MERRY NAVIDAD Y FELIZ CHRISTMAS!!‏

December 22, 2014

Sara's baptism celebration

 Two-nosed dog

 Nelson's baptism

 Sara's baptism

BALLIN. How´s it going? Thanks Mother for your letter.. I always seem to get Dad´s a week late... I´m guessing he writes me at work when he gets the chance. Anyways, this week was.. yep you guessed it. Busy. To answer your question Mom, we played basketball last week! It was so sick. We played against a high school, inside, but on a crappy and slippery court. Anyways we ended up winning! It started out a little rough, and I was so rusty, but we picked it up towards the end. They were actually pretty decent.. better and bigger than I thought they would be. Elder D, who also played basketball in high school and I just did pick and roll all day. It was awesome and it felt SOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOOOOD to get out and run and play basketball. Before the game, we all went and bought sick snapbacks (hats) to show up to the game.. hahaha yeah we´re pretty sick. About my tooth.. I set up an appointment for Wednesday in the morning to go see him, but I don´t think I´ll go. You mentioned it would probably be better to wait to see Dr. Baugh, and I agree. I talked to Elder B here in the zone who went last week, and he said they charged him 30 bucks just to space the tooth out, and he also has to go back in again on Wednesday. And he said they don´t even have an X-Ray machine, so I´m thinking I¨ll just wait. Is it dangerous to wait too long if you have a cavity? Well I know it is, but what´s the time limit? 
     So this week we´ve been working hard to find more investigators.  I told Elder S early on that if we just worked hard and did all we could, I felt like we would get a reference from a member at the Christmas activity on Friday. We worked really hard, but nothing happened at the activity. I´ll explain more in a second. At that activity we had a family night, which consisted of a movie, talent show, and food. There were like no members that participated, and right before, I taught all the missionaries the skit we did in Laguna Redonda, my last sector. We did it again, and wow the members absolutely LOVED it, just like last time. Hahaha we definitely saved the talent show because all the members that were going to participate flaked out.  Elder H is really good at the piano, so he played a couple songs and the members also enjoyed it. Anyways S came to that activity and she said she fell asleep right before our skit, and when we started screaming and acting she woke up all scared. Haha she´s such a funny lady. Anyways we had put a goal at the beginning of the week with the zone. We have been doing really well with baptisms this month, but don´t have hardly anybody progressing for January. We put the goal of having 12 new people in church with a baptismal date, which would be 1 person every companionship. We didn´t achieve it, or even get really close, but we were trying really hard to find one new person to bring. Anyways, after church, a member from a different ward, comes up to us, asks us if a certain street is in our sector, and after we say yes, he says, ¨Merry Christmas¨ and points to his friend that´s a girl. He told us she had interest in the church, and that he had already told her the first discussion. By the way, he´s a returned missionary of 10 months that served in Brasil. He works with this girl, and she´s awesome. She woke up Sunday morning at 5:30 just to read the Book of Mormon, and had loved church. (She went to church in a different ward in the stake where the returned missionary is from). Anyways we got her number and we need to call her to set up a return appointment so we can teach her, and possibly her family. We´re excited for her and hopefully she progresses. Pray for her please.. her name is J. N is doing well. He had an interview with the bishop about the priesthood, and we also talked to him about it, but wants to wait a little bit before he receives it. He came to church yesterday, and seems to be progressing pretty well. For this week, it will be really busy. We have the Christmsa conference tomorrow, which will last from 9-4:30 about. We made our skit which will be really funny, but haven´t had a ton of time to practice it. We´ll have to get there a little early tomorrow to practice it. On the 24th, we should be going to a hospital to sing as a zone. We had to do a service before the 25th, and what we had originally planned out isn´t going to work out. S´s daughter yesterday told us we weren´t going to be able to do it where she works, so now we´re left to hurry and see if we can go to the hospital to sing. The 24th in the night, we´ll be eating dinner with the ward mission leader´s family, which is awesome. That´s what they all do here... they eat dinner the 24th like at 11 or 12 or so. We have to be in the house at 11, so we´re obviously going to do it earlier. We will also be skyping from their house, and it looks like we decided to do it at about 2 our time. So Mom, that would be 10:00 your time. Like always, have the email pulled up and everything so we can communicate if something doesn´t work right. Also, have all the phones and everything there in the house disconnected from wi-fi. It should be pretty good internet at the ward mission leader´s house, so hopefully all goes well. It will be crazy talking again... it´s been 7 months or so. I´m not sure how long I´ll be able to talk for, but we´ll see what happens. Don´t count for EXACTLY at 2, because we need to fix our lunch schedule so we can eat earlier. Just somewhere around 2 we should be calling. If it´s later, or even like at 3, don´t worry. I´ll figure it out. For the activity that day, it will last 3 hours. The first hour we will be doing minute to win it games, the second hour a movie (We don´t know which one yet), and the 3rd hour, we will play sports and eat some food. It should be fun, and today we gotta go buy some stuff for the minute to win it games. 
     I loved the story of Teagan and the presents.... hahaha he´s so funny. Tell him I would love to see him open the presents when we skype.. I can´t wait to see those nerds. By the way, Happy Anniversary!!!! I actually thought about this week, and hope you guys enjoyed the day 33 years.That's all I can think of to update you guys on. We´ll be talking on Thursday so it´s all good! Is DJ Teaskie gonna be there? I hope so. I´m gonna try and send some pictures of S and N's baptism. Thanks for everything.