Feliz Navidad!

Feliz Navidad! :) I can't believe Christmas is THIS week! Time sure has flown by!

This past week, I hit my one month mark in the field it's been so much fun!

We also got to sing in the estaca (stake) Christmas program anoche (last night) all the wards got to go up and sing a Christmas song! :) it was very fun!

We had a barrio fiesta on Saturday, we went a little early to help make the food and set up the gym and it turned out to be so much fun! I am also getting a lot more used to all the spicy hot foods that people love here, and I'm really coming to enjoy them! Their papusas and enchiladas are the best ever! Watch out family, when I come home that's all I'm going to be eating! :) I also looooooove the rice juice drink they have, and i'm not even going to explain how they make it because you'd all judge, but it's called ochuga (oh-chew-gah) and it is SO YUMMY! I also got to try arroz con leche, which literally translates to "rice with milk" and that is literally all that it is, rice drowned in a cup of warm milk with raisins. Let's just say, it's not my favorite dessert haha

 We've also had the opportunity to do some servicio this week, we help out at BTAC, a food place, and we pack bags and fill orders and help people put the bags of food into their cars. It's been very fun to meet people and even use our Spanish! Speaking of which, it's very crazy to use English SO often and then be expected to also know Spanish and how to carry a conversation and use Spanglish at some points or just Spanish, but I love it at the same time!  It's hard to joke in Spanish, because my vocab is limited, but I'm getting better! :)

Oh, fun story! We were doing some contacting the other day and knocking throughout an apartment complex. We were about to end for the night because it was getting late, so we said a pray to find the last door we should knock on and hopefully meet our goal of contacts and new potentials....in the middle of the prayer, the number "7" came to my mind. I laughed it off at first, because it only starts in the 100s for the apartment numbers. 7 came again to my mind. After the prayer, I just looked at my companion and said, "number 7" without even thinking. I gave a crazy look because it sounded weird to me too, but we looked around, and there on a door was a number "7," it was missing the 1 and 0, but I thought that was pretty funny! :) We knocked on the door....lots of pressure....and a family answered! They were interested in our message! We shared a short one at the door and got a return cita to meet up with them! Which actually happened the other day, and we got to know them some more. It was very fun!

Okay, some other fun stuff, aqui estan algunas historias chistosos de esta semana pasado:

·         there have been these crazy birds, with weird beaks and colors, flying alllll round Burbank, VERY loud and actually kinda annoying. sometimes their groups fill up the whole tree and they just stare you down as you walk by, sometimes they even swoop very close to you....in a contact the other day, we learned that these birds are actually parrot, What!? They come to this area around this time every year! Crazy, right!? We heard a story that it's because one time a pet shop burned down and the parrots got lose and so now they just hang out in warm Burbank, CA for the winter! :)

·         In CA, people here are wearing big poofy winter jackets, like ones I don't even use for playing in the snow! Needless to say, I am in a t-shirt still! Walking with the palm trees and having people ask me if I'm cold. I've started having to carry around a cardigan just so that they don't worry about me! The culture here is very friendly and they are concerned with others, so much that they will literally give me a jacket so that I don't freeze, because they don't believe me that it's not cold haha. The other day, in a contact with a random guy, he took his sweatshirt off and tried giving it to me; it was very funny, so from now on I promised my comp would take a cardigan so I can at least show them I have a jacket if I need it. Okay, point of the story, they're all afraid of "la gripe" (gree-pay), AKA..... the cold....it's very funny to see them all worried about slightly runny noses or the sniffles or just feeling cold and thinking it's "la gripe." But they also call the flu "la gripe" and pretty much every sickness, so we can't always tell if our investigators/potentials are actually sick or just feeling cold haha :)

·         I've learned some good Spanish lessons this week! One is, when you eat faster than your companion, you get seconds! ...and then thirds! Ahhh! Also, when they ask if you want more, if you say "esta bien" it actually means "yes please, more food!' (even though it translates to and is also used for "oh it's okay, don't worry about it), which I've been saying...oops...haha but now I say "estoy bien" (i'm fine, no thanks) and they still put thirds on my plate, so maybe that doesn't work either haha :)

  

ITS CHRISTMAS WEEK! the culture here celebrates Christmas on our Christmas Eve! Very fun! :) I'm excited to try their Christmas meals also! And this Christmas will be very different as a missionary but I am very excited because there are so many missionary miracles in store this week and so much love from the ward, my family, my friends, the other missionaries, and of course from the Savior, surrounding this work! :) <3