Week 23 and 24 -- Managua

No letter week 23

I'm glad that your week has gone well. And it's great that (hopefully) the rest of this semester should be fairly easy from here out. And that's crazy that Melia is already back from her mission. It seems like I remember sitting at her farewell just a little bit ago. But really, it is true. Time is weird on thee mission. Time, as it's passing, seems really slow. The days are long, and the work isn't easy. But looking back on it, it seems like I was at the MTC just a litle bit ago. But then even worse, it seems like I've been on my mission for forever. It's weird. And I've seen some photos of the inside of the City Center temple, and it looks stunning. I think that it will probably be the first one that I go to when I get back home. And I did get the valentines letters, which were awesome, and I don't know if I told you, but I finally got the package of letters from Christmas, and the package from grandma and grandpa. They were all amazing, and I really enjoyed them. But I'll keep my eyes open for my birthday package. 

So, it's been kind of a crazy couple of weeks. As you know, I got emergency changed into the office. I am now Secretary of References and Retention, along with some other random jobs that I'm picking up from the Senior couple that are leaving the mission this change. The job, on a day to day basis, is not very difficult. There are a lot of little things that I do, that are easy to handle. Mondays are a little bit more hectic, because I have to call half of the zone leaders in the mission to check on retention, which is basically statistics for all of the recent converts of each zone. But then every once in a while, we have a mission wide event that requires all hands on deck, and nobody gets any free time. Last week was one of those weeks. Elder Ochoa of the area presidency for Central America came to do a training, and we had to prepare and run that. Basically, last week the secretaries didn't get a P-day. And just letting you know ahead of time, we probably won't get to write either, because it's the week of changes, and that week is insane for us. But really, I love working in the office, and the area that I work in is fantastic. It's a great ward, and there's a lot of people who want to listen to our message. But yeah. So that's a little bit of my life in the office. Lots of stress, but worth it because the secretary's house (we all live together) has hot water. It's fantastic.

Right now, we are teaching two people named Carla and Alohndra, who are the mother and the daughter of Anielka, a woman who we baptized last week. They're really positive, and it looks like we'll probably baptize them this month. The little girl, Alohndra, is actually almost exactly a year younger than Evie (her birthday was just last week), and she reminds me a lot of Evie, just in the way that she talks and interacts with people. Anielka also has another daughter who's 4 years old, and that kid is insane. As in, bouncing off the walls energy insane. It's kind of hilarious, probably because I don't have to live with her.

As for restaurants I've eaten at, it's kind of weird. Now that I live in Managua, we have a lot of the same restaurants that we had in the states. McDonald's, Subway, Burger King, and PriceSmart (which is basically Costco). So it's really interesting, because I'll walk into these places, and for a second it'll be like I'm back in the states, until I see that all of the menus are in Spanish. But yeah. Definitely strange. But yeah, that's me at the moment! I love you all, and if I can't write next week, I'll write in two weeks! Can't wait to read your letters!

Love,

Cooper

Week 23 -- Cuidad Sandio and Managua

I'm glad that everything has gone well for you guys this week. It really is cool to read a little bit about all of your lives every Monday. I wish I could have been there for some of it, but I know that it's better that I'm here. So, this letter's going to be a little bit shorter than it usually is every week. Because, as I just found out about 3 hours ago, I have something called cambios de emergencia. Basically what it means, is that even though it's not the normal time for a change to happen, I'm being moved to a different area with a different companion. I was told this a little bit earlier today, and Elder Hironaka (one of the Assistants to the President) told me that I would be picked up "tonight". So basically, I have about four more hours to pack, get ready to go, and say goodbye to all of my converts, before the AP's come and pick me up to go wherever they send me. Which is another thing. I don't actually know where I'm going. Right now, it looks pretty likely that I'll either be in the mission office, or it a district in Managua called Boer. But I really have no idea. So the last few hours have been pretty stressful for me. But we'll see how this ends up going. Last week, we found a few new people to teach, but they're not really my investigators, so.... Yeah. Next week I'll definitely have some new stuff to share.

As for last call in my package, if you could find a pitch pipe on such short notice, that would be really cool. But other than that, I'll leave anything else you want to put in the package up to you.

Well, that's going to be it in this letter. I'll definitely have some new stuff to report next week. But I love all of you, and wish you all luck this week in your various stuff. Can't wait to hear from you next week!

