Mon, Nov 15, 2010 at 10:32 AM

Hola Familia. I really enjoy receiving your letters and your support for me. I haven´t yet received my package from Grandma and Grandpa but 40 days is a really long time. I will see how long I can hold out once I get it. So I will be waiting patiently for that. Eric I really enjoyed the video you made. I could understand you perfectly fine and you are right about it taking a while to understand their humor. They have really weird jokes and sayings mostly having to do with animals for some reason. But it is still coming along fine. Mom that big ol´pot of stew stuff isn´t really that great, at least here it isn´t. You can´t really eat the meat because it is mostly fat and bones but the soup itself is alright if you have limes. Dad I am going to send that picture off again of me thinking. It may have not downloaded completely before I had sent it off. Mom my skin is fine already and I will be more careful in the future.

Our baptism for the Family Garcia went great. I was worrying about a few things before but everything turned out fine. The one major thing I was worrying about was if we had white clothes big enough to fit Oscar, the husband. He is a pretty big guy. So we were running all over, calling missionaries from different zones trying to find some. Usually Nicas aren´t that big so we don´t have those big sizes. We eventually found a really stretchy jumpsuit. I gave it to him just before the baptism just praying he could get into it. When I went to go check on him he had it on and everything but it was very form fitting. I was laughing so hard. I couldn´t help it. He was fine with it, he was even joking around in it too. We had the bishop do the baptism because they were good friends and he was pretty strong. We had also married them before so we bought them a cake and they brought Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola is the drink that all Nicas just love here. They have a really cute baby too. That all turned out great in the end and they are definitely going to make it to the temple in a year.

So here in Nicaragua it is going good for us missionaries. Elder Feliciano is a very funny guy and he always has me laughing. I guess this morning he had a crazy exercise coming back to our area. Last night we went on divisions with the Zone Leaders because they had to do interviews for other missionaries in an area far from here and Elder Young was sick so I stayed in Sandino while Elder Montierth and Elder Feliciano left for Mateare. They couldn´t find a bus at that time of night to come back so they just stayed at the other missionaries house. The next morning they got a bus to come back on the freeway. Well when they were about 2 or 3 miles from our bus stop in Cuidad Sandino I guess my companion thought it was that one and got off the bus. The bus was really packed as always so he didn´t hear the missionaries yelling that it wasn´t the correct stop. So the next thing they see while the bus is already moving is Elder Feliciano hopping off the back. They look through the back window and he is just standing there all by himself and confused with the bus already getting up to speed. The missionaries were just shocked and tried telling the passengers to stop the bus but they said they couldn´t. They look back again and they saw Elder Feliciano in full sprint chasing after the bus. I guess he ran for about a mile before they could get off. It took me a while typing this story because it was making me laugh so hard. The good thing is that he knew where he was because we had explored out to there a few times when tracting, he just didn´t realize how far he was from the actual city. So it is a bunch a stuff like this that he does all day that keeps me laughing.

I am really having a great time here on my mission here in Nicaragua. The time is going to fast though. Kyle is coming home in December right? Make sure to tell Elder Hiatt thanks for helping me realize that you can still have fun on your mission and that he really helped me prepare for one. Thanks for your love and help that you guys give me and Love you Lots.

Elder Ochs