Dec. 26, 2011 with Elder M in Melo

Hey all!

Long time, no see! (not really!) but yeah. After my call, I thought I
would have nothing to talk about in this email, but our Christmas eve
ended up being really fun. We had dinner with Bishop Rodriguez's
family and we ate lamb(one of the few big Christmas traditions here),
which was really good and we stayed out until 10:30. Then when we got
home, we did an in-house christmas exchange with the other elders. I
got a grabby arm/hand thing which was cool. Then we broke open some
glowsticks that my comp had and splattered the paint on our Christmas
tree. That was crazy. Then we climbed up on the roof of our apartment
building to watch fireworks at midnight, since we didn't have a real
curfew to go to bed. Then when we came in, we watched Mr. Krueger´s
Christmas that Elder Burnett payed the guy at the cyber to download
and put on a dvd for us. It was a really nice way to end the day. It
reminded me a lot of back home when we'd watch that in mutual or at
home.

Christmas day was pretty uneventful. Shisel that got baptized on
Friday didn't go to church because she was at her dad's house and so
she couldn't get confirmed, which was a bummer. We made ourselves a
good lunch of Chorizo....a type of sausage, I guess. It was really
really good. Then we went out and worked. At the last hour of the day,
we got together with the other elders and caroled for a little bit,
but everyone thought it was really weird because carolling doesn't
really exist here.

Questions and answers:
Other person from Alta? It was Hermana Watkins who happened to be in
the cyber at the same time as us.
How are me and eler moffitt getting along? Really well.
Will I be a valiente at changes? Yes. My final change is about to arrive.
Have I seen the hand in the sand? No. It's in Maldonado and almost
only hermanas go there. Before, we were allowed to go visit if we were
close, but not anymore...And I'm not close at all, so I'll probably
never see it.
Travel to Montevideo? Not till next week for zone leader council.

So yeah, I'm trying to get some pictures on, but they're not working.
I don't know why.
Nope. Might have just figured it out!

One is a picture I took back in Rio Branco when it was really cold and
our front door had a merry christmas thing, so I was wearing my
Russian hat and took a picture in front of it. Happy Christmas! One
picture is Shisel's baptism with her mom and little sister and friend
Fernanda who is probably gonna get baptized this week...and Rodolfo,
counselor in the bishopric who is crazy and baptized Shisel. One
picture is me with my grabbo arm. Thanks Elder Burnett! Also, don't
worry. We aren't usually just on mattresses on the ground. We have
beds. We just happened to have a sleepover that night in the living
room, so we just have mattresses. Aaannnddd...the last one if you can
see it is our Christmas tree covered in glowpaint.