Day 54

¡Hola Familia!
I am so excited to talk to you guys for Christmas! its going to be
awesome but im still not too sure how everything is going to work out.
i think that i will be able to email you again on friday to tell you
when i call (or when you can call) for Christmas day. right now i am
thinking we will be spending christmas eve on the roof until midnight
to watch all the fireworks and then christmas day with my zone and
this family that wants to make us an asado (the most amazing meat
ever) and i am really excited! this family has some young girls that
the mom is trying to set up with my zone leader but eating that asado
is worth a few hours of strange-ness. i am starting to enjoy futbol a
lot here but nobody lets me play because i am not very good yet. i am
always the goalie because i am the best but i want to get in the
action. thank you for sending me a scarf! im in comodoro right now
and my comp and i were about to go buy one so i will pray that the
package makes it into my hands. still no package yet, but last week i
received a mountain of letters and i was so excited to get them. they
were all dear elder letters from nov 17- dic 3 on diciembre 13. i
loved reading them and i have to say that jamie wrote to me the most
and i wrote her a letter but i don´t want to send it yet because they
are moving soon. jamie, can i just email you next week? i cant
remember your email address. i will take a picture of the awesome
envelope that i made for you but i dont want to send the letter
anymore. my companion told me that i talk a lot in my sleep and he
started to write down the things that i say. i mostly just correct my
grammar in spanish so i think that is pretty awesome. one night i
apparently burst out laughing for a few minutes but i cant remember
why i would. this is my last week of my first transfer!!! i dont know
how long i am going to stay in abásalo but i hope i stay for a few
more transfers. this week we couldnt do a whole lot because we had to
take the bus to the kilometros building a lot to practice for the
stake choir concert. we performed last night and i played 7 songs on
the piano with the choir for about 200 people. it was awesome because
there were people with saxophones, trumpets, and drums accompanying
us. i was kind of a big deal. but we did find some more awesome
families this week. this week we found 11 new investigators. a lot
of the people we found are menos activos but their families are not
members and they let us talk to them. since you asked for it, here is
a list of people we are teaching that need your prayers: natalia,
silvia, mirta, oracio y silvia, jaime y jazmina, zulema, hna vargas,
flia levicoi, juan v, nena, alberto, flia ruiz, flia castro, javier y
su familia, y flia menendez. the first few women listed are about
35-40 with a lot of younