Happy New Year!

Well hello. Feliz Año Nuevo! That's right, it's time for a new year! 2015 is at the doorstep and it's crazy to think how fast 2014 has passed. It seems just like yesterday that I was with my trainer (who is now home in Brazil) were hanging out alone for the New Years of 2014. CRAZY!

Well Christmas here went really well! It was really awesome! I don't remember how much I told you last week, but we went to an elderly man's house to eat dinner with him and his daughter. It was really fun, because he is the man! His name is Hermano Sepulveda and he is so cool! He has basically read everything there is to know about anything, so it was fun having awesome conversations about just cool stuff about the Gospel. Great guy and we really enjoyed Christmas, especially because we got to Skype home with the Family! That was the greatest, and the hour passed even faster than Mother's Day, so that wasn't good. But it was great being able to see everyone and see that you are all okay!

After Skyping home, we went to an Evangelical church we did service at and attended one of their meetings. It was cool to see how they worshiped and I learned a few things. Overall it was great to meet new people and stuff!

Then on Friday I went on divisions to my first ward, Poeta Neruda, and it was really cool to walk the streets and stuff again. Nobody remembered me because I was only there for 3 months, but they remembered me as the greenie who didn't talk with Elder Bezerra. But I had to tell them first.

Anyway, that was my week. Tonight we have to go into the house at 9, and we can't leave until tomorrow. We actually got our P Day changed to tomorrow, and we only have time to write and buy our food for the week today, and so after this we have to work.

Alright so the first one is our Christmas tree there in the house.

The second one is really funny. We have 3 dogs in our little street that all the neighbors feed and stuff. But they are really friendly and stuff. We left our gate open for 3 minutes and this big guy decided to nap in our front walkway haha.

And the last is the family during Skype! Awwwww, how cute!

Merry Christmas!

Well, here's Christmas. I can't believe that it just snuck right up on us! That came so quick! 

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!!!

We are super excited here for Christmas! It has been great because it seems like everyone is more happy, which also means that they are more receptive! So that's great! We have been having a great time this week! We have found a lot of new people and eveyone that we have are progressing really well! 

There's not many stories to tell this week, other thn the fact that we've been tearing it up! We have been doing so well together! I love working with Elder Virga, he's awesome! We work so well together and we are having a blast here in the sector. There is so much work to do!

Anyway, to answer a question I think everyone has, How is Christmas in Chile? Well it's very different than in the states. It isn't as big of a deal, people just usually spend it with their family. But it is different how they do it. They call Santa Claus "El Viajito Pascuero" which basically means "the Old Guy of the Passover." I don't know where they got that from. But here, El Viajito Pascuero comes at midnight Christmas Eve (so today), so all the kids leave the house to watch fireworks at 12 at night and then when they get back in, the Viajito Pascuero had passed, so that's when they open up presents!

(This was a long email so I'll send you another with pictures)

So the first picture is the Meza Family. They were great and I worked with them the whole time I was in Covarrubias. I'll miss them a lot.

The second one is in the Subway this morning. The whole zone went to sing Christmas hymns in the subway this morning. Super fun!

And then the last one is me and Purnell with the Pezoa family. They were great! 

Changes!

Well, I got changed. I finally left my ward. I went back to my first zone, La Bandera, and I am just in a different ward. My new ward is called Pedro Aguirre Cerda! My new comp is Elder Virga from Arizona, and he is a great guy. His trainer was an elder who has my same time, so I'm still senior comp, but I don't know anything about the sector, so this will be fun!

It was sad to leave Covarrubias, I had come to love the members so much. They were all just such great friends of mine. I didn't even get to say all of the goodbyes that I had wanted to. That ward will always hold a special part in my heart, as long as all the individuals who helped me out in my time being there. But, now I'm out.

I don't know too much about my new ward, but I'm really excited to be in a new sector. I hope it doesn't take me too much time to get used to it, even though it will be hard. I don't know much about the ward, so there isn't much to tell about it.

Well that's about it this week. I spent most of the time this week saying goodbye to everyone. It was hard because I had been there for so long.

But anyway, here's the pictures.

The first one is our house "Christmas Celebration" with hot chocolate and sugar cookies.

 The second is a picture of Nicole and her son. She was a less active member but was reactivated. She was a great friend of mine.

The third is a picture of our room while Elder Diaz and I were living in the house of 6.

Have a great week!

Well here we are in the ciber a little bit early this week. This Saturday we have a Mission Christmas party at the Mission office, so today we only have from 10:30 in the morning to 3:00 in the afternoon to have P day, so this morning we baught our food for the day, hung around the house for a bit and now here we are writing. So it's going to be kind of rough getting to Saturday without a full P Day, but it'll be worth it!

We had a good week this past week. Things have been going well in the new house, and the ward has been looking up for the last little bit. One problem is that the Summer Vacations are coming soon, which means that soon everyone will be going out of town, so things will probably start slowing down in a little bit. But this week was pretty successful. We were able to find a few people who seem interested in listening to the Gospel, so that's exciting!

On sunday we were able to watch the First President Christmas Devotional! That was great to see! It was really good this year, and the best thing about it was that we brought a few less active members to see it and they loved it! It brought a great spirit!

This week, I'm on schedule to finishing the Book of Mormon again, so I'm getting really close. I am in Ether right now. The Book of Mormon has become a big part of my life and a bit part of my faith in Christ. I've felt the changes in my life as well as the blessings that come from reading it and living by it's priciples.

Well, this picture that I've got is my favorite part of the house we're at! It has a Massive Manchester City rug!

And, this week I have a surprise, thanks to a guy in our ward. This is a bunch of Christmas pictures that our District took! I hope you enjoy them!

This week was pretty interesting. We had a lot of running around.

This Saturday was really weird because it rained. And we had had weather of about 80ish degrees and then it went straight to 40ish with rain. And when we all thought it would rain again on sunday, it didn't and it was back to 80 degrees. So that was weird, it doesnt usually do that here in Santiago.

We also had an awesome activity in our chapel. The other ward that uses our chapel got to have an "Open House" in the chapel where the mission comes and sets up a lot of stuff and they give a tour of the chapel and what we do there. So our District went there and cleaned the whole chapel and outside of it. So I mopped the Whole chapel. And then it rained and I saw the nice clean floors destroyed. But it was alright because there were a lot of people who were excited about the church and who asked to have the missionaries over to meet with them.

Monday was really cool! We found a new investigator, her name is Maritza. Her dad used to drink a lot, but 2 missionaries helped him quit a long time ago, so she was super open to talking to us. And then after that, we went to help a less active family decorate their Christmas Tree. So that was fun! I didn't get the pictures from that yet, so I'll try to send them next week.

And then yesterday morning we had to go get my comp's Chilean ID, which was my 3rd time going. And it took AAAALLLLLL morning. It was terrible, we were in the center of Santiago from 8 to 3, and he didn't even get it done, which means we had to go back there today, on P Day, which stunk but whatever. Now it's all done. 

Things are going pretty good in the area. The new apartment is great, I live with our district leader, so that's fun! We only taught 14 lessons this week, so we walked around a LOT this week. Sunscreen, I use it when I know I'll be in the sun all day. But the sun doesn't get to me here. 

I hope everyone at home is all good and doing well!