Four Baptisms! April 26, 2010

hey fam!!

well this week was a pretty good week. I actually had four baptisms this past saturday! We had been working with this inactive lady for quite a while and she has three kids that aren´t baptised so we reactivated her and baptised her kids, it was awesome. Then there was another girl that is way way solid that we baptised, she is only 14 but i think knows more than i do. The house of the family we baptised is out in the middle of nowhere, it takes about 30 minutes by bus and then another 30 minutes of walking. Right in front of there house is a big river that we had to cross, haha it was awesome i took some video and a pic that i will send. Well I'm starting to get more used to the area which is nice but the 105 degree weather is still killing me. It should start raining here in a couple weeks so that will be a nice change.

Im not sick anymore so that's good news! We might have to change houses here in a little while because we think somebody is stealing our electricity... our bill was $30 this past much which is RIDICULOUS. It´s usually about $8.. and it´s in a pretty dangerous part of the city, so yeah i want to move haha. We´ll see what happens though cause you have to get direct permission from the president. Well tomorrow we have our multizone meeting which Im pretty excited for! I don´t think I will see many elders that I know, but that´s alright it´ll still be a good time. Supposedly this Friday the Lions Club is coming to El Salvador and a ton of gringos are going to go and translate for them! I'm kinda nervous I'm not sure how well I´ll be able to do it, but oh well it´ll be cool and maybe I´ll get to see some elders that I haven´t seen for a while. Oh yeah i forgot to tell you that I gave a talk yesterday in sacrament meeting, my first talk in spanish! it went pretty well and it was only about 8 minutes so it wasn´t too tough.

Well only two more weeks and I will be talking to you guys on the phone! I can´t believe it. I'm way excited! So supposedly the night before I'm supposed to call you guys and give you the number that you need to call me on for the next day. Well thanks for all your prayers and support I love you all have a great week!

p.s tell Darrel Welling that i know he´ll do an awesome job and that im stoked to have him as my bishop when I get back.

First week in San Miguel- April 19, 2010

hey fam!

Well first week down here in San Miguel. its been pretty crazy! San Miguel is SO hot... like nothing I have ever felt before in my life. I feel like I am in a different country, it is very very different from Lyco. It’s really not very pretty, just really dry and a lot of countryside.. almost like I'm in Kentucky or something! Ha-ha but it’s way weird because it seems like I am sooo isolated from everybody and everything in my area, but then I just have to take a bus 20 minutes and I'm in a city and there is actually a small little mall! Where the zone meets for Pday there is a WENDYS!!!! I couldn’t believe it... I think we are going to eat there today and I can’t even express how excited I am.

We have to take a 30 min. bus to get to our church, so that is also very different from lyco. But I was pretty happy cause we got 6 investigators to come to church which is pretty good! We actually have a lot of people to teach and our area is HUGE. It goes all the way to the beach which is actually about 1 hour or so. But after 5 o’clock we are restricted to only about a third of our area at most... it’s pretty dang dangerous here! I have already seen and heard some crazy stuff. Don’t worry though I'm going to be smart and follow the rules and as long as I do that I can guarantee nothing is going to happen.

Well my cook is really really good! A lot better than my last one. She is not a member so we have to wash our own garments which kinda stinks... but oh well. I feel like I'm living like 70 years ago so that’s pretty cool ha-ha. Her house is seriously like a zoo, she has a chiwawa and a HUGE dog that looks like a bear, two parrots, and like I all ready told you a monkey. The monkey is insane its waaaay strong and aggressive so you can’t really play with it or anything but it’s still cool to watch. Friday and Saturday I actually got really sick. I had diarrhea and was throwing up every half hour.. the worst I have ever been here! I obviously ate something pretty bad. But I'm all good now!

Yesterday we had a huge rain storm which was awesome!! There is a part of our apartment that doesn’t have a roof so I just laid in my hammock listened to the rain with mist blowing in my face, it was reaaal nice! Well I'm sorry to hear that Kim’s Dad died.. sounds like it was pretty tough. Sounds like he was suffering a lot though so I guess it’s a blessing that he finally is released from all of that. Well yeah that’s about it, I'm just plugging a long here takin it one day at a time! I'm sooo excited to talk to you guys here a few short weeks it’s going to be awesome.

Well I’ll write Brooke and mom and dad on their emails so have a good week everybody thanks for all your love and support!!

love nick

New Area! April 12, 2010

hey fam!

Alright, ready for the news? I have been transfered to San Miguel!! My area is called Roosvelt. it is THE hottest area in the mission... it's on average over 100 degrees, plus the humidity..haha oh well im just getting it over with early in my mission. My companion is named Elder Gonzalez, can you believe it?! haha two in a row, pretty weird. He is from Honduras, and ready for the kicker... he has 1 and a half months in the mission.. im senior companion!! I was pretty dang shocked, and i am really nervous to tell you the truth. I now have all the responsibility of teaching him, making sure we complete our numbers, baptizing, and paying all of our bills and all that good stuff. I know i will grow a lot this change, but i also know that it will most likely be very challenging.