Love,

Cooper

Later that week:

Well, turns out I'm in  tho office. So my P days are Wednesday now. Woohoo! Two P Days in a week! I'll very likely be in the office for five and a half transfers or so. Apparently the guy that I replaced got robbed and it got pretty hairy, so they emergency transferred him out for his safety. So now I'm here in the office. I'm over References (from members, mormon.org, etc.) and Retention (making sure recent converts get all their lessons, stay active, all that stuff). I'm pretty happy with it. It shows that President Russell has a lot of trust in me, I like all the guys in the office, and I'm proselyting in a pretty blessed area. It'll be stressful, but I think I'll enjoy it.

Week 22 -- Cuidad Sandino

Honestly, the past week has been pretty boring for me as well. But I'm glad to know that at least I didn't miss much with the superbowl. But congrats to Isaac on making the State swim team! It really is cool to see that he's having so much success with swim, especially since he's just a sophmore. By the time I get back, I'm positive he'll be making and breaking state records, at the very least. 

Like I said, not much has happened this week with me. Alison came back from Tippitappa, so we were able to baptize her, and now we're working on getting the mom to church. Umm.... the only other really noteworthy thing that's happened this week is that Elder Martinez and I were attacked by some vagos (street bums) yesterday. We were walking to an investigators house, and a bunch of them were fighting near the entrance to Pedro Juaquin, one of the areas where we work. This isn't really uncommon, so we just kept walking. But then two of them came up, and one of them kicked me. It didn't do any damage, but Eldeer Martinez looked back to basically yell, "what's wrong with you?" in Spanish at them. That's when we saw that four more of them were coming at us with the big flagstones that they use to pave roads. Needless to say, we ran to our next cita. We didn't run into any problems with that for the rest of the night, we just avoided that entrance on our way out. So that was exciting. 

Right now, now that we've baptized Alison, we don't have a lot of people that we're teaching. But hopefully I'll have someone to write about next week. 

As for the beach town that we went to, it was actually a pretty cool place. It's called Playa Gigante, which literally translates into Beach that is Giant. It was pretty cool, eventhough we really didn't get to see a lot of it (as missionaries at a beach, we were pretty heavily supervised). The town itself was pretty cool, from what I saw though, there wasn't much. A few restaurants, maybe a shop. But it was kind of cool, because you're basically in a jungle, and all of the sudden, boom, you're on the beach. There was a couple of places that you could rent out rooms. And there were a couple of houses on the beach too, which were amazing. One had a loft that was open-air, and it just looked like a really cool place to stay. If we ever come out here after my mission, I think that Playa Gigante (or San Juan del Sur, which is supposedly better) is one of the places that I would take you.

All in all, that's pretty much it for this week. As always, I love all of you, and can't wait to read your letters/write to you next week!

Love,

Cooper

Week 21 -- Cuidad Sandino

It's cool to think that you recognized something that an experienced nurse didn't (talking about an experience Mom had at work). And yeah, it might be frustrating that you didn't stand up for it this time, but next time you will. Kind of just how life works. It's been the same on my mission. There's stuff that I regretted not doing or saying, but it's an experience to learn from. We have stuff like that in our lives to help us progress. And it's really nice to hear that everything is going well with the family. I miss you guys, and these emails help me reconnect a little bit. 

As for me, the week has been pretty boring. Just normal days of studying, contacting, and teaching. But we were able to baptize Henry and Brandon last weekend! We had a bit of a problem with that, because their parents had a fight and ran off to Tippytappa (North of Managua) with Alison. But we ended up being able to baptize those two Sunday, right before church, and we'll probably baptize Alison this week. Other than that, we don't really have a lot of investigators right now. But we're searching, and hopefully there will be someone to talk about next week. 

As for my favorite memory with Elder Elison.... I'm not sure if I've already talked about this, but there was one night when we were talking, and somehow the conversation turned to the names of Christ. Long story short, we ended staying up until 2AM writing down the names of Christ on a white board. We got 141, and that was only the ones from the Bible. I'll include a picture of that one. But yeah, that's probably one of my favorite memories with him. 

Well, sorry that this email is a bit short, like I said, it's been a boring week. But I love all of you, and I'll write again next week!

Love, 

Cooper