New District in Nicaragua

Two Sundays ago, the Church created its seventh district in Nicaragua in Puerto Cabezas. The Puerto Cabezas Nicaragua District consists of four branches (Bilwi, El Caminante, Loma Verde, and Puerto Cabezas), three of which have been created over the past two years. Convert retention appears modest to high in most of the branches as active church membership has grown to around four or five hundred. Many of the recent convert baptisms has resulted from significant breakthroughs with the Miskito Amerindian population, a group which has had very few Latter-day Saints in the past. Full-time missionaries are beginning to learn Miskito and some of the congregations are designated Miskito-speaking, albeit there are no LDS materials translated in this language. Earlier this year, full-time missionaries reported that as many as 40 local members in the Puerto Cabezas area were preparing to serve full-time missions in the immediate future; a significant achievement for ensuring long-term growth and self-sustainability considering only a couple native members in the region had served a full-time missions in the past.