10/25/10 - Letter to the World

Dear Family and Friends!I´m sorry for not being so good about writing my letters to the world. Starting this week I´m going to have a new system. When things happen, I´m going to write it down in my agenda so that I don´t have a lack of things to say when P-days come around. Throughout the week crazy things happen, but when they don´t get written down, they get forgotten.This last week all the missionaries in my zone had the opportunity to get interviewed by the mission president, which was a really cool experience. I had my first interview with him the first week I came to Nicaragua, but as I was really new, I didn´t have much to say. Now that I know what´s going on in the mission, we were able to talk about how things are going and how things are going to improve. Before the interviews, we were all in the sacrement salon and he taught us some really neat things. He tought us about the importance of asking inspired questions, which was just what I needed. He taught us that although across the world there are hundreds of different cultures, the culture of the Gospel is one and that no matter where we live, we need to live the culture of the Gospel.Here in Puerto Cabezas, we´re focussing a lot on retention. The last mission president had the attitude of ¨baptize anything that moves¨, but our new president, President Arredondo, is much more focussed on baptising strong families that understand the Restoration and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.I really love this new turn that this area is taking. I don´t think I will be here in Puerto for much longer, but I can definately see that with this new focus the church will be greatly strengthened. On Sunday our 4 branches were formed into a district. When the members and recent converts change parts of their culture for that of the Gospel, we´re going to see wards and stakes here in Puerto!!! Ya´ll just wait - in one of these next general conferences you´ll be hearing about a new Nicaragua Managua Temple!I know that the church is true and that it´s only going to keep growing here in Nicaragua and across the world. Have faith and exercise it! If you don´t know how to exercise it, ask any seminary student!Love you all!Have a Happy Halloween.....OooOooOga BoooOoOOOoga!Elder Denton IIPS: If you need a good Halloween story, look up grisi siknis...it freaks me out!

10/11/10 - Letter to the World

Buen Dia!
How are we all doing today? I hope life is treating you all well! I don´t have ANY bug bites on my arms, the rash from the water is COMPLETELY gone, and best of all...my comp didn´t start ANY fires last week!
This last week has gone by incredibley fast. As my companion, Elder Amaya, is the district leader, it seems that the time that we have with our investigators is incredibly limited. Our days are spent riding our bikes to and from meetings in Puerto and doing interviews for the other missionaries. The meetings and interviews are really important, but at the same time it´s hard not being able to spend as much time with the investigators that need our help.
I don´t know if you remember, but a few weeks ago I mentioned that I gave my first lesson in English to an old lady, the grandma of two positive investigators. We had a great lesson with her, but she told us that she already had her religion and that she didn´t want to visit our church. Weeks went by and we kept visiting with her grandkids, but she would just walk by as we taught them, never really paying us much attention. On Saturday we went to her house again. We sat down with her and her grandkids and asked her why baptism was so important for us in this life and in the next. She told us that it´s important because it cleanses us of our sins and it´s a commandment of God. We were satisfied with the answer and were about to move on, but she followed that statement with ¨That´s why I want to get baptized¨. WHAT?!?!?! OKAY!!!
Following the promptings of the Holy Ghost and asking inspired questions is really like hitting the ¨Easy Button¨.
We all need to be ready and willing to always follow the promptings that we recieve. When we follow them, the Holy Ghost will confide in us in the future!
Mai wantsna. Wik kum pain bris. Kli wal praubia
Elder Denton II

10/4/10 - Letter to the World

Good afternoon, everyone!

I´m sorry for not writing last week. I´m sure you were all devastated to not know about my adventures here in Nicaragua. The truth is that everything here is pretty normal now. The things that used to shock and surprise me are not just part of my daily life, which is funny, because we just got a few greenys! It´s exciting to here the nervous voices saying ¨You shower with buckets?¨, ¨You drink out of a well?¨, ¨Is it always this hot???¨. All of us here try to be really supportive of them, but every once in a while, you just gotta laugh!

This last week we got a sign that we need to be harder workers. It was 8:00 pm and the power went out. My comp said that it would be too hard to teach a lesson without light so we went back to the house to get ready for bed early. My comp never writes in his journal, so I thought that since we had extra time, it would be a good day to start. He told me that he didn´t want to so I didn´t press it. He went to bed and I stayed up writing. My comp always leaves a candle lit when he goes to bed so that he can see if he wakes up in the middle of the night. At about 9:45 I noticed that the pages of my journal had a red tint to them, so I looked up and noticed that the curtains had cought on fire...along with the mosquito net and my comps bed. I jumped out of bed screaming ¨ELDER ELDER ELDER!!¨ and I started pulling the curtains off the wall. I put the fire out and we both went to bed. Since then, we haven´t gone to bed early...and I don´t think we will! ***** Don´t waste the Lord´s time ***** LESSON LEARNED!

Since last week was General Conference, we didn´t have any baptisms, but this Saturday we´re looking forward to baptizing Chiquiña and hopefully Vicenta! Vicenta needs to get married before she can be baptized, but first her husband needs to get divorced...gotta love nica culture! I hope to tell you about that baptism this next P-day.

I´d leave you with my favorite talk from general conference, but the power went out several times over the weekend, making it hard to know exactly what was taught. On monday I´m going to start watching the talks at the Cyber. Although I can´t share my favorite talk, I do want you to think about how blessed we are to have a living prophet that loves us and recieves revelation directly from God. I used to take that for granted, but sharing the message daily with the people here has really forced me to realized the importance of it. If you have a spare minute, look up an old conference talk that you liked, read through it.

I hope you all have a fantastic week. Remember who you are. Hagan lo justo!

Elder Denton II