1-22-13

Dear Mom,

  Welllllll I will start off by saying that my area is even hotter than my last one, haha, its kind of funny because I didnt think it could get any hotter. but its alright, I am enjoying it, I get sooooo tired every day because of the heat, we are just constantly sweating. Its great, helps you sleep really well. 

My new companion is Elder M, like I said, his mom is from Ecuador, and his dad from Chile, But they live in [the U.S.], so he speaks English as his first language. But he already has some very good spanish, so he had a great jumpstart from his parents. I feel like we are getting along pretty well, we work hard, and laugh, and so I am enjoying being companions with him, but I dont know for how long we will be companions, we have some pretty crazy stuff happening in the Mission. When I got there the assistants came and left another bed in the house, so we should be in a trio here sometime soon, that will be interesting, I have never been in a trio in the field.  That should make everything kind of a little different, Unity is a little harder between three instead of two.

Also, our area is masssssssssive. Its huge, we walk so far every day, its crazy, thats another reason we are really tired at night, but its alright, I enjoy it. 

So also, I am sure you are all curious about our visit from Elder Christofferson. It was amazing! I have a couple pages of notes in the house, but it was really cool because he talked about some stuff that I had been thinking about during personal study, and confirmed what I had thought, so It was a kind of cool experience to have that. He basically only talked about how we are called to preach repentance and nothing but it, but the way we should do it in, he showed us a lot of scriptures and it was really cool. Something I will never forget. His wife is awesome too, she shared a Story from 2 kings chapter 4 verses 1 through 7, and compared it to the mission, it was pretty powerful. Elder Christofferson is hilarious and a great man, He called us his companions, and told us our call was apostolic, and our authority was apostolic. 

I am glad to hear brayden finally got that part of his eagle project done! thats awesome! he just has to keep on going till its reviewed and he can get it done completely, I know he wants that license.

Another stake conference? Wow, please keep me informed on any changes, I am already lost as it is with the split in the ward, so I guess when I come home I will just be completely confused with even more changes. But thats great that I will give my homecoming talk at 1 instead of at 9, If I wake up that morning and realize I havent prepared anything I will have alot more time to prepare! Or do I have to speak in the Branch too because it was one ward when I left? Well, whatever the case, I am trying to practice my oratory skills alot right now, and being in this area will help alot, apparently we speak almost every other sunday here, haha, During sacrament meeting on Sunday the Branch President came down and told me that I had 15 minutes to speak at the end of the meeting, so I had about 3 minutes to get prepared, that was kind of a funny experience, but my companion says I did a pretty good job, so maybe I am getting better at improvisation! Also I have the goal of giving my testimony in sacrament meeting every month this year so that is another thing that will help. I want to get over my fear of speaking in front of a large group of people, so I am just confronting it as much as I can to overcome it.

But anyways, Thank you for all of your support, I love and miss you all, hope I got all the questions, sometimes I forget, but I love you and cant wait to hear from you!

Love,
Christopher