Staying!

Elder Dorrough and Elder S are staying together yet another transfer! Sweet!  In any case, I am very happy because Christmas is going to rock with my cuate Elder Sanchez as my comp. I am so happy.

We had a very interesting week! For starters, we got to perform a baptism in this area. Actually, we performed two. Our investigator V got baptized as did the 8 year old T in the family that has just come back to church. A soul was saved and really a whole family. It was also pretty cool because we basically had a day off. We have to travel down to the city to use a chapel to baptize which is like an hour away. We baptized V soon after Church so she could be with her family in the afternoon and then after we came back we went straight back to the same chapel to baptize T and then traveled an hour back again. Afterward we ate cake, coke, and tamales, the perfect Mexican combination of refreshments. Brother R (her dad) also ran over a dog on the way back home in the car. We all started busting out laughing so incredibly hard as we saw it in the headlights and felt the bumps. ''Creo que aplasté un perrito. Ni modo.''  It was actually sad, just so unexpected and random!

Friday we had a Mission Christmas Conference in Xalapa. Half of the missionaries from the mission went down to Xalapa and we had our only day off of the whole year. President and his wife gave talks, we watched some silly videos of missionaries, and we got to share talents. In any case, it was a fun day off just sitting and chatting and relaxing with a whole bunch of other missionaries and no stress. I got the Christmas packages! The candy canes actually made it whole! I don't know how, but it surprised me. Elder S: The house smells like chocolate. 

Me: Wait, chocolate smells?

Laughter.

President’s talk on Friday is definitely the turning point for this mission. The theme of the talk made me smile – scripture study as missionaries. President said, ‘’We are not here as missionaries to teach Preach My Gospel. We are here to teach the scriptures - and Preach My Gospel is our guide to help us teach the scriptures effectively.’’  He spent his time teaching us about how our use of scriptures as missionaries should be the same as Christ’s – any time people had a question he would refer chapter and verse to the answer. It is a mission rule now to read the Book of Mormon every morning as if it were a novel, and we are required to read the whole book in order at least once each year. Also, after zone conferences and things like that we usually did a little competition in which President has a couple candy bars up front and he asks a question and we have to flip open and find the answer in Preach My Gospel and say what page it’s on. The Elder who finds the page first wins the candy. He said now we’re going to change that – he’s going to read a scripture and we have to find it in the scriptures, with the same candy reward. You’d never guess who won four Snickers bars on Friday.

Today I spent all day in what are definitely the coolest ruins in the whole world! It's a place called Cantona in the northern part of Puebla (which is still in my branch) and it's ginormous. We spent about 5 hours hiking the whole thing and that's only 1.5% of the city that's uncovered! It was built in 900 BC  and the whole history of the city goes hand in hand with the Book of Mormon, including the details of how the priests did their work. It's awesome. I'll attach pictures!  The drive is super easy on the freeway with no bumps. So worth it. Not like Caracol at all. This is the greatest place I have seen because you can walk everywhere and on everything.

Catona is slightly huge and awesome.

Aubs - keep up the good college work as you wrap up finals here. Get some sleep.}

Jakey - please learn how to play Blowing in the Wind. I'd appreciate it as a coming home gift.

Joel - thanks for being spunky and laughing at the less-than-intelligent girl in your class.

Noah - my Red Sox buddy. Thanks for keeping me posted on the news and updates.

Savvy - keep on running and stretching and doing amazing athletic things! I want to be the brother of an Olympic medalist.

Zack - I miss you and miss seeing you grow up. I look at pictures of you sowing or doing whatever and think, how did he grow so much?

Until next week!  I love you!