Crazy Week!

Hey Mom and Dad,

Wow sounds like it´s been another crazy week at home. Ah good times with freezing temperatures. I´m not gonna lie, it really doesn´t feel like Christmas time here when it´s only getting hotter. It´s fun to see how here nearly everyone has already put up their artificial Christmas trees and have even put up lights. Of course they don´t really have roofs like we do to put up the lights, but do you remember when I told you every house that´s not made of cane\bambuu has bars over the windows? Well here they string Christmas lights all around the bars that are over the windows so it still gives a nice effect. Definitely different than Christmas in Oregon but it´s still good. There are lots of nativity scenes that have been put up as well so those are kool to see. Changes are next week so it´ll be crazy to see where i´ll be for Christmas, hopefully I stay here. I only have 3 months so I think I will be, but crazy thing of the mission is you never know. This morning we got a call from the Elders in Barrio Olmedo and had us run over there this morning because Elder Arellano, our zone leader, was called to be the new assistant!!! We ran over to say goodbye. But it was crazy to see, but awesome because he is such an awesome elder. Remember I was his companion for a few days while we waited to receive our trainees. So yeah it´ll be fun seeing him in zone conferences now :)

I don´t suppose you´d hear at all about the South American soccer cup but guess who won the championship! Yeah, Liga from Quito of Ecuador apparently won the championship for South America, and I´m pretty sure they played against Brazil so that was fun to hear about. Elder Cevallos was way excited (especially since he´s from Quito) he said the last time Quito won the championship he cried he was so happy, lol.

But yeah it was fun after district meeting I got the packages, and then Elder Salazar, our district leader, told me that if there´s food I can open it now for the food, lol. So I hope it´s ok I opened my birthday package early and ate some of the candy, lol. I´m pretty sure everyone agreed that those cookies were AWESOME!! :) lol. And it was perfect too because after the meeting we didn´t have anyone that was going to give us lunch so we went back to the house to cook and I decided to make those potatos and gravy and I had some frozen hamburger that I thought would go nicely with it so I made that. Then Elder Cevallos made a soup called encebollado that is delicious so we split the meal. I thought it was a pretty sweet thanksgiving meal, two different people from different countries, sharing there culture and food, that´s what´s supposed to be in the spirit of thanksgiving, right?

Well other than that it´s been an awesome week now that I´ve finally been able to leave the house!!! Lol, and yeah my knee feels great now. After two weeks of not bending my knee it was quite stiff so I spent the mornings stretching and just moving it, lol, and we walked a little slower the first few days but now it´s all good. It´s been crazy this week we´ve received quite a few references from the members over the last two weeks that we´ve finally been able to contact. There´s one family who was less active but now they´re coming back and want their 9-year old son to be baptized, then another niece of a member who´s actually been coming for a while now is telling us that she wants to be baptized (yeah, it doesn´t get much better then that when the people tell us that want to be baptized, lol=). We also have another family that is progressing great. The other night we had a lesson with just the 17-year old son and committed him to be baptized for the 26th! That would be so awesome to have a Christmas baptism! Now hopefully if the rest of the family is ready we can commit them as well. It´s been fun since we didn´t have any scheduled appointments after 2 weeks of being in the house we´ve found ourselves with extra time since it´s hard to find investigators when we randomly pass by, thusly we´ve had the opportunity to knock doors, lol (remember I told you we hardly ever do that as my trainer first told me), but it was actually pretty neat. That neighborhood of cane houses on stilts that I told you about is very receptive. It´s amazing how the humility helps people listen. Like in most neighborhoods every 5-10 houses we´ll find one that´ll invite us to hear more. But there it´s like every other house. Definitely a confidence builder :P One guy said that he´s been looking at all the different churches and says he has a lot of respect for the Mormons and of all that we would join, it would either be Mormon or Catholic. He should be good.

Then of course the Christmas devotional was great! I love those because it´s always awesome after having taught the restoration and putting enphasis on prophets to be able to afterwards invite them to hear the words of a prophet. So it was neat. Of course I´m not gonna lie it brought memories of being back there at Christmas, lol. :P

Alright, well I´ve got to get going. Thanks so much for the packages! I love you and hope everyone has a good week!

Love,

Elder David Frome