Feliz Navidad y Propero Ano Nuevo

Or in other words: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! A Christmas phone call, a baptism, and a fun street contact.

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Glynis here: This week we got to talk to Jacob on Christmas Day! Talk about the best present ever! We were extremely lucky and got to speak with him for almost an hour and a half. He looks wonderful, and sounds amazing! He had a really hard time with English for the first 15 minutes or so, and told us that it was his first conversation in English since August in the MTC. He is filling out (rice for every meal will do that to you), and is so happy! He bore his testimony to us in Spanish, and it was a very spiritual experience for us all. How we love our missionary! Now, to look forward to Mother's Day!

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Merry Christmas, y prospero ano nuevo! It didn't feel much like Christmas here at all. It is 90ish degrees pretty constantly, and it rains every day, but nevertheless, I had an amazing Christmas.

By far the highlight was talking to my family! It helped me feel not too far from them, and getting to see how they all are doing was pretty great, I'm not going to lie. It was also really interesting to hear my companion talk with his family, because Chileans talk with a completely different accent than Peruvians. I tried to talk to them a little but it was really hard. After talking with our families on Christmas, we had a family home evening with our pensionista. We watched some Christmas videos from the church and played some games with the family, then she came out of the kitchen with a turkey! That was pretty great! Overall, this week has been good, but also super long.

I feel like Christmas was weeks ago, even though it was just this last Tuesday. Even so, some pretty good things happened this week, so here we go. The best news is that we had a baptism! Hermana Jackie was baptized this Saturday, and she wanted me to baptize her. She was pretty nervous when she saw the font, (I think she had in her mind a baptism with just a sprinkling of water on the head), but we told her not to worry about it and that she should be excited. We told her that Heavenly Father was celebrating in heaven for her decision. After the baptism we shared some videos about covenants and how God asks us to endure to the end. Overall, it was a great night, and I know she felt the spirit. She invited a bunch of friends from her work too, but only one showed up. We got his information and we are going to be visiting him pretty soon. 

We are finding new people to teach, so that's pretty good. We found a few families as well and sharing the message of the gospel with them has been pretty cool. I have found that when it's a family, they will feel the spirit much stronger and have the desire to keep investigating.

A few days ago we had an interesting experience. We passed a man in the street and he whispered under his breath, "Why do you guys walk so much, buy a motorcycle." I started laughing so hard! Well, my companion and I went back to him and started talking to him. He tells us, "I know you guys and all your lies. You say you worship Jesus Christ, but you worship Allah." We were like, "Um,no." We talked to him a little more because he was REALLY confused about who we were and what we do. He wasn't interested at all but it was pretty interesting. We left him with a pamphlet and invited him to read it.

  Really there wasn't a whole lot more that happened this week. It's been good. I love the work! This week felt really long but I think it's just because it was Christmas. Overall, I feel great! I am loving the people and seeing them grow and change their lives for the better. I hope that you all have a Happy New Year!!

Feliz Navidad y Prospero Ano Nuevo

-Elder Neves

ps. On Christmas Eve there was the most incredible sunset I've ever seen in my whole life so enjoy the picture!