Happy New Year

December 30, 2013

¡Hola familia!

It was so great to talk to you guys on Christmas Eve. Looks like Fondue was fun.  Glad some other missionaries got to enjoy it; that will be something cool to write home to their families about.  Christmas here was interesting.  We didn´t really do much for it.  We had Almuerzo with a member, but it wasn´t anything super special because we eat lunch with her every Wednesday.  Aw, but the one thing that was different was at exactly midnight Christmas morning, I started to wake up.  It was a slow process and I was confused as to why I was waking up.  And then I remember they light fireworks here for Christmas.  It was really loud, and you could hear people celebrating for several hours after that.  My companion woke up sick so that wasn´t fun.  It´s kind of a funny story though.  I´ve been having blister problems, anyways I did not want to go running that morning so I said a pray the night before for help and instead of my feet magically becoming better my companion woke up sick was like, "Hermana, we are not going running today." She´s been telling everyone I prayed to get her sick now, but she´s feeling much better and we opened our stockings that morning instead. The stockings were perfect mom! Thank you so much!  They were like a little slice of America. 

Thursday we had our Christmas Activity.  We gave white elephant gifts which was fun.  I got one of those Asian cat things where the arm moves, although it doesn’t actually work. We played volleyball, water volleyball, and soccer, which was a different way to celebrate Christmas.  We also walked up to a monument to the Virgin Mary.  It was kind of cool.  On the other side of the hill was Argentina.  I didn´t bring my camera so I didn´t get any pictures of it so that was kind of sad, but maybe we will go again next Christmas.  

Tuesday and Wednesday were kind of hard days for proslyeting because no one really wanted to talk to us.  But Friday we had a really good day and taught four lessons.  We have a couple of investigators.  A couple of them have been meeting with missionaries for a long time so we are trying to get them to work towards Baptism.  Latisia is a young mom.  Her son is about 2 years old and she isn´t married, so it’s just her, which is actually really, really common around here. She says she is ready, which is really exciting, but she needs to come to church one more time before she can be baptized.  She didn´t come yesterday because her mom was visiting and left yesterday so she was sending her off, so now she can´t be baptized for 2 weeks.  Dulce is our other investigator.  Her sister  and brothers are members and she´s been meeting with the missionaries for awhile too.  She´s about 23 or so and she´s really smart gospel wise.  Her only problem is that she works every day including Sundays and so she can never go to church.  She is trying to look for another job, so we are praying really hard that she can.  

Other than that it was a pretty weird week because of the holidays and such.  I was reading in 1st Nephi the other day when he is on the boat and his brothers tie him up.  And he´s tied up for like 5 or 6 days, so his hands and feet must be swollen and sore and it´s during a storm so he probably feels sick too, but he says that not once did he complain, and so I just remember that every time I feel like it´s too hot or that my feet hurt or when I get bitten by bugs.  I know that this mission is going to make me a stronger person because that´s what trials do, they make you stronger.  

Hope you guys have a fun time celebrating the New Year! Te quiero! 

Hermana Lindsay