Hey Family!

I can´t tell you how good it was to talk to everyone, even though it was one of the hardest things I´ve ever had to do to hang up. I feel like we barely talked about anything, but I hope you liked what we did talk about. Also, sorry if I talked too much, I wanted to answer more questions but that time just flew by. Also I don´t think I said thank you for the packages! Thank you so much for everything, they we´re incredible, and a reminder that my Mom knows me all too well (as well as the rest of the family). One thing though that was a surprise to me as well, they have spicy ramen in the markets here, the exact same thing that we buy. It´s actually more common. Thank you none the less haha. I´ve already enojoyed my jump rope, peanut butter, and much of the candy, and my stomach in turn is not doing too well, but that´s what I get.

Mom, my companion was in the other room when we were talking, but he can´t understand english except for very few words, and the word companion is extremely similar in spanish, so all latinos can understand that. He apparently asked his family not to send anything, and yes was able to talk to a few of them. His whole family is seperated and lives in different places. He lived by himself for 2 years before his mission. He was sad because his Dad was drunk when he called him, but was happy to talk to his Mom. I felt a little uncomfortable opening the packages and am trying to share with him but he doesn´t like to recieve ¨sympathy¨ as he sees it, so he just takes it sometimes without saying anything and other times no.

Anyways Christmas was really fun here! We we´re able to eat tamales at the houses of pretty much everyone we visited so I was stuffed the entire day. We visited Jose and played Don´t eat pete with his family and shared something with them before we ate something with their family. He went all of Christmas Eve and Christmas without drinking which is a miracle, but then drank the next 2 days. We don´t know what do because hs progress is slowing, but we´will see. Anyways we also visited a lot of members and ate at their houses and tried to bring some Christmas cheer into their homes with our cute missionary faces. I looked in the mirror and I think it´s safe to say with assurety that we did just that. We we´re also able to find a few new people to teach and we are hoping that they can progress. The area here is for sure a little harder, because people are set in there ways, but we are working hard to make something happen. I hope and pray that as we work hard that we´re going to see some success in January. Merry Christmas to all, I love you, and I hope you enjoy your break.

Love,

-Ben