Week 45

Hello beautiful family! Your faces are so lovely!!

I am a little sick, I came down with the cold.

Monday was just a busy day. I felt like my head was cut off the entire day. We biked to the church so that I could send you that email, while being ready for the Elders that took us up to the mission office. While at the mission office I emailed a little bit while waiting for all the 'paperwork' stuff that I had to do. After all that was said and done we went back to the church and played some basketball while I was trying to figure out the iPad thing again... I am so not tech savvy. We played basketball with one of the youth who can dunk and plays for his high school team.... I almost beat him at 21... Almost. We then biked in the rain to our dinner appointment with W and C. They are a really nice couple, they just have some problems. We shared with them the Christmas story in Luke 2 in the New Testament and they liked that. We ate carne asada, guacamole, frijoles, and tortillas and it was soooo good. We then tried to contact a referral, but he wasn't there, so that was a little sad. We had a member give us a rotisserie chicken so BABOOM! That was really nice.

Tuesday was alright. We were told that there was a Christmas tree in the attic so we got that down during companion study and took a video as we put it all together. I am not going to lie, that tree looks sang good. There is a train track with lights around it, ornaments on the tree, lights, tinsel, and a picture of Jesus Christ as the star because we couldn't find a star or an angel on the top of the tree, so we figured that Jesus was better anyways. After that we waited till the elders with the car came to pick us up for the dentist appointment. That took 3 hours!! Sorry about all the.... Expenses... After that we had to bike from the church back to our apartment to drop stuff off and then straight to our dinner appointment with the E family. They gave us ham, rice, and beans to eat for dinner with lemonade that was amazing! Then after they even gave us stockings!! They are so nice. The daughter served her mission in Utah so we joke back and forth about a lot of stuff. 

Wednesday was a day of miracles and awesomeness! We needed to go get toilet paper from the 99 cent store when we got a call from a member who needed to have some service done for her. She was removing carpet in her home and needed help moving all of the furniture. It was pretty fun. She gave us breakfast from Mcds and we moved a lot of stuff. That house was super dusty and had lots of cobwebs, but it will look better now. We did that for about 2 ish hours... Not too bad for late notice. We then bought the toilet paper (nope didn't forget that) and then went back to our apartment to work on the Area Book app. We decided to go and visit P U. So we walked a good little bit, talking to lots of people along the way, the good, the bad, the ugly, everyone. We knocked.... And he answered! I don't know if you remember, but we gave the blessing to his wife a couple weeks back. It is the family that had the older lady say "these are Elders!" Ya, anywho. We had a lesson about a week ago with him in which we invited him to be baptized a gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon. The next lesson that we scheduled with him, he didn't answer the door. When we went in and started talking he told us that he heard us knocking, but didn't know it was us. He then went to look and so us walking away so he grabbed on his shoes to run after us, but we had already crossed the street. His wife is doing much better, she has a brain infection so that's real tough. We asked him if he had read in the Book of Mormon and he said yes. We asked him to bring his book because we would be using it in the lesson. He brought his book with pages doggy-eared and said "I've read this" the pages were Alma 5-10. I was so impressed! I was like "wow 5 chapters!". But then my draw dropped. He then said "No elder, I have read from the BEGINNING of the book to THERE"............ WHAT???!!! That's 279 pages in the Book of Mormon (Spanish) he told us how much he loves reading it, he was all smiley about it too. He told us that he reads for AN HOUR EACH DAY, unless he is tired then AT LEAST 40 minutes.... That's more then me. I cannot say that I read just the Book of Mormon for an hour a day.... Dang! He then told us the most coolest thing: he said "I know when I finish this book, that I will want to be baptized" BAM!!!! He does have some doctrinal issues here and there, and a problem getting to church because he has to take care of his wife, but STILL!! We then walked to H's house and read with him a bit and talked about the Word of Wisdom. He then showed us how to make his jalapeño salsa. This is all you do: cut the ends of the jalapeño, stick it in the frying pan with oil, fry that pretty good, then put those in a blender with some garlic and a titch of water. That's it. Caution though, the smell is AWFUL. It made all of us sneeze, cough, runny nose, watery eyes, everything... I felt like I was melting. We even opened the door, eveything. We then ate dinner with the M's, that was good. We had tamales chapines which is tamales  the Guatemalan style. They had green olives in it, which was weird, and chicken, masa, all of it. It was pretty good, but I do like my Mexican tamales better than Guatemalan style. We then biked to the N family to have an FHE with them, but the hermano was the only one there. We shared the Christmas story with him and then played the card game 'Burn' with him, remember that? Well I didn't win once. The hermano won twice and my comp won the last time. We then ended the day trying to set up all of our dinner appointments for Navidad y Noche Buena. 