Alright, kicker number 2.. remember Elder Street? He is in my District!! haha i couldn´t believe it.. almost 200 missionaries here in El Salvador and I am in his same district as him (only us 4 in total). Elder DelMarcado is also in my zone, so yeah its pretty sweet to be in the same zone as two elders from the MTC! It is very different here in San Miguel from what i have seen. It´s much more rural and VERY hot. There are a ton of cows and horses and oxen that pull stuff around and yeah its pretty crazy. Guess what? Supposedly my cook has a pet monkey! haha im way excited for that. Well yeah that´s the big news for the day.

So our baptism this past Saturday actually fell through.. i was pretty sad. But that´s ok hopefully they will just get married in the near future. A couple days ago as a result of my not drinking enough water, I apparently got some sort of infection and I felt like i was passing a kidney stone! It lasted for two days (longest days of my life).. but luckily it went away. im going to need to drink a ton of water here! Well sounds like you guys had a pretty good week. Sorry to hear Grandma and Grandpa have been sick.. but i know that Grandma worships you Mom, she tells me everytime in her letters haha.

How was skiing this past week? Mom im sorry im not going to be there to translate the letter you sent to Hermana Zelada.. but there is another gringo so he will be able to tranlate it for you. So yeah about that text message josh got haha. I was at a members house and this girl was messing with her cell phone so i took and put in my number and said this is my brothers number send him a text! So she took about 10 minutes to type it in English and the original message said " hi am from El Salvador, you brother is my house," haha so I corrected it and she actually sent it! I didn´t think it would actually get to the phone thats sooo sweet! I wasn´t there when he replied.. what did you say? Brooke I can´t believe you are graduating college... that´s incredible way to go! The invitation to Reese's blessing is way sweet, she´s so pretty! Tell Danielle I got her Dear Elder today and that I´ll write her back next Monday. And I can´t believe you have turned to the dark side of the golf world.... repent! haha jk.. But seriously, Dad I can´t believe philis won! im still impressed that tiger took fourth though considering everything. How did Boston go? Well you got your wish for me to be in a more rural place, I feel like Im in the year 1750! Haha it´ll be sweet though and hopefully I´ll have some success. Well sorry guys I don´t have a ton of time but love you all and wish me luck this week!

Love Nick

Happy Easter! Monday April 5, 2010

His highly anticipated Hammock

All the Gringos watching Conference in English

Nick and his Machete

Well this was a pretty exciting week. Pretty much from Friday to today I have had a "missionary vacation" ha-ha. Here in El Salvador they celebrate Easter the whole week, its called "holy week". Friday is a special day where they make huge painting type things in the street of the Savior and other religious things. They are called alfombras. But it’s not paint or chalk, it’s actually colored salt and different weird materials. I'm going to be sending you a few pictures of it, it is one of the coolest things I have seen my whole mission! So yeah anyways that day literally nobody is in their house so we pretty much just walked around and looked at the alfrombras! way fun. We then watched conference Saturday and Sunday all day at the Stake Center. As you guys know it was really, really good. I think (ok... I know.) that this is the first year I have actually caught every second of conference ha-ha. Dad I also thought of you and the boys a lot during the priesthood session. Man that Uchtdorf is a stud! I think my two favorite talks were from him on patience and from Elder Holland. They had a separate little room where they had a TV playing it in English, so that was way nice. All the gringos in my zone watched it in there with pop and candy and snacks, it was way fun. It really strengthened me a lot. It’s really cool that like Hermana Zelada said in her email, that even though the people here are not even hearing the voice of the speaker, they can still fill the special power than the prophet and apostles carry.

Well right after the afternoon session of conference, I saw my first big rain!! it was awesome. It was raining sooo hard and I made a comment about it and my comp said, dude this is "tranquilo", not bad at all! ha-ha so i can’t wait to see what they consider here a really big rainstorm. But I got to test out my jacket and my more heavy duty shoes and they both worked great, so that’s good! Well sounds like you guys had a pretty good Easter. Adam to answer your question, no we didn’t get to tie-dye Easter eggs.. too bad huh! They have never even heard of that here, and the idea of a bunny being the representative of Easter is completely insane to them ha-ha.

Well like you guys I am soooo excited that I get to call home in a month!! How sweet is that? That’s way weird to think that I will almost have six months down when I call.. pretty cool! Like you said Brooke in some ways it seems way fast but others in seems like an eternity ha-ha. Brooke that’s sweet that Sam talked to you! I miss that kid. Tell him I said to freakin write me! Well guys I'm gonna hurry and send this so I can get some pictures in there and a little voice clip things possibly. love you all and glad you had a good conference weekend and Easter!

Love nick

p.s. My baptism is still on for this Saturday!