Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 4:52 PM

Hey so I am having a great time here in Managua, Nicaragua. Thanks for writing me and letting me know about how you are doing at home. I definitely have time to read your long letters, I like the most information as possible. But it sounds like you are having a good time. How did the the All Star game of Braydons go? How was Brennan´s season of baseball? Did Ryan ever get my letter?

So this week was a pretty fun week again here. Today we were looking around and different shops to buy soccer jerseys. I don´t know how crazy it is up in North America but everyone is crazy about the World Cup for Soccer. It is a whole month long event and people are just in their houses all day watching it. Most of the people here are fans of Spain, Barcelona so are lot of people of wearing those shirts here. We couldn´t find any today but we will keep trying.

But while looking around I did find a cotton candy man. He was selling these decent sized bags of cotton candy for only 25 cents each. I only bought one to see if it was even any good because you can´t always trust the food here. By the time I did try it out and I wanted to buy some more, the guy had already disappeared. So I am going to be keeping an eye out for him.

So ya the food here has given a lot of the missionaries problems. I stayed home for a whole day with one because he had stomach problems and then my comp was having a lot of pains. I have been lucky enough to be fine but then again I haven´t been drinking the water here haha. Not only the missionaries have gotten sick either. Almost every house we have visited this week had someone sick in it. They say all of this rain is causing it. They say the water of the rain is from the lake where everyone dumps their trash so it gets people sick. But they have a bunch of wierd ideas here. They think that if you iron in the morning and then get wet it will get you sick because of the temperature change haha. A lady actually missed her baptism because she had ironed that morning haha.

So we did have a service project this last Saturday fixing a lady´s house that was falling apart. It took a few seconds to take out one of her walls and then we redid it. We actually had to chop off branches from some trees with a machete for the frames of the wall. Elder Jorgensen that climbed up the tree to cut the branches was attacked by a bunch of ants and he was freaking out haha. He wasn´t getting bit at all but they were climbing all over him haha.

That same day we had 2 baptisms, Lucrecia and her daughter Anaís. We had only contacted the mom 3 weeks ago and had set up a baptismal date for her at that first meeting, haha. She had talked to missionaries before as they walked by but they never actually talked to her, they only greeted her and walked on. They passed up the best lady that was just waiting to be taught. She is so awesome and her daughter also. She is definitely going to be a great member of the church and help it progress. Elder Flores baptized her and I baptized the daughter. When Anaís, the daughter, came out of the water she exclaimed " Que rico!" which translates "How nice!" or " How great". It was a really awesome baptism.

But yes the people here are great, the other day we also set up a baptismal date with these three guys at a car wash place. I was on divisions with Elder Montierth and he really had to go to the bathroom. We were planning on going to to this place further but we were walking by this carwash and we asked them if they had one. This guy we thought was drunk yelled something and pointed to the back and we found one back there. When we came out and went to thank them we ended up contacting them. The one guy wasn´t actually drunk it turns out (haha) and we set up the baptismal date with him and his friends. One of the friends was really excited about it and was trying to get the other guys to make an appointment with us. We got all of their information and they are all excited.

So yes the missionary work is moving along great here and the blessings just keep coming. We are all pretty excited for the big changes coming up and the future of this mission. The final changes for the split of the mission are this Wednesday and I am hoping I am here again in Managua to work with these amazing people. Well thanks for all of your love and support and Big Hearts.

Elder Ochs