Surviving the Holidays

Hey everyone! How´s life? I´ve had a pretty great week. It went by quickly and slow at the same time...not sure how that works, but It´s all good. I´m here now :) We´ve been working hard this week for sure. Trying to find new investigators and really help them to progress. It´s hard. Really hard. Now that the language barrier is out of the way the hard part is watching people choose the wrong path. Our amazing family that I talked about last week told us that they didn´t want to come back to our church anymore. They love when we visit, because they know we´re messengers of God. But for a lot of personal reasons, they just didn´t feel comfortable and don´t want to give it another chance, and want to go back to their old church. We did all we could to try and change their minds, but in the end they have their agency, and we have to let them choose. We´re never going to forget about them, though. We´re going to keep checking up on them and everything, but we can´t focus on them right now. It honestly broke our hearts walking away from that last lesson on Saturday. It felt like they dumped us and told us we could still be friends, haha. But It gave me an idea of what Heavenly Father feels like when we disobey or go down the wrong path. He can´t force us to do anything, as much as he wants to, and so it just hurts. He hurts for us when we make wrong choices, and that Saturday night just gave me even more motivation to live a better life. One that He would be proud of. I don´t want to make him hurt more than I have already.

On a more exciting note, this New Year´s Eve was pretty exciting. Apparently there´s a tradition here in Nicaragua where people make scarecrows called viejos and stick them in front of their houses. They just chill there for the day, and then at midnight, they blow them up with fireworks. A little morbid, but hey. Welcome to Nicaragua. We didn´t do anything, haha. We went to bed on time, but we wore earplugs...the fireworks and screaming were SO loud. It was kind of crazy. But we slept really well and woke up to the new year in peace :) My first year not doing anything for the New Year´s, but it wasn´t that bad. I´ll party it up when I get home ;)

We also had a branch Christmas/New Years Eve party on the 30th, and it was pretty fun. There was a tiny spiritual thought, and Hna Near and I sang La Primera Navidad, or The First Noel, and then we ate food. Yummy food, and helping serving brought back memories when I worked at Catering at BYU. Except the way we handled the food was a little sketchy...#nicaragua. And then we brought out the piñatas and watch the children beat the living daylights out of it...haha. My goodness these kids love their candy :)

We also got to make tortillas yesterday! We have some investigators who came to church yesterday, but at first they said they wouldn´t because she has to make tortillas from 4 am until 11 am, and she sells them too, so she said she couldn´t. We offered to go over and help her early in the morning so she could finish. She just laughed and said that we can come help and even if we didn´t finish she´d still come to church :) So we went there at about 7 and helped for a little bit, and then we all went to church, and they loved it. Making (or in Spanish, echar tortillas) is harder than it looks. You just take the masa and stick it on a piece of thin plastic in the shape of a circle, and then you slowly pat it down flat while spinning the plastic around. You need to kind of settle into a rhythm, haha. And not hit it so hard and keep your fingers wet or you break it. Then you just stick it on the pan to cook. So fun to have the lady and her kids laughing at us trying to make tortillas. I´ll have to get a picture of us doing it somehow ;)

For my Spiritual thought, I chose something in 3 Nephi 13.

19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and thieves break through and steal;

 20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.

 21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

 I´m out of time, or I´d talk more about it. I just feel like I personally need to focus on making Christ and his gospel more of a treasure in my life. Especially as a missionary. I know that we are blessed when we put the Lord first in everything. 

I love you all so much, and I hope you have an excellent week!

Att. Hermana Oliphant

Pics.

1) Our lovely member family who feeds us dinner! We love them so much.

2 and 3) Hna Near´s cumplemes pizza!