Numero 30

¡Hola a todos! ¿Que tal?

Well I am getting used to this place here in Ocotal. For having to open up another area, it is definitely easier the second time. I love here in Ocotal. The branch is super tiny and the people are so goofy here. There are some super cool members too though. Almost the whole ward is recent converts and almost everyone is still brand new in the church. The president of the branch doesnt even have more than 4 years in the church. Its pretty cool. I hope I will be able to stay here for awhile especially because we are about to get into the hottest months of the year here in Nicaragua and here in Ocotal it doesnt get too hot so I hope I can stay up here and pass through these next few months and not have to deal with the crazy heat here. 

This week we had a multi-zone conference in Managua with our whole zone and two others called Matagalpa and Tipitapa. We met with Presidente the whole day and he talked to us about the work here and how we are doing with our goals on the year. Its crazy how much that dude knows about the gospel and i just love the way he motivates us. Our year goal for 2015 is to baptise 2400 people in the year. That is a pretty crazy number to think about but in this mission we can do it. He has told us what we have to do to be able to reach that goal and the secret is just to work as hard as we can and be completely focused on the work. 

We found some really cool people this week. I was on divisions with a new white kid that just got here in my area and so I had to do everything but we were able to have some really cool lessons with two new families. One family is an old investigator family. They were about to get baptised about a month ago but something happened and they stopped going to church. So we went there and had a really spiritual lesson with them and the dad came to church this week. We will be working with them really hard this week. The other family we found is brand new too so we are excited to be able to teach them this week.

One thing I learned this week is the difference between teaching and teaching with the spirit. A lot of times we just get in the habit of teaching people just to teach them instead of actually finding the needs of the people and helping them through the gospel of Christ. As I teach with the spirit, the people are way more receptive the message we have and are more willing to act on the impressions they feel. I dont know why but that was something that just stuck out to me this week and something that my comp and I are going to work on.

All in all a great week here. We are going to Managua again this week with both the missions in Nicaragua to listen to a Seventy come. I am really excited for that!

I love you all and hope you guys have a great week!

Nos vemos

Elder Sherle

Numero 29 ~ Ocotal

Well hey everyone! Sorry I didnt send out a big email last week. It was a crazy p-day and I didnt have much time to write so I wasnt able to send out a big email. 

My comp and I got changed last week to a place called Ocotal. It is super close to the border of Honduras. We both got moved up here and now we are opening up a new area again here in Ocotal. It is super nice here. It is not hot at all and the people are super nice. It is such a big difference from the people of Sebaco haha. There were already 4 missionaries here and we are 6. I am excited to be able to open up another area again with my comp. All of our last p-day we had to look for a house but we found a tiny little bedroom and bathroom that we are living in now. The good thing is its super clean. That was definitely something we wanted to change coming up here to Ocotal. It is super small but it doesnt matter to if because it is pretty clean. The one thing is that the water here is soooo cold. We always have cold water in all areas but here it is way colder than I have ever experienced. I have to work myself up some courage to be able to hop in the shower. Its good though, it wakes me up. 

 

The area here is even bigger than Sebaco. That is why I think they sent more missionaries here. It is separated from everyone. It is about 2 hours from Esteli and about 4 or 5 hours from Managua. The church only has 4 years here in Ocotal. We meet in a house. The house doesnt even have the plaque of the name of the church outside. We dont even have a pulpit in the sacrament meeting so the people who are giving talks just stand in front of everyone. I have always wanted to be in a branch this small. It is so crazy how everything is the exact same in a tiny little house as to my house where we have huge churches that are full of people, nothing changes. The person with the most time in the church here has about 4 years of being a member of the church. It is tiny here. I am excited to work with 6 missionaries here to be able to grow the branch here a little bit. The attendence this sunday wasnt bad though we had 50 people show up. 

Well I turned 19 this week too. I didnt do much, it was a pretty normal day. I rocked a new tie my mom sent me and ate a really big bowl of cereal so I feel like I celebrated pretty good haha. A birthday is just another day here in the mission, but it was good. It is crazy to think that I only have 1 birthday and 1 christmas left! Oh and I also hit 7 months this week too. The time is flying by. 

 

John lives on sugar cereal (and candy) when he is home

 I just want to give a shoutout to everyone that wished me happy birthday. Thank you so much! It was much appreciated! Thank you for remembering your boy down here in Nica!! haha

We are doing good here Elder Lainez and I. We are working hard up here in Ocotal. 

I love you all. I hope you guys have a great week!

Adio

Numero 28 ~ Ocotal

hey guys i got changed to a place called ocotal. its like right on the border of honduras. this place is wayyy different than the others. Oh and i am opening up another area here so we will see what happens. today has been crazy, we have had to find a house, move everything from sebaco to here, get to know the area a little bit and we have like no time to write. i will write a big letter next week!

