December 5, 2011

Hey!
Sorry for getting back to you guys so late today, I had a lot of little things to do. It was pretty uneventful wee here (worked hard but nothing crazy happened). We have 5 people that are preparing to get baptized right now and I am honestly feeling like all 5 of them will make it. One of the people that we are working with is ready and has been ready for a long time but she doesn't have permission from her parents because they think that she will be kicked out of her (catholic) school. It is really a dumb situation and so I have been talking to a few people that work here in the government and they are going to help us find out a way to protect her rights and get her baptized in the church. I am so thankful for always having a family that supported me in everything I did and I honestly feel so much pain when I see parents who don't want whats best for their kids, but are more worried about their own personal problems. We have made progress with the family and we are hoping that she can get baptized on the 17th of this month. Which brings me to the next topic...the 17th of December. We are planning on having a baptismal service at 7 or 8 in the night and we are expecting to have 8 or 9 baptisms!!! I am so excited and have never felt better about the work that we are doing than I do right now. I am loving everything and I love where I am at/hoping that I don't get transferred in a week! We have changes in a week and I am really hoping that I will be able to spend Christmas here.

Today we were in the office of the mission putting in the numbers from the week and stuff and we got to talking to Hermana Humphrey and I thought you would like what she said....Our office is right next door to the other mission (Concepcion south) office and they decorated the office like crazy. They have a Christmas tree, streamers and a bunch of other stuff. Well, hermana Humphrey saw that they had decorated the office and she saw that ours wasn't and it made her a little jealous, so she went and looked at it, examined it and then came back and decided that they couldn't have a "more cute" office than us. Anywho, it turns out that their president gave them a certain amount of $ to decorate and so hermana Humphrey said we could us a little more, and they had a Christmas tree so hermana Humphrey said we needed a bigger one...anyways one thing led to another and before I knew it I was cutting out paper ice-cicles and hanging them from the roof of he office ceiling (using an hour of my p-day), but I did it all in the spirit of Christmas haha.

It sounds like all is well back home and I found it really interesting that you guys had a little snow. We had a little rain the other day but it is like 85 degrees here right now, so there are no predictions of a white Christmas. How excited are you guys for Christmas? I am not dying of excitement, but I am definitely excited for the opportunity to talk to you guys. I will be taking a ton of pictures and I will make sure to be better at sending you guys any pictures that I take. Love you and hope all is well! Tell Josh I am sending him a letter but the line at the post office was too long today and I didn't have time to wait and that I will send it next week!

Yours truly,
Elder Cody Dastrup