Hey Familia,
Its so good to hear from all of you this week. I'm so glad that this
week has gone by just fine and that you are all well. Thats kind of a
bummer that theres not that much snow over there in Utah and I'm sure
Christmas won't be really the same without it. Now just imagine it
being 80 degrees outside and you'll know what I'm living with right
now. I actually don't really miss the snow from Utah, or the cold for
that matter. It just really doesn't seem like Christmas without those
weather items, it seems like I should be watching summer baseball
games, go on vacations, swimming, cutting the lawn and working rather
than drink hot chocolate, put up lights, sit by the fire, build snow
men, shovel snow, fight through the bad traffic and decorate a
Christmas tree. The people here have thier own traditions for
Christmas. Every once in a while we find a house that is decorated
with lights and stuff, but its not as wide spread like in the States.
Thier biggest tradition is that of the food! Everybody we talk to asks
us, "Hey, where are you eating on Christmas?" That's pretty much all
they worry about. So what they do here is they have a HUGE dinner
party at midnight and then they open presents and dance and eat and
eat and eat. They usually make turkey. They also eat something called
Paneton, which is kind of like fruitcake but it actually tastes good.
And they drink hot chocolate, probably the only time during the year
that they do that. They spend all the time with the family and more
than anything just party. Its not like home where everybody has
Christmas lists and want a whole bunch of stuff from Santa. Mostly
becuase the people here don't exactly have the money to really do big
Christmas gifts for all their kids. That kind of puts the holidays
into more of a perspective.
Well, enough about what I'm expecting for Christmas and I'll tell you
all about my awesome week! So, last week was kind of difficult just
because of the permission and our baptism falling through. I wasn't
really depressed or anything becuase I knew that we did all we could
to help the situation. So this week we had two baptisms planned. But
on Tuesday we realized we could have a third. We are working with a
family where the step dad is a member, his "wife" that he's not
married to isn't and neither is the ten year old daughter. We're
trying to get them married and baptize the two of them but they are
having difficulty doing that. So we just focused on the girl, Thalia
and she was excited to get baptized. So we taught her and she got
baptized too. We had a baptism service on Saturday and all three got
baptized!! We were so happy to see our work and patience finally pay
off. That's such and indescribable emotion. Efrain asked me to baptize
him and my companion baptized the little girls. Efrain is soo cool!!!
He has such a strong testimony and not that much experience, I know
he'll be a great asset to the growth of the church and that he'll
bring an entire family to the gospel too. He was a reference from
Leonel and was really prepared by the Lord. We are actually really
good friends and he wants to go into business with me. We can open a
Peruvian restaurant in Utah together because he already has experience
with that and I love Peruvian food so I thought that would be
awesome!! Oh, and Karen too. She was the third baptism. Her cousin is
a member and so is her uncle. She gave the best testimony of the
entire meeting (including the Bishop, his councilor, and the other two
baptisms). Her testimony was so good becuase she's only eight but it
seems like she's a grown women with a ton of experience in the church.
So, my Christmas came a little earlier and yes, it was white. We're
hoping to have two baptisms this week. If we can get a permission and
somebody comes back from vacations we could do it. So on the 24th I
will call you all at about 8:00 to 9:00 AM to set up the call on the
25th. We're only going to have sacrament meeting that day too so I
should be able to call at like 11:00 AM your time but we'll have to
see. I'm excited to hear your questions but a little nervous for
everybody to hear my horrible accent that I have now. We have the
Mission Christmas party tomorrow and they are saying that we should
get all the packages that day so I'm hoping that's true. Oh, I'm not
going to use SKYPE so don't worry about it.
Thanks for all your prayers.
Love,
Elder Child
P.S. That's cool to hear about the Jazz game, wish I was there.
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