Good afternoon from Nicaragua!

 
From: Ethan Bever [mailto:ethan.bever@myldsmail.net]
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2012 3:10 PM
To: jsbever@molalla.net
Subject: Good afternoon from Nicaragua!
Hello everyone!
Thanks for all of the e-mails, I just read them ... all. (I only have time to reply to one, so tell everyone
else that I would love to reply back but cant) Well I'm sitting here in the same "cyber cafe" (which is
really just a glorified garage that's always way warmer than anywhere else). I had another great week
and it was fun to hear about all of yours.
We're walking a lot and sweating even more, so I really like the rain here because it cools things off a
little. My spanish is continually improving, I hope ... I've kind of lost track of my progress with the
language and now I just talk and don't worry too much about it, I guess that's a good thing. I still study
lots and learn new words every day.
We weren't able to baptize Moises Saturday because his soon to be spouse doesn't have her birth
certificate so we couldn't marry them. But we are definently going to baptize him this coming Saturday!
It has been so fun to see his progress over the last month or so, they are really happy now. He's had a
really hard life with much of it being lived in the streets as a drunk. He just needed a little help. (see
attached pictures)
Today for our preparation day we went and spent a couple of hours with a less active family who lives
pretty far away in a more rural part of town. There is this one old lady who is the grandmother of
someone there who was baptized about a year ago but doesn't want to admit that she is actually a
member. She's a little senile, but I think she warmed up to us. We killed a chicken, prepared it, and ate
it; ate a couple of coconuts; sweped up some leaves, cut some firewood, and tried our best to get her to
like us. I think it worked, I told her that she was a little bit like a coconut: hard and a lot of work to find
the sweet center. Anyway, it sounded better in Spanish, but that was pretty fun.
Then on the way back from the bank (by the way I took out a little money to pay for at-shirt and I still
need to take out some cash for emergencies so I think I'll do that the following week or so) but on the
way back from the bank, I contacted on the bus! Its not very effective and is more for fun and practice
than anything. But I just walked right up to the bus driver and asked him to turn the music down and
then stood up and introduced myself in what I thought was pretty good spanish and handed out some
flyers and videos (they really like free stuff here), and everyone loved me! ... okay maybe not everyone,
but we got like 50 contacts out of it.
Okay I'll try to add pictures now, hopefully it works.
Have a great week, and know that there's still a "chele" (white guy, comes from the word milk) way
down here in Nicaragua who is doing his best to be the best missionary that he can.
Love,
Elder Bever
(Oh here's a couple of pictures of my zone, we're a pretty fun group)