Feliz Navidad

Eth seems a little down this letter....understandable.  We are excited to speak with him in two more days on Christmas.

Well. It's raining a lot here instead of snowing which is super lame. And all my teachers that we've had the whole time since we got here have been leaving too for Christmas vacations. So now we have substitute teachers for our last week. No me gusta. My Spanish is getting a little better. We do this thing on Monday where they have us Skype members from south america and teach them a lesson. Yesterday me and my companion talked with some girl from Guatemala on Skype and I understood everything she said, so that's a good sign. But I know when I get to Argentina I'm going to get wrecked and not understand very much and probably get lost. They made me the travel leader for my group of 6 people and I don't know why. So we did get our flight plans this week, I am scheduled to depart on the 28th around 8 to the salt lake airport. We have a 5-6 hour flight to Atlanta, and then we leave at 9:00pm on a flight to Buenos Aires, which is scheduled to arrive at 9:00am. Santa Vaca! That's going to so rough. After that we have a bus ride across the country to Cordoba. I have no idea how long that will take. Probably forever.

 I hope it's better once I get to the field cause the MTC is seriously aburrido. I don't want to be indoors anymore. I'm getting pale enough that i can barely see my old watch tan from the car wash. The only thing I really enjoy here is Spanish class and language study where we just talk in Spanish for an hour about whatever we want. I told everyone yesterday about when I had a pet dove that rode on my shoulder for a few days until my mom set him free while we were at school haha. I love you mom! 

It doesn't even feel like Christmas here. There's no snow. Or Christmas music other than hymns. I miss my family and friends just about more than I can take. It's really sad being lonely and homesick on Christmas.  All the adults here say that this is a Christmas we will never forget and will always cherish. We shall see. 

Along with our teachers, we had to say goodbye to our only real investigator last week on Thursday. The guy named Elias from the Dominican Republic. He was so much fun to teach. I can tell that he really liked us. We had a really good connection with him (we talked about baseball and martial arts. My companion is a wrestler). But Thursday was our last lesson because we aren't scheduled to teach him during our last week at the MTC. (we have infield orientation and stuff.) So it was actually really hard to say goodbye. It was definitely the first time i got emotional talking in Spanish. He told us about overcoming a cocaine addiction and all sorts of motorcycle wrecks and stuff. After the lesson he revealed to us that he was a real investigator and has been for 25 years. That was really frustrating because we all knew that he knew the church was true, he just wouldn't commit. So hopefully the next missionaries can put him across the line. I know that if we had been able to teach him a couple more times we would be able to get him! So yeah that's the first real disappointment of the mission. 

We have infield orientation tomorrow. I don't really know what that will be like! 

I'm nervous about going to Argentina but excited also. I know it has to be better than being stuck indoors 24/7!

I love everyone. I hope you all have a great Christmas break! Feliz Navidad