Craig: Johnnyboy! You are like 4 hours from Managua. Are you still on?

John: ya they shut down sebaco. that place is just not ready for missionaries still. ya we are like 5 hours from managua. its soooo far away haha. This place is cool though. i am really excited to be here. just a little info.....there isnt a font here so they baptise in either a waterfall or a river....its one of the last places in the mission that still does that! I am pumped for that!

Craig: Did you get our package? How's your boy? Are you still training him?

John: ya im still with lainez. and there are 6 elders here now. we are opening up this area. we are the first ones to be in this area ever. crazy.

no i havent gotten the package. i hpoe to get it htis week!

Craig: I really hope you get it for your birthday. Use your money if you run out of it while trying to get cleaning supplies and stuff for the new place. I hope you get a better home. Are the 6 of you staying in the same building or spreading out?

John: we are all spread out. there is a kid here named elder rowe and he went to capital high school hahah. pretty crazy huh?

Craig: Yeah, that’s crazy. Cool though!!! Tell him Rocky just beat Capital for District Championship!!!

John: haha ya i already told him.....all he told me was "we will see what happens in state" haha he already knew

 

Número 27

Whats up everyone!

It seems like it was just yesterday that I was writing. This week has gone by super fast. 

Well things have gotten better here in Sebaco. We had a lot better week and were able to talk to a lot more people. We got to teach a lot more and find some new people. That is probably why the week went by so fast. We found a super cool family this week and I think it was just meant to be because the dad has pure red hair!! Everyone here calls him "rubio" haha. I think that is a sign that we were meant to find eachother. You just dont find a guy here with red hair...I guess we will see what happens with them. 

We had interviews with Pres this week in Esteli. The whole zone got together to do a bunch of stuff with Pres. I had a personal interview with him and he gave me some good advice and helped me not be so stressed out. I also got to see Elder Jacobsen too. He came up with Pres. It was good to see him, we got to catch up and talk for a little bit. It is crazy that he is pushing up on a year in the mission and it feels like it was just yesterday that he had 3 months, crazy.

This week the comp and I were walking to a meeting and some random kids wanted to play with us in some soccer so we grabbed 4 rocks and set up our "goals" in the street and played 2 on 5 for like 15 mins. These kids werent bad but werent great so I hung with them. My comp is pretty good and he got mad at me a few times because I am just dont understand the soccer ways yet haha. It was something so small but after we played I just felt so relaxed. It was only 15 mins of playing but it was so nice to just get everything off my mind and play around for a little bit. Just like in Rosario, a bunch of people just stare at me whenever I do anything like that because i am white. We had a little crowd of people watching us haha it was funny.

One thing I realized this week is this mission is a lot different than others. I realized that right now we are here to establish the church. Our job here is to actually establish the church, not just baptise. For just about every other mission the church is already established. There are actual churches, there are a lot of members, and the church is strong. Here in Nicaragua, the church still isnt established. The members arent strong and church seems to be fairly new here. Its pretty crazy to think we are here to actually establish the church. Just a cool thought I had this week. 

This is their meeting place for church. The church logo is on the building
My Spanish isn't very good but it looks like they serve cocktails next door - hahahaha

Well thats all I got this week. I am doing good here. I am relying on the Lord to help me find those people that want to grow closer to our heavenly father. I know the Lord will bless me, I just need to keep putting in my part.

I love you all!

Adio

Elder Sherle

Número 26

Y entonces!! Como estan todos?

Well, i dont know if this week got any better, but it happens. I am staying positive. 

This week we had to go down to Managua for a new persons meeting for my Elder Lainez. It was so weird being there as the "senior comp" because I feel like it was just yesterday that I was in my training. It was a cool meeting though. Presidente Collado talked with us and changed some things of the mission. We are going to start working a lot more with the members here and we are starting to ask for a lot more references. We are starting this plan that he has for us this week so my comp and I are pretty excited to see what happens. Also, I got to see a couple dudes from my district from the MTC that are training too and we got to catch up a little bit. 

hmmm something funny that happened this week. We were contacting and we contacted this house and a guy came out and so we just started talking to him like normal and then randomly he just points to his 2 chickens and says "You dont allow this in your religion, huh?" and I thought he was talking about if we can eat chicken. So I told him of course we can eat chicken in our religion and then he says to me "No, you guys dont allow that they fight eachother?" haha this dude was asking me if cockfighting is against our religion haha. So I asked him if he thought it was bad and he said yes its bad but its the only way to have fun here. So he went in to explaining to us all the things he does to train these chickens. It is a very strict routine that these chickens have to go through to be able to be ready to kill eachother haha so we just told him that we should be involved in that kind of stuff and there are other ways to have fun. It was such a random question and I was so thrown off. He wasnt even scared to tell me that either, haha these nicas crack me up. 

