Knee Deep

This is Hermana Justavino after she fell knee deep into the mud! heheh

Okay so this week has been... interesting. Honestly the week has FLOWN by but I feel like not much has happened. That is until YESTERDAY. So we had placed a baptismal date (and wedding date) with Marvali and Mario for this coming Saturday at the start of this week. We planned on finishing up the lessons with them during the week and preparing them for baptism. WELL, the men here that are members have the opportunity to go to Guatemala for 2 months to study, work and get certificates so they can get better jobs here. They leave this WEDNESDAY! Well Mario decided he wanted to go so they told the President of the Rama the situation and he gave them the permission to be baptized and married TODAY! What the!? So we have been scrambling all day to get ready. I am so happy for them and I know they can be LEADERS in this church if they stay faithful to the principles of the Gospel. We had a beautiful experience with Marvali yesterday. She shared her testimony with us and broke down into tears. The spirit was so sweet in that moment. Their son has been attending church with them as well and he wants to be baptized. We are going to continue to teach him a little more and baptize him this Saturday. 

Well as I said before the members here have the opportunity to go to Guatemala for 2 months starting this week. It is such an incredible opportunity for them and can really change their lives. I am so glad they have this chance, HOWEVER, it is going to KILL the attendance at church. Almost ALL of our Priesthood is leaving for Guatemala. It will be interesting to see what we will do and how we are going to work with this situation. 

We are seeing all sorts of miracles here. I think I told you about Edwin last week and the Baptismal date Hermana Tzraza and I placed with him for this Sunday. Well, we weren’t able to baptize him this Saturday BUT he did come to church this week! It was a miracle to have him there. I KNOW he felt the spirit and he knows this church is true. We just need to continue working with him and I am confident he will be baptized! This Sunday we also had a few recent converts come to church with us that haven’t showed up for A LONG time! It was so good to have them all there. 

This week we had a conference with President. HE IS AWESOME! Honestly every meeting with him just confirms to me why I am here at this time. This mission needs missionaries that want to keep the rules, work efficiently and effectively, and follow the guidance of Preach My Gospel and WORK! The mission is changing DRASTICALLY right now and I know I am here because the Lord wants the mission to go in a direction I am familiar with. Anyways the meeting was awesome and we learned a lot of new useful things about how the mission is going to function from now on. It is 100% focused on the principles in Preach My gospel, The White Handbook and The Book of Mormon. The APs and secretaries were there which meant we got all our letters. WOW!!!!! THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO SENT LETTERS!!! I am so spoiled!!! I know most of them are for my Birthday so I am waiting to open any that look like potential Birthday letters haha. Seriously, thank you to everyone! All the missionaries were coming up to me asking for their mail because they thought I had all the mail for the WHOLE mission! Everyone kept saying WHAT THE I haven’t got that many letters in ALL MY MISSION put together. SO THANK YOU!!! I am so blessed to know so many incredible ppl! 

Okay so I just wanted to share two funny experiences from this week. 

Number 1.

So Thursday night after a LONG hard day I decided to take a cold shower. After surviving about 3 minutes of that I came out to find a small baby turtle out front of our room. I told my companion to come look at the turtle I had found. She took one look and started SCREAMING. I panicked and started screaming too. She ran into our room, got a huge can and SMASHED IT! I was so confused until she told me it was in fact not a baby turtle but a GIANT COCKROACH!!! EWWW! I was running around making gagging sounds for a solid 3 minutes afterwards. Haha

Number 2

Every Wednesday night we have an activity called the Noche de Hermanamiento. It is just a small class we have every week with a little refreshment at the end. Everyone is invited. It has been awesome to see the activity GROW! President (of the Branch) told me the first week they had the activity 5 ppl showed up, his family. This week we had 50 ppl there. It was incredible. Anyways we were running late to the activity this week because we had to go pick up some less active and remind a couple families. Well after having NO success getting anyone to come with us we RAN to the activity. We took a route we normal don’t take and ran into a little problem. They had moved all the earth from the middle of the path to the sides creating walls on either side of us. We assumed the earth that was in the middle was solid and fine to walk through. Well Hermana Justavino took one step and SUNK knee deep into MUD! Hahahah I was dying laughing. She had to wade her way back to the side to get out. I was stuck on a little piece of solid land and had no idea what to do. Finally one of the guys that saw Hermana Justavino fall (everyone was laughing so hard that witnessed it.... thanks for the heads up haha) gave me a hand and helped me to dry land. Man it was so hilarious!

EVERY ONE and their dog knows it is my birthday the 30th and are planning parties Hehe. They play tons of pranks on the birthday person here. So I am sure the ZONE is going to EGG me. Our lunch cita already has a piñata. And our old lunch cita, Noehelia has been planning a chanchada, prank, for weeks now. I am terrified. Just thought I would let you know I will be taken care of that day. 

Tells the boys good luck with school I love them and miss them so much!!! Also tell them we played fugitive today as a zone in the streets of Nicaragua. It was awesome! Also I may have scared the life out of a tiny old lady when I saw the elders (the police in the game) running after me. I turned around screaming bloody murder ready to run away when I smashed straight into a tiny Nica lady. Haha not my shinning moment. Needless to say they caught me. Haha tell the boys they will understand. 

To all the sweet ppl that wrote me letters THANK YOU! I can’t wait to read them in a week. I love all you sweet ppl in my life so much! Thank you for your support, love and encouragement! 

I love you so much,

Savannah

PS It has been bloody HOTT!!!! I don’t know how I am going to survive this for the next 15 months. I am getting color that is for sure. My hair is red, my eyes are green and I have freckles for days!