Ethan's Mission to Nicaragua

Sent: Monday, September 23, 2013 4:23 PM To: Jim And Sandy Bever Subject: Hello Thanks for keeping me posted on things from home... I´m pretty sure I start every letter home like that every week. But like I always say it really is nice to hear about life back home. Things are good here and we just finished our zone activity at the beach again. We rented a private bus and made sandwiches and played soccer. It was nice to get the whole zone together, being such a big zone is sometimes hard to get together, but I really enjoy being with them. Things are looking good for the zone as I think this month we will break the record for baptisms in the zone. Elder Velasquez and Elder Sanchez are both doing really well but we´re getting ready for changes coming up. Its been really nice to be able to work more with the zone by doing divisions, but Elder Sanchez will probably be receiving a new assignment next week and it very well could be that I will too. I really like it here and it woul...

  Sent: Monday, September 16, 2013 1:18 PM To: Jim And Sandy Bever Subject: Hello Family! Its always nice to hear from home and it is definitely one of my favorite parts about Pday. Things are going well here in San Marcos. As a zone we´ve really picked things up and we should see the fruits of our labors in the following weeks. I´m really getting used to our ward that we have here and the members are getting to be some of our best friends. That family that we baptized a couple of weeks ago is doing amazing and they and their sons are here to stay in the church. Its amazing what a change the gospel can have on families like theirs. But Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad! I think I remember writing you that about a year ago too, but I´ll have to do something more special for your next one. That being the case, I hope you each do something worth remembering for your anniversary. I still haven´t made root beer yet because its hard to find dry ice here in the little town of San Mar...

  Sent: Monday, August 19, 2013 1:16 PM To: Jim And Sandy Bever Subject: Our last Pday Well today is definently less busy than last week´s P-day. We´re just staying here in San Marcos getting ready for the week. Tomorrow we find out who has transfers... Elder Levy has six months here in San Marcos so we´re pretty sure that this is our last Pday. We finished off the change really well though. Here´s some photos of our family. Its been about a year or so that this area has baptized a complete family here so we really wanted to change things. Their names are Izamir and Petrona. I love this family. They have 4 sons (he´s the step dad), and two of the sons joined the church about 4 years ago but shortly went inactive. They moved and the two oldest sons (Fernando and Carlos) found a church to go to and started coming back again. In the ward where they were reactivated, the two older brothers baptized their younger brothers (Enrique and Alberto), and they all kept everyone togeth...

  Sent: Monday, April 29, 2013 4:14 PM To: Jim And Sandy Bever Subject: HEY! To: Jim And Sandy Bever Subject: HEY! Hi family! It was so good to hear from everyone and know that everything is going well, and please don´t worry about the emails not making it through, I knew that was what happened. So after spending about a half hour reading through all the emails, I hope I have time to reply to them. First off, I am so proud of BOTH of my little (not so little now) sisters who can run really fast, apply for and get into leadership, uphold my high shandards for accademic excelence and who have also enherrited some of my good looks. Audrey: the secret is love (to get into leadership and succeed in anything that we are going to do in live). This week I worked with a missionary that has more time than I do and is struggling to find motivation and not be so concerned with the things that are happening around him. After working with him for a day, he learned that what he really ...

  Sent: Monday , April 22 , 2013 4 : 06 PM To: Jim And Sandy Bever Subject: Hi from Managua! So ... I had transfers! I thought I was just going to stay i n my old area but last Tuesday I was told otherwise . I really liked Granada and the people there. Now I'm back in Managua, just more in the city than where I was before . I'm in a suburb part where its not so dangerous and the church i s a little more established . I have a great companion : Elder Gomez (also from Guatemala ... there ' s a bunch of them here). He has about 6 months in his mission and all of this time has been spent here in this area . He's a really hard worker and we · re going to get along really well. I'm a district leader here and have a district of 1 O missionaries in total. That means that 1 • m normally up pretty late calling everyone and getting their numbers for the day. 1 ·m really excited to be here and am sure that we · re going to have success here like I did i n my last area . S...

 Sent: Monday, April 15, 2013 4:07 PM To: Jim And Sandy Bever Subject: Hello! So today we found a cyber that has air conditioning so that's always a good thing. Well I hope everyone had a good week and that everything is going well. I had a pretty good week, no baptisms but we went all over Nicaragua. Elder Paz and I got a call that we were needed to go to another zone in the mission to work with the missionaries there for a couple of days this week, so we went and spent the day in Juigalpa on Thursday. It was fun to get to know other elders and see the sights a little bit. We had a pretty long 6 hour bus ride to get there and when we got there we found out that Juigalpa is built on a bunch of hills and its really steep in places, consequently the missionaries there stay fairly fit (might not be such a bad place for me). But the drive there reminded me a little of eastern oregon because it was so long and everything was so dry. Then today we went to a volcano as a zone that's r...

  Sent: Monday, March 11, 2013 1:57 PM To: Jim And Sandy Bever Subject: I should think of a more creative subject heading So it sounds like everyone had a good week, I did to. We baptized again this last Saturday, no families but three kids. They ' re really cool and although the baptizmal service wasn't very heavily attended, it was nice. Here's a picture. So last Monday after writing home, we went over to the house of the branch president and they threw me a suprise birthday party. It was really nice of them and it helped me to remember that I'm loved from Central and North America. Elder Paz bought me a cake and apparently the tradition here is to egg you on your birthday (it feels kind of like confetti eggs but more runny and colder), in this case a picture speaks a thousand words . So that was fun. I'm doing well though, Granada is a little farther away from Managua than my last area, so the mail will probably take a little longer to get here, but patienc...