Hola todos, I hope you all had a great Christmas. I was so happy to be able to talk with my family, that was pretty great. I have a spanish-english dictionary now so hopefully the spanish learning process can start to speed up. (I accidentally left my Spanish books in the MTC, so thanks, Mom for sending em some new ones). We didn't really do a whole bunch on Christmas day, but this week leading up to Christmas we did a lot of service and caroling with our district. I almost feel bad for the people we went caroling to because we were not the best singers. Our district leader, Elder Waite, can play the guitar so we had some background music to help us out. We knocked on this one door and started singing and the guy answered the door, looked at us and shook his head, and closed the door. I guess we he wasn't in the mood for some Christmas spirit.

We have found some new investigators but none of them came to church... We did see however, Ernesto, who we played soccer with on Thanksgiving. He came to church with his family that is in our ward. We talked with him a little bit and we are hoping to find a way to be able to start teaching him. Our area is hard to keep investigators for very long because the always move away, it is weird. Because of this, we do a lot with the less-active families and they are fun. One family, the Florez family are crazy. They have 11 kids and there are 3 adults that live there. All of the kids are under 12 years old too. The dad wants us to teach his kids that are old enough to be baptized. Our lessons with them are a little crazy. We mostly focus on teaching the 3 who are old enough to be baptized, but the other 8 kids just run around and climb all over us and it is hard for everybody to focus. I have learned something from their family though; and that is that I never want 11 kids. But they are great and I love them.

We have another family, the Romero family that is kind of in the same boat. They don't have 11 kids though, they only have 5. However, they have one set of triplets, so they're always fun. The dad wants us to teach his kids so that they can be baptized as well. So If both of these families keep progressing, we could have a pretty good month. It has been pretty exciting to teach them as well.

I have seen a lot of broken families here, and a lot of people with some pretty difficult trials. It has made me so grateful for the blessings that I have in my life. I have been really humbled out here. Don't take any blessings for granted, especially your families. There is a reason that this gospel is centered around our families. I love you all, have a great week!



Elder May

Our humble Christmas tree

Us with the Spanish sisters in our branch

Christmas caroling

Bro. and Sis. Bernal