Hermana Merrill: Fun Nicaragua Facts and Rainy Day Contact

Fun Facts: We live close to the Rotunda (a round about) which is basically the center of all the action here in Bello Horizante. At precisely 5pm every day hundreds of pigeons fly in and sit on all the power lines, they stay until sometime in the night because in the morning they're gone. The street has white lines directly under all the power lines from all the bird poop. We walk very fast through that area.

Nobody's house is closed in completely. All of them are open to the fresh air. Bugs in houses are very normal.

Pulperias: they're little stores that are on every corner. They are very convenient. My favorite thing to get is polvoron, it's a cookie of sorts that's not as sweet as normal cookies. They're one cortaba each one and the milk kind tastes like big soft nilla wafers. there are other kinds too- ones that taste like gingerbread and another that's kind of coconutty.

More Nicaragua eats,
that I'm sure she enjoyed

Here in Nica there's a verb for chilling. (like to chill out-- I'm just chilling out) It's chiliar.

Cool experience:

Well this story starts bad.

Rosa and Alfonso, a family that's super awesome doesn't really want to listen to us anymore. When we went by to teach them we ended up just talking doctrine, also Rosa didn't even come out for the lesson. This is the story of this family: One day we contacted them, but since they lived kind of far away we didn't go back to visit them for a while. One day we were walking to someone else's house and as we passed their house I just randomly said, hey do you want to visit the fam we contacted here? So we changed our plans and visited them. The first visit they were so cool. He said he believed that there should only be one church of God he just didn't know where it was. He also liked the idea of eternal families. They were both very sincere and the cutest couple. And they're married! Most aren't here. We had 2 lessons where we were with another couple from the church and both were horrible! The first lesson the members offended them by making a comment about the evangelico church. And in the second the member macheted (reprimand of sorts) our investigators. This last lesson we had with them Rosa didn't even come out of her room to have a lesson with us and the lesson was horrible. He has changed and now believes what everyone believes in Nicaragua, that every church is good and every baptism saves and God is in all of us but doesn't guide us today directly. I call it the hippie belief in God. Free, there are no rules, God loves everyone and will save everyone. Read second Nephi 28.

So Sunday night both my comp and I were low on faith after that lesson on Saturday and after the 2 families that we had committed to church fell. Also our recent converts decided they didn't really want to come either. When we went out to work on Sunday night we visited a family we contacted in the rain the night before right after the super frustrating lesson. They were really awesome, open to the idea of baptism and coming to church and we have another appointment with them tomorrow.

Blessings from God. They're real. Thanks mom. I love that quote.

Hermana Merrill

(I just posted more pictures on last week's post...scrolling down will take you to them)