Hi mom,
It was super cool to Skype with you. A little weird, but super cool none the less. You've all changed a lot since the last time I saw you like six month ago. Thank you for the Christmas card. This will probably be a shorter letter because we talked just last Thursday.
Something I forgot on Thursday. The family we had dinner with on Wednesday, Familia S* (I think I butchered that name), had a little yorkie. I had to get a picture with it, so I sent that home. He was no where near as cute as ours, but it was still nice to have a yorkie for Christmas.
About the lie... S* did not get baptized this last week :((((. She was all set and looked good until the day before her baptism. She told us that she'd drunk a little on Christmas and then started trying to justify it. Elder Gonzalez and I are at a lost for how she can be so solid and not keep the commitments.
Good news, we have one lined up for this week coming up. His name is A*. He's the 12-year-old son of V* and is super excited. The rest of the familia is not quite ready for baptism, V* needs to get married and E* just isn't 100% sure he's ready to make the commitment, but they're all preparing and really excited to get baptized. What's super cool is A* is rushing us to get him 100% ready for this Sunday because his birthday is the 11th (just like Chris's) and he'd get the Gift of the Holy Ghost on his birthday because it's the next week.
Weight loss: up 3lbs, but it was the holidays, so I will hopefully make up for it in a few weeks. Not an excuse, just a reason.
Spanish four out of seven, super bad, but we'll do better this week.
Love
Elder Michael Blanding.
Sorry I forgot about this little bit of geniuses by my Companion.
So S* wasn't baptized this Sunday, but two other investigators were and I finally got to go to one because S* and V* both said they were coming (you need to have an investigator at a baptism in order to attend). Only S* showed up, but that still meant we could stay. Elder Neff and Elder Houmond (Think hound man, I don't know how to spell that, which is super sad because he is sitting right next to me), who had the baptisms, asked us to give the missionary minute, where you stand and teach the Joseph Smith story while the people are changing. We said yes and Elder Gonzalez had the brilliant idea to ask for referrals right there after we shared the story. We passed out little sticky notes to everyone in the congregation and had them write a name and address of someone they knew, didn't matter where they lived. We probably got about twenty referrals and the Obispo's wife gave us one for her sister. We need to try and teach her tonight.
p.s. you have until 12 to send me an e-mail, after that I know I won't get it.
keep forgetting things. We also went caroling on the 24th and people kept asking us to come sing to them. It was super sweet and we shared the gift with a lot of people. It was really fun because we did all the singing in Spanish but most of our potentials/referrals were in English. Just shows how powerful the spirit of Christmas is in translating from one language to another.