We had prearranged to call Elder Bloomfield (Kyle) at the home he eats lunch at every day. We called right at noon and he (Kyle) answered, it was so wonderful to hear his voice. He shared with us much of his everyday life in Nicaragua, from the food, to the animals, to the people. He told us about the church there. As mentioned before, it is one of the highest baptizing missions, but the retention rate is not very good. In the branch that Kyle is currently serving in, there are almost 500 members on record, but only 80 were at church last week. So they are working very hard to re-activate and to baptize families rather than single people. He said that he is currently teaching three families. He is in one of the poorest areas of all of Nicaragua. He said he sees naked children all the time as they can not afford clothing, nor do they have running water to clean with. He said that he lives by a huge lake, but that it is contaminated by all the pollutants and garbage that is thrown in it. Part of the Lake includes the garbage dump and so they burn much of the garbage and let it just run into the lake. There are many people that live in the garbage dump trying to live off the things that they dig through and find. Kyle said that 20 families from his Branch live in the garbage dump. He says that it is always smokey, stinky and gloomy near there as they are always burning things.
Kyle loves the people and has enjoyed getting to know them. He said the family he eats lunch with each day loves to mess around with him and play jokes on him. They tried to feed him cow tail which he said was not good at all. He is a little nervous as to what they feed him each day. He said most of the people in the area he is serving in have never seen a gringo (foreigner), so he is a novelty to them.
On the spiritual side, Kyle says it is amazing how the Lord has blessed him. On Christmas Eve, he taught the whole lesson to a family and was able to speak to them in Spanish through the gift of tongues. He said the Lord has really helped him to be able to speak and understand when he needed to. He said for the most part now, he can understand what they are saying, but he still struggles to say what he wants to in Spanish. I am sure having only Spanish speaking companions will help his Spanish to improve rapidly.
Kyle said it is always noisy there and that people set off fireworks and gun shots all night long for no apparent reason. He said the dogs bark all the time as well. He said there are stray dogs everywhere and no one seems to care for them, so many of them die and just get left there until they rot.
We called Kyle's friends, Mo Hamze and Zach Harris with the cell phone and put them up to the speaker and let them hear and talk to him as well. We all agreed that Kyle seemed to have matured a lot over the last few months and was much quieter than we had ever known him before. All in all, he seems to be doing wonderful other than the daily diarrhea he experiences. I feel the Lord prepared him for what he is doing and so he is loving it and accepting all that comes with it. He did buy a guitar, so he is enjoying learning to play the church hymns on it. I am sure it is a time of relaxation for him at the end of a long day when he can play the guitar.
We are so proud of him and can hardly wait 5 months until Mother's Day when we get to talk to him again. We love and miss him lots!!!! But we also know that he is exactly where the Lord wants and needs him to be. He will do great things in Nicaragua over the next 21 months!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This post was put in by Kris Bloomfield (Elder Bloomfield's Mom)
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