Notes from Christmas

December 30, 2017
    Man, I haven’t had any time lately to write in my journal.  It’s been super crazy these past few weeks.  Even now, I am staying up late to write this. I have to get better at managing my time so that I can write.  I just have so much more to do now that elder Long is gone, and I haven’t been able to find the time to do it all.  Some major events:
    1. We had a 3 zone wide Christmas party with President and his wife. I went on divisions that morning which was coll.  That night Elder Holmes (who trained Elder Long) and Elder Knight (from my MT district) and Elder Torres stayed in our house. 

     2. We started teaching 2 really great referrals.  In fact, we just went today to teach them fir the fourth time.
    3. We had a baptism!!!  I. got baptized after 6 months of missionary lessons.  The last 3 months were with me and elder Long.  We had to hold the baptism at 8 am because she wanted to be baptized before Christmas, but she also had a bunch of stuff to do to get ready for Christmas.  She was confirmed on Christmas day, but she was late for church so she had to be confirmed after the sacrament was passed. 

    4. We got to Skype our families.  That was a really weird experience being on the missionary side of the call.  I have done a bunch of Skype calls with my 3 missionary siblings, but is is totally different being the one that is away from the family. Originally we were going to go to a member’s house who has an office set up so there was a good internet connection.  But, he wasn’t home so we had to improvise by going to the chapel and using our iPods.  It actually worked out well enough and I got to talk to ALL of my siblings, even Bailey and Mia were there!

     5. Transfers.  Changes were on Monday this week which meant that I had one last p-day with elder Long before the change.  That was super cool.  I got my new companion, Elder Agustin. It was hard to say goodbye to Elder Long.  I have literally spent every moment of the last 12 weeks with him and he has taken good care of me.  Fortunately he is going to be my new zone leader so I will see him and hear from him a fair amount.  This last week has been the most stressful week of my mission.  Elder Agustin knows literally nothing about this area so I have had to take the lead with the planning.  We have worked hard and I think that we are doing reasonably well.  Elder Agustin is from Guatemala, he works hard, and does not speak any English. He is a really short and he loves to spend all of his free time studying the scriptures.  A funny thing about him is that he always has a candy bar in his mouth when we are at home.  He is not super clean, which is a big adjustment from Elder Long.