week. I guess that little storage area that the bat ran into had one this whole time. I didn´t mention how I pulled out all the stuff looking for the bat and found a toilet. So I have been using it this last week.

I´ll end this letter with a pretty cool experience with this girl in the street. We usually walk by this girl everyday and she yells at us and we wave and say Adio. Well we started giving her pamphlets and she read all of them. She even answered all of the questions in the back. She has learned pretty much everything from those pamphlets we would give her. We have been teaching her now the things she doesn´t understand, which is few, and we will probably baptize her within the next couple of weeks. She reminds me of Isreal, where she has to be absolutely sure this is the right church before joining. So the Lord just keeps blessing us and more blessings are in store. Well I love you all and thanks for your Love. Big Hearts.

Elder Ochs