CHRISTmas Week!

 Pictures include missionaries from the Hurricane area, and Chad's "Secret Santa" gift -- a pair of snowman slippers and at the bottom, crazy Christmas lounge pants for all!  Ho! Ho! Ho!

Hola Mis Padres!!!!!                            27 December 2010

          Como le va?? (How is it going?) Well I hope that your Christmas was good!!!!  Well I mentioned the rain in my last email, and let’s just say it produced a lot of rain! It rained constantly for about 6 days! So with all the constant rainfall here, it caused a little bit of flooding here. The once Virgin "River" was huge for the people around here. But even with the flooding, this "River" was nothing compared to the Snake or Columbia. The rain and flooding got so bad that they had to begin to evacuate the towns of Virgin and Rockville, because they were scared that it was going to be washed away. This was just pre-cautionary because they thought that maybe the Dam about Rockville might break from all the water. So it was a pretty crazy time here! On Tuesday night, we also had a power outage! We were in the middle of teaching a lesson with the Lopez family and then boom! NO LIGHTS! We were in a basement which made it a little worse, but it was still cool to be here and experience all of this on my mission.

Well with all this talk about weather, I guess I will just keep it going. It is nice, without all the rain. It is so nice here that I can walk around in just a short sleeve shirt and I won’t be cold at all! The joys of Southern Utah! Well for P-Day last week and in the morning for exercise, we have found new entertainment. The Sisters were given this laser tag set from one of their ward mission leaders. But this isn’t just any old laser tag set. What happens is if you get hit, you get shocked but you gun. So there is a price to pay, but it isn’t unbearable. It’s actually really fun, and it helps us wake up in the morning! Well with our District, we had a Secret Santa thing. So I got hooked up with a sick present from Sis. Mariano. Check the attached pictures of the snowman and the slippers! So that was pretty interesting, you can always count on girls for something creative.  (sick – means really good!)

Well with it being Christmas this week, most of our investigators were in Vegas, California, or Mexico. So we didn’t have that many people to teach. But when we did, we just watched the Joy to the World movie. We probably watched that thing about 6 times in 3 days. So it got kind of old. But still was a good movie.

Well Christmas on the mish, is like no other place! It was super fun and exciting!! We had a few meals on both days, thanks to the Zone Leaders. So we got to play some “Just Dance” on the Wii with one family. It was pretty legit, made me kind of like I was kicking it back with all the friends in B-Town, but it was a good escape for a little bit. Christmas Eve dinner was also with the ZLs but with a different family. We ate with the Bringhursts. I know it’s a pretty big name. But their house was jam packed full of different people! There was about 50 people total there. We just ate and chilled, they even got us all a goody bag and a present. They made us all pajama pants. My pants were a frog wearing a Santa hat. They are pretty legit.   (picture attached!)

Well Christmas Day was just as fun as Christmas Eve. We were once again with the ZLs. But before we went out on the town, there was THE CALL (home). I know that you enjoyed it as much as I did. It was good to hear your voices and especially the voices of Bry and Chay. They still can melt my heart even from a 1000 miles. Well the one major thing about Christmas Day was that we all went out in just "regular" clothes. Let me just say, it threw a bunch of people for loops. They were expecting us, but didn’t really know that we were there when we first got there. When we went to eat with the Spendloves, we went in and sat down and were there for about 5 minutes before anyone really recognized us. When we were introduced as the Elders, people just started laughing. Before they knew that, they just thought we were family friends or boyfriends that were brought over for Christmas. But we set them straight. I started to make everyone look at my tag on my shirt. We also ate with the Law family. We rolled to that house 6 Elders deep. Well while we were there, it was just mayhem! When you have 3 Elders that are just crazy, (Springer, Booher, and I) Things are bound to get a little crazy!

I discovered that I still have the ability to make people laugh. In Spanish it’s a little harder to tell jokes, or quote movies. But overall Christmas was incredibly legit! It was a lot better then what I expected! Yesterday the Branch was a ghost town! Just as our investigators were gone, our Branch members made the same trips too! We did our best, but still only had one investigator at church! Bummer! Well last night, I made one of the worst mistakes of my life! I decided to eat a jabenero!!! (sp) We went over to Bro. Felix's house to collect a tie before Perez left, cuz last night was transfer calls. But he ate one to get the tie, so they asked me to eat one too! Well needless to say I did it, but the after effects sucked!! Luckily I got it on video! But I drank too much milk trying to cool off the pepper that I ended up throwing up! I drank a half a gallon of milk in like 10 minutes. So 1 jabenero, half a gallon of milk, and 30 minutes later, I walked out of the house a proud owner of two new ties!!! The things missionaries will do for ties!! But my collection has begun to grow!! Better start thinking of a way to make that quilt Mom!

But last night was also transfer calls! I am staying in Hurricane for at least another 5 weeks. But I will be getting a new companion. His name is Elder Hernandez. He is from Spain. So I will be required to speak a lot more Spanish, but it will help me out a lot! 

Well that is my amazing Christmas week! I hope that yours was just as eventful as mine was! I love you so much!!    Live it, Love it, Preach it!!!         Elder D