Last Christmas in Chalco

Hola,

Another week has come and gone here in Chalco.  The mission Christmas party is tomorrow, so I'll let you know how it goes.  As far as other Christmas activities, we are going to be singing carols as a mission on Wednesday in the center of Chalco, and giving out gift-wrapped Books of Mormon.  It should be pretty fun.  

Other than that, not too much news to report.  We keep working hard, and we've been finding some more new investigators.  One in particular, Wendy, shows some good signs of progressing.  As part of the first lesson we had with her, she said that she and her husband have been looking for a church to join, but they didn't really like the ones they had gone to before.  She even said that her husband had gone to our church once with a friend, and said that he liked it.  She also lives about five houses from a sister who loves participating in missionary work, which is a big plus.  The only problem recently is that everybody is going out of town for Christmas, so these next couple of weeks might be hard as far as finding people goes.  But that's OK, since these are the two weeks in which we don't work as much.

That's about it for news from me here.  I'm glad to hear you're enjoying your break.  I love what you said about Linus.  I had never heard of it before.  I have truely seen exactly what you're talking about.  I'm sorry this is kind of a short one.  But I'll be talking with you soon, so hopefully that makes up for it.  I love you, and I'll talk to you soon.

Love,

Elder Samuel Long

Just a couple pictures today of the view from my area.  This is one thing I love about the smaller towns here, they always have great views.

Holidays

Hola,

Well, another week has come and gone.  This week we had the holiest day in Mexico, the birthday of the Mexican mother of Christ.  This year the party was actually pretty calm.  Last year we had to be in our house at 6, this year we went to the super Catholic town in our area at about 7.  There were people partying, but nothing like last year.

As far as news goes, there's not too much to report.  And I don't have too much time, so it's going to be a quick one.  We found a couple new investigators in said Catholic town, Cocotitlan.  One in particular, Arely, is pretty golden.  She accepted the Restoration pretty well, and we'll see what happens with her.  Other than that, we had the dedication of the Tijuana temple this Sunday instead of the normal services.  The cultural ceremony was a bit unorganized, but they seemed to have fun doing it, which is good I guess.  The actual dedication was good.  President Uchtdorf and Elder Oaks came to do it.  All in all it was a good dedication. 

That's about it for news from here.  I hope you have a nice Christmas break.  I still don't know where/when I will be calling on Christmas, but I'll let you know.  

I love you, and I'll write you next week.

Love,

Elder Samuel Long

December Already

Hola,

Well, another week has come and gone here in Chalco.  I can't believe we're already a week into December.  I just barely got used to November.  I also can't believe that in a couple of weeks it will be Christmas.  Two weeks from tomorrow we will be having our mission Christmas party.  And since we have a white elephant every year we got the usual shmeel today from the zone leaders about the type of gifts we can bring.  Basically, the majority of the gifts are something funny instead of something useful.  Things like Catholic saints and pineapples.  (The last one is a mission joke.  And I might be guilty of giving a pineapple last year.)  So basically they told us that it has to be something useful that costs at least 100 pesos.  I'm sure there will still be a lot of joke gifts.  I'm considering doing a combination.

Other than that, things are pretty much the same around here.  We had a seventy, Elder Toris, come visit the mission.  He talked about the importance of, and the way to work with members, among other things.  President Crickmore also gave us a surprise announcement.  Starting in January, the boundaries of the mission are going to change.  We will be losing two stakes, Meyehualco and Ixtapaluca.  And we will be receiving three new stakes in the city of Cuautla, in the state of Morelos.  He said that the missionaries will not be changing missions, just the boundaries.  It will be kind of sad to see the two stakes go, since I've served in both of them.  But who knows, maybe they send me out to Cuautla to finish my mission.  Other than that, no big news.  We've had some interesting lessons these last couple of weeks.  We have an investigator named Pilar who is a Jehovah's Witness, who is actually progressing pretty well.  But we've had to study up on the bible in order to be able to teach her.  But we've managed to get her to accept a Book of Mormon, and she came to church yesterday, which is a good sign.  Other than her, we found an interesting Investigator this past week name Itzel.  She doesn't profess any religion in particular, but her beliefs are more buddhist than anything else.  Including the fact that she is the second person in my entire mission I've met who believes in reincarnation.  The first lesson was interesting, but we'll see what she says in the next one.

That's about it for news from here. 

I love you, and I'll write you next week.

Love,

Elder Samuel Long