Busy, busy, busy....

Que transas familia?

I'm doing well here in Salem, and a lot has happened this last week. We now have FIVE baptisms set for january! Four of them are on the ninth, and the other one is on the 30th. I would have written this yesterday, but we had our mission-wide Christmas party, which was pretty fun, but it took up almost our entire day, so that's why I'm writing today :-P

One thing I've noticed about being on a mission is that if you don't make an effort to write stuff down that happens during the day, you don't remember any of it just because SO MUCH happens! Like this last week, we had zone conference for the first time, which wasn't too bad... There were a few talks, a training on how to teach some certain doctrines, and then a practice. Oh, and at the very end, there was a doctrinal discourse by president Dyches about the Holy Ghost. That was pretty cool actually.

Aside from zone conference, Smithee and I had an exchange with the Zone leaders up in Tigard, so Smithee and Roush stayed in Salem, and I went up to Tigard with Sotelo. We knocked doors for about six hours that day, and had quite a bit of fun. We knocked into a Baptist family, who actually let us in, and let us teach them! It was seriously saweet because usually, baptists are in your face about being saved by grace and will flip when you pull out the Book of Mormon, but with this family it was different. They were seriously so humble, and so prepared to hear the gospel. We taught them the first lesson and got to the book of mormon, and I kinda braced for impact, thinking he was going to freak out on us, but when I extended the invitation to read, he was hesitant at first, saying that the bible was the true word of God, but after explaining the concept of being able to read and pray for himself to know (and after Sotelo cracked open the Book of Mormon to 2nd Nephi 29), he accepted to read it and pray to know the truth of it. Needless to say, awesome.

Aside from that, I thought I'd find it harder to be away from home during Christmas time, but there really isn't much time to feel homesick out here just because we are so busy all the time! I absolutely love the people here, and am excited to spend Christmas with them... even if I only understand like 50% of what they say haha. I feel like my spanish kinda took a dive for a bit, because some people speak so freaking fast, especially if they're from Mexico, I mean, when Smithee speaks, I understand like everything he says, but when we teach people from Mexico, holy crap it's fast. Oh well, I'll get it, it's just a matter of time and hard studying.

All right, I apologize everyone that this letter isn't too terribly long, but I've got to get going.

I love you all, and I wish you a merry Christmas!

Con todo mi amor,

-Elder Moondogg