Ringing in the New Year!

Hola Padres!!                    3 January 2011 

          Feliz ano nuevo!!! Well I guess I will continue to start my emails off by talking about the weather, because that is the one thing here that seems to always be changing. So the last few weeks it has been all about rain, well it’s a lot different here now. It rained one day this week and then just all of the   sudden dropped like 20 degrees and was in the teens. So that night we ended up getting snow and ice everywhere. More ice then snow. Then it was just plain freezing for about the last 4 days. We were always wearing our suits, long sleeve shirts, and sweaters. I even had to put on my Under Amour leggings when we went tracting this week. Talk about a difference in weather. And then this morning we woke up to about 2 inches of this random white stuff on the ground. I guess its called snow??? Not too many people know about it down here.

Well I guess this week I can talk a little bit more about my new companion since I have actually met him and spent some time with him. Elder Hernandez is from Barcelona, Spain. He is about 5' 5" 125 pounds or so. So just a little guy, but he is extremely funny. He has only spoken English for about 8 months. He learned it here on the mission. He has been out for about a year. He used to play semi-pro soccer in Spain. So he is going to make us all look silly when we play soccer now. He is an extremely good missionary. I call him a prodigy, just because the only leadership calling he hasn’t obtained yet is AP. He has had all the rest of them before he even reached his year mark. So he is a prodigy in my eyes.   We talk a lot in English, even when I try to talk to him in Spanish, he always will answer me in English. So my Spanish will improve a little bit, but we speak a lot of English, only because he is trying to learn it well.

This transfer I am the designated driver, which has taken some getting used to, but I am back into the flow of it. It’s very interesting to see how fast you lose a skill if you don’t use it a ton. Just think if I would have going to Africa or South America and not driven for two years. Man I would have been a terrible driver.

Well this transfer is going to be completely different from the last one. Elder Hernandez is a completely different missionary then Elder Perez. A lot more is going to be required of me and as a companionship. I first thought it was going to be a lot “work first, and don’t play later”. But we are finding a way to completely enjoy our time together, but still find a way to accomplish the work and succeed with what was happening here before. This companion will really set me up for greatness and set me on the right way on my mission. I have been discovering a lot of things about myself that I need to strive to do better. I am definitely finding that true obedience brings blessings and miracles. We have been getting in all these doors that I have knocked like 45 times before, but with Hernandez, we have been getting in and teaching lessons and more lessons at that. We have been way underachieving here before, but now we are set on the straight path. We are teaching way more lessons then ever before. We taught the same amount of lessons that we taught all last week in just 1 and a half days!!!!! So we are striving to go above and beyond what we had accomplished here before. (which won’t be hard)

New Year's Eve was pretty legit. We went over to Bishop Lewis' house to have our district activity. We had pizza and breadsticks, and then the real fun started. We were allowed to watch Toy Story 3 by our Mission President, so we were able to enjoy that in the theater room of Bishop Lewis. We all enjoyed watching Toy Story 3, just because almost no one had seen it except for me. So after watching the movie, we decided to head home. I ended up finding someone special to spend New Year's Eve with......my pillow!!! I was in bed and out before 10:30!

This week I met some extremely random and peculiar people on my exchange with the new ZL Goodman. We knocked all these doors and so many random people answered. There was this one door where we knocked it and this guy poked his head out and said, " You know what guys, we are good. Thanks though." So we just asked him a few questions and then he just repeated himself again and started to shut the door. So to not be rude, we just were standing there waiting for him to shut the door completely before we left. And right about as it gets closed, he throws it all the open again and says "is that gonna be a problem for you?" Man, talk about an awkward situation! We just said, "No" and did our best to hold in our laughter! As we left, I was basically dying right there in the street.

I also learned my least favorite phrase that you can hear as an English missionary. It is "Well I really respect what you guys are out doing, and don’t have any problem with you or your church, but I wish you the best of luck!" I guess that they don’t have enough respect to let us out of the freezing cold and come in to tell us that! J The other thing I wonder about is, if people around here just say that they are already a member of the Church just so they think we will leave them alone. Do they not realize that by saying that and us thinking that they are a less-active member we won’t stop by again??

Well I am extremely excited and looking forward to 2011 and all that it will hold for me! I hope that you all enjoy the New Year as well!!

Live it, Love it, Preach it!!       With love from the 435!!       Elder D!

(we have NO IDEA what “from the 435” means….)