Hoping For A White Christmas!! 12/10/2012

Hi Family,

This week I sent pics of our tree and lunch last week with the wonderful Family Castillo :)

I'll also let y'all know, I forgot my notebook with my notes so I'm running on memory but I think I remember stuff :) The questions mom asked I'm not sure on but I do remember you guys went to like Seattle or Portland or something and that you toured under the streets, legit! Great week :=)

We also had a great week here in the city. Still in trio but we're having a good time.

As for investigators, most people are progressing quite nicely :) Henry, after 2 absences came to church yesterday and he's super stoked for his newly put fecha for the 22 of December :) He has a couple doubts but nothing huge, mostly about sabbath day, but he's chill, he'll be baptized :)

Also, we put fechas with Bryan, Yisenia, and their cousin Osmar! All for the 22nd but Osmar will have to be pushed back because he got sick and couldn't come to church but they're all pretty stoked. We ended up just taking a couple steps back and just read the Book of Mormon with them for like 2 weeks and now they WANT to be baptized and that's the important part :) So were pretty stoked there!

Also, Pablo. He's new, he's not a member but he's at church almost every week, he just never wants to meet with us but we have all the support of the members and we have a cita with him tonight so we're hoping  to be baptizing him this month as well.  Christmas is getting close and we're looking to give the best gift we can to our Savior, a white Christmas of baptisms, and it seems like we'll make it!

We also found a new family, the family Garcia. The dad is a less active but really wants to come back to church and his wife, Heidi is suuuuuuuper interested in the church's focus on the family :) So we're pretty stoked about that, it would be for January but we're pretty stoked.  

Also, we had a super opportunity to have a conference with Elder Martino, president of the area Central America and there were 20 elders there and President Bautista. Just the Zone Leaders, the assistants, the secretaries and president. To receive council and instruction from our area president, it was super exciting, really good meeting, tons of ideas of how to baptize more as a mission. We're really, really focused on baptizing and excited to see the results of our newly placed focus and drive. 

As I said, this was a super duper good week, we had a ton of success and we're excited for what this week can bring, thanks so much mom for the recipe, I'll try to remember to take pictures :) LOOOOVES!!!!

Elder Westensanta

Good Week in Xela!! 12/3/2012

Hey familiares,

First I'll explain the pictures, we have Thanksgiving dinner and we have a legit Jenga game that we played that got suuuuuuuuper high!  

 

Now, to answer questions, is my area similar to Esperanza? not really. It's the difference between Salt Lake and Riverton, Esperanza would kind be like a suburb of Xela ha ha That's weird, never thought of it that way :)  Central Park is just that, a park in the middle of the city. Kinda like a town center ha ha.  Are we close to the mission home/offices? It's about a 15 minute walk from my house so yeah :)

And it's funny that you ask about the shoes because this week my second pair died. There's no heel on them anymore ha ha. But we're going to MegaPaca today to look for shoes so you should be getting a little debit card alert :) Just so ya know.  And as for how big the area is, I have no idea, but we have a mountain so with that it's pretty big, other than that, it's pretty small ha ha.  

Glad y'all had a great week, I'd like to go to the zoo when I get back :)

Now, as for me, I'm shortish on time so yeah, but this week was another week of  40 contacts so that was a lot of fun ha ha.  We did a LOT of knocking doors and I'm pretty sure that we talked to every single person in our area ha ha. But anyway, we did find some people that could be positive but if anything comes of it I'll let you know.

 

As for investigators, we have to push back Henry's baptism because he didn't come to church. He got his wisdom teeth out so that didn't really help him. But he is super excited about baptism, stuff just keeps happening so that's a bummer but he's good :)

We are also still going with Bryan and Yisenia but were also teaching their cousin, Osmar now who came to church yesterday! He seemed to like it and he really enjoys the things we teach, we want to challenge him to be baptized this week so we'll see what happens there :)  

However, the crowning event of the week was that on Friday, I WENT TO THE TEMPLE!!!!! With Wimmer ha ha. He's not even close to my zone but it was all the people with more than a year that hadn't gone yet so we went! That's why you got a charge from the distribution center, I needed garments ha ha. But yeah, it was like being really really really really thirsty and then drinking water, so RELIEVING!!! Such a good spirit, learned so much. REALLY enjoyed it :)

Apart from that, we also hit 17 months this past week, gettin' there :)

Now, I do need a favor, we're going to be having Christmas fun so I'm going to need the recipe for Maranda salad if you could send that to me :) Thanks a lot!

Now, today is a special day, Walter's daughter turned 10 on Wednesday and invited me and my comps to lunch so we're going to Esperanza today, how exciting! We're pretty stoked :) Welp, I think that's it for me, a good week here in Xela.

LOVE YOU ALL!!!!!
Elder Westenskow