Ten Days till Christmas!

Happy Christmas! So good to hear from you guys as always and cant wait to hear you on the real phone! Ten days! :) Sounds like everything is going awesome back home. Christmas here has been very funny to see. On Friday was “Luces del Campero,” and everyone lights fireworks to celebrate the beginning of the 12 days of Christmas! The church had a HUGE party (from 4 to 9 PM!). We didn’t go, but I heard it was way fun. They even had fireworks. There was a bag of them that fell over and caught on fire—they started shooting everywhere! I heard everyone was fine, which is good, haha. I cant remember if I told you about the firecrackers here—they are CRAZY! There seriously hasn’t been a day where I haven’t heard at least 5000 explosions in the streets. The kids LOVE them. Pretty funny. Dec 21 is the turtle shell day—I am stoked! :)
This week was a little difficult, but me and Elder Patterson are still working as hard as ever. Weve really been trying to find new investigators so we’ve been contacting LOTS! Weve even contacted buses—it is scary but very fun and there are always lots of people very interested afterward. Sunday is the Alvarez baptism and Kendalls is on Friday—I am so excited! Emilias was Saturday and it went awesome.
Be sure to send the ward my Merry Christmas and send Sara my congrats!

Lanie—do you think Linus still remembers me? We will have to see on the phone :)

Alex—haha about the phone. Do people ever send me texts? Elder Patterson loves the time when you and Leslie looked up Guat on Wiki and found out we are beating the jews. He says they actually met one before I came. This woman walked by and said “Shalom.”

Jerm—congrats on the new license. Elder Hutchins in my district is a huge fan of Starcraft and cant wait for starcraft II—we were wondering if the release date is out yet!

Dad—We start our day at 630 and have 4 hours of prep, personal study, comp study, and language study! We go contacting for 2 hours and then have lunch with our “cocinera” (cook). Then until 930 we have appointments and lessons with families, and we contact if they fall through. Dinner consists usually of…tuna! Or whatever we can find after we get back :D Its pretty fun!
Miss you as always. The work is going so well here. I cant remember if I told you but the goal for the mission next year is to double the baptisms and have 2010 in 2010 :D I know we can do it! Pray for us and for the prepared investigators. I testify that this work is marvelous and wonderful! Those who are brought salvation include not only the people we teach, but the missionaries ourselves :) Love you and miss you. Happy Christmas! (not in the restricted section :) Till next week
Tyler