Douglas came to church this week again. He is having problems with his wife right now and they need some time to get things figured out, so we will see what happens with them. We are praying for them that they will be able to work things out here soon. 

As of right now, we are struggling a little bit. We have taught a lot of lessons and havent seen the success we want. We have been able to get into a lot of doors but almost all of the people do not want to progress. We were a little down this week because of that. But I have trust in the Lord. I know that if I do my part, he will provide the way for us. I know that the Lord is a Lord of miracles and he is always more than willing to help us, we just need to put in our part. I know he will bless us, but maybe right now we just need to show a little bit more faith. 

I am working hard here in Sebaco.  

I love you all. Have a great week.

Elder Sherle

Número 25 - Sebaco

Heyyyyy everyone!

Well, I just passed a pretty big landmark in the mission. Last week, I hit my 6 months! I cant believe I am a fourth of the way there! TIme is flying by! I was thinkin about all the things that I have learned in these 6 months. No doubt these six months have been the hardest 6 months of my life, the most trying, but they have been so fun. I mean, 6 months ago I couldnt speak any spanish and now I speak spanish every day all day and can talk and understand to just about everyone. I have experienced so many things and have learned so much about who i am and who I want to be. Its always said through hard times we learn the most about ourselves. That is definitely true. Only 3 fourths left too hahahaha

This week was alright. I did divisions this week and I got to go back to Rosario for a day. I got to see all my friends and say hi to them. I miss my converts really bad. They are so cool and we have such a good relationship. I miss that house too. It's crazy how much of a difference it is between that house and ours. We still dont even have a mirror in our house hahah and in the house in Rosario you dont even have to wear flip-flops to walk around in the house. I definitely miss that part! 

This week has been a little difficult. We had a ton of meetings fall this week, which just makes us go contact for hours, so we were on our feet most of the week instead of teaching. It was a little rough. I was pretty frustrated when it came to Sunday. Sunday was rough too, we only had 41 people at church. It was pretty dead. When we started the sacrament meeting there was only 11 people there. Pretty rough. I am praying that this week will be better than this last one. I dont think it can get any worse haha. I am still being positive though. I know that God will bless us with the people that are ready to receive our message. Elder Lainez and I just need to rely on him. 

We have a family right now progressing. There names are Douglas and Nedy. They love having us over and are very humble people. They are thinking about getting married on the 14th for Valentines Day. We hope to get them baptised before the end of this month. Oh and no one celebrates valentines day here. I guess that is a good thing though hahaha

Last but not least, I just want to give a BIG shoutout to my lil bro! He turns 13 on Wednesday. I know I cant be there to celebrate it with you, but just know that I love ya bro and I hope you have a great day! I cant believe you are already a teenager!!! Much love bro!

Thats all I got for you guys this week! I love you all and have a great week!

Adio

Elder Sherle

Numero 24 - Sebaco

Whats up everyone!

A much better week here in Sebaco! I finally know the area and can get around pretty well. Not a ton that happened this week, but I will try to remember a couple things.

Sunday was a good day for us. We had our first family investigators come to church. There names are Douglas and Nedy. They are family of a super strong member family in our branch. They seemed to like the church a lot. They are super positive so we will see what happens. I was just happy that we had some investigators in the church this week. Church is weird here. Its like Rosario, but different. There are no men at the church. We had like 52 people at church and I think there were 8 guys in church. That part is just so weird for me still.

One thing I have learned here in the mission is how to live without money. I always run out of money here. So i havent had money for since I got here to Sebaco because I had to spend all of it to clean the house. So I hadnt been able to eat dinner in awhile. We dont have a stove or anything in the house so we asked the neighbors if they could heat us some water for us to be able to make ¨cup of noodle¨. haha i felt so weird asking but they did it for us no problem. The cool thing is for this past week, they have just showed up at our door with dinner. They have sat and talked with us while we eat almost every night. We didnt ask them or anything, the dad of the family just brings us stuff. It's pretty cool. Like I have said before, the people here are just so nice and giving and so chill about everything. I dont think very many people in the states would just bring over dinner to two random people every night. The dude loves my nerf hoop I have in the house too so he likes to come over and shoot around a little bit, he is awful though haha. Basketball is not a sport for Nicas.

We have still had to walk a lot this week and we have had days when all the meetings have fallen. It gets pretty hard sometimes when we are on our feet for so long, and it can be easy to just give up. I am so glad I have been able to develop habits of pushing through times that are so easy to take the easy route. It has made it a lot easier here to just keep going and keep pushing even when we arent having the success that we want. I know if we keep working hard we will see miracles here in Sebaco.

Not a ton this week. Just know that I am doing good here and I am working hard. The baby boy is good too. It is so nice having a latin comp, he is helping me learn songs in spanish right now haha

I love you all so much. Thank you all for your support. I'll catch ya'll next week!

Nos vemos

Elder Sherle