Thursday was Christmas Eve and that was intense. We had already done the weekly planning that we needed to do because the Area Book Planner app helps a lot with that. We decided to do a gift exchange as a district, thinking that that was a good idea. I also called the dentist office so that they could "fix" the bonding on the tooth that came undone. We decided that as we would walk back from the dental office to the car we would buy the gifts, but we were told that we were not allowed to do that. That's ok, I guess. We still needed to buy something to validate our parking, so what do missionaries do in downtown LA at Figat7th? We go to the food court. We saw this really cool pizza place when this random guy standing in line told us "Elders, let me buy you all pizzas.".... BABOOM! He told us that he himself is not a member, but that he married one and that his whole family basically is and that he supports missionaries whenever he can. He said he knows that we are doing God's work and that we are becoming men, all that jazz. Then he bought each of us a pizza, took a picture, and then left. What a nice guy, he was just super nice. The pizza was pretty good to, and we got to validate! So the pizza only cost about 1$ a piece, not too bad. We then went to our apartment and headed out. After talking with people for a bit, it was time for dinner with the M's, who are our apartment managers and they are all members. They go to the English ward so we never see them and they invited us over for dinner because we are always busy. They had really good food. They had ribs, fried chicken, asparagus, potatoes, a dish with corn in it, ponche, and this freaking awesome Trader Joe's Apple Cider, wow. After that we went for round 2. We went to the A family to have dinner and open gifts. We got there and ate chicken, rice, Russian salad (it's just called that, it's not from Russia) and some bread. To drink we had ponche and lemonade, it was good. We then opened gifts. Latinos are super mean when it comes to celebrations. The three little girls A, J, and G were given presents from 'Santa' and what looked like boxes of something nice turned out to be wrapped boxes of old hamburger boxes from McDonalds with a rotten banana inside. The girls cried and the parents only laughed. J, one of the girls, got a scarf.... But she made it. Her parents rewrapped one of her gifts and gave it to herself. I told her that it looked good on her and she loved the gift after that. That happens for about 3 gifts... Poor girls. Then after they had all cried came the normal family gifts. They actually gave Elder G and me gifts too! I got a fancy gray sweater and Elder G got a nice gray hoodie. Then the day was done.

Friday I talked to you!!! Well, to the family family. But let's talk about the whole day shall we? We woke up at 6:15 so that way we could clean the apartment a little bit. We invited some other companionships to come over to our place to open gifts and to have a breakfast with us. We had Elders Z, H, G, and W there. I have thus been nicknamed "The District Mom" because I wanted to take pictures of everyone opening gifts and standing in front of the tree. We then cooked up some pancakes with chocolate chips and drank pumpkin flavored egg nog with some Martinelli after that, it was so good. It was a lot of fun, but then there was more. We were invited by our apartment manager to have breakfast with her family also, so we went over after and had leftovers from the night before and one of the daughter in laws made Monte Cristo, so that was real good. We then hurried home to get our stuff and bike super duper fast to go get our bikes and then Skype at the R house. That was really fun. You all are so awkward, I hope you know that. I think the best quotes from this time were "I love your face" "I got a sword for Christmas" "Talk in Spanish" - "no" and of course the jovial little time we had about Peggy;) that was cool. We then went home to get some stuff that we needed for our investigator H. We went to see him, but he was sleeping. His mom said that we could come back later, and that we should take a nap "because we looked bad" so we took the wise counsel of a member and took a quick power nap at our apartment to go back to H's. We watched The Prophet of The Restoration with him and it was really good. I love the movie, it gets me at different parts every time, that tear jerker!! We the. Biked to the R house for dinner and ate there. Elder G and W because they had just finished skyping their families. The food was soooo good! We ate actual desserts!! Brownies, Apple pie, ice cream, ate it all. All in all today we had a total of 3 meals, not the 5 that we were expecting. We had 2 breakfasts, some chips for lunch, a nap, and then an amazing dinner. All in all, it was a pretty epic Christmas in the mission.

Saturday I came down with the cold.... Ugh. It was not a fun day. We had District Meeting and I was just trying to survive, basically it's just my nose that's all stuffed up and so it's difficult to breath sometimes. After that we walked around for a bit, tried to go visit P, but he wasn't there. We had dinner with B, who is a Recent Convert and she always is forgetting things. She gave us a referral though! The food was really good, she cooks super spicy food, so I always try and go for the fruit or something else that she has that I know isn't too spicy. We biked back to the apartment because I did not have energy to continue, and I crashed out for the night.

Sunday I woke up and my nose hit me like a train. We went to church and that was good. I really don't like it when teachers go off topic with the lessons. Sometimes I think teachers miss the principle part of the lesson and want to go on something that they think is cool or that they found out, but they don't stick to the lesson... Just saying. After fighting with my nose all through church, we arrived back at the apartment. I decided that I didn't want to be lazy the whole day so we went out and talked to people, tried to visit some investigators, but they weren't home. We stopped by the N family, a less active family. They are less active because the husband works on Sunday's at a golf course early in the morning, and if he doesn't go, the family doesn't go. We had a improv FHE with them and we played some card games. They gave us pupusas. Mom- learn how to make pupusas!!! I am so grateful that I have always been around a family that likes to play card games and play games together. I am glad that you as parents taught me (even though sometimes it doesn't show) how to be a good sport while playing. I think the mission has taught me more about being a good sport when playing games, cause hey, everyone plays soccer here and I don't. Let's just say that my comp is not use to playing card games and he really REALLY likes to win.