Semana Santa

My comp. turned 25 this week!!! YAY! I love her to pieces.

This was after a very long day of work as you can tell..... we arrive at the casa just dead! 

Every Morning we wake up to millions of mangos in front of our house! We love it!

The weird Christ Statue they walk around with during the Semana Santa....  

Alvaro and Marlen were baptized! YAY:)

The Semana Santa has come to an end! YAY!!! Seriously this week has been nuts here. NOBODY works and it is extremely hot so everyone either goes to the beach or buys a little swimming pool and sits in it all day and all night! It was so hard to not just jump in sometimes ;)  It was a little harder to find more ppl to teach because everyone was partying...or drinking we should say. I have never seen so much beer or drunk ppl in all my life. It really just made me so sad to see so many of my brothers and sisters participate in those things. It is extremely sad to see how alcohol effects ppl and it has made me even more determined to stay away from it all my life. DONT DRINK PEOPLE! It really does ruin lives.  In addition, to the partying the Semana Santa is full of Catholic traditions...everyone all of a sudden is Catholic for a week haha. There are big parades about every night. The ppl walk around holding candles and following a huge statue of Christ. They are followed by a small band and a ton of ppl vending food. They present a different statue every night and have a small "act" going on in front. One night a bunch of men dressed up with shields and swords and pretended to fight. Another night there was a group of about 20 men that rode around on horses with swords as if they were off to war. It was all really interesting but mostly just sad. It was sad to see how lost some of these ppl are.   But today everyone started working again and they don’t have any more money so things are back to normal.  I just feel so blessed to have the truth and to know that Christ lives. I love sharing that knowledge and this message with the sweet ppl of Nicaragua.

We were able to see many miracles this week. Starting with the baptism of Marlen and Alvaro! YAY!!! Seriously this day was the BEST! I love those two and their mom so much! They couldn’t have been more excited to be baptized and their mother was so supportive. I can’t wait to see how they continue to progress and prepare to attend the temple. While teaching them we talked about baptism being our ticket to enter the heavens and after Marlen baptism she ran up to me, gave me a big hug and whispered "I now have my ticket." Man I love her. Alvaro was awesome as well. He had to be baptized 3 times due to.... problems... ha but he was so cute! Every time he came out of the water he started looking around with a huge grin checking to see if it was valid haha. They are a really special family!

This week we have also been working with several families but we have one family en especial that is just golden. They are very young and have 2 kids but they are so prepared. They understand the message and WANT to change their lives. They attended the baptism Saturday and just kept asking when it would be their turn. When we went to pick them up Sunday they were already headed off to church by FOOT (the church is really far away and we always go by taxi) with their Book of Mormon in hand. I love this family with all my heart and I know the Lord has prepared them at this time so they can raise their family in the Gospel. They will be getting married and baptized in MAY!

This week hasn’t only been a week of miracles with our Investigators but with the less actives as well. We have been working a ton with the members to reactive and encourage a lot of less actives that live here. (Seeing how many less actives there are in Nicaragua has been really sad for me. For example we have 800 members that live in our boundaries and 115 come every Sunday. It is that way in all of Nicaragua. SO MUCH WORK TO DO! We find less actives on every corner practically) This week at church we could see the fruits of our labors as 2 families of less actives showed up. They felt such a sweet spirit and can't wait to return. Sunday was a great day for us!

The President came to our area to work with us for a little while as well. THAT WAS AWESOME!! I loved learning from him and seeing where we could improve. We were able to find new investigators with him and a few less actives. We felt a really special spirit together and learned so much. President is the best. I can tell he really does love us and just wants us to see success. I am so grateful for the sacrifices he makes for us on a daily basis.

P.s. The investigators we found with President showed up by themselves to church. PILAS!

Well, it has been a great week of learning and hard work here. We are literally crawling back to our house so tired every night and have no troubles sleeping haha. I love my comp and the work we are doing here!

I love you guys and Happy Easter!

Love,
Hermana Kendall

P.S. My comp turned 25 this week. She is from a very humble area in Guatemala and has NEVER celebrated her BDAY! She said her family doesn’t even remember each other’s birthdays. So it was her first time to celebrate! We had a good little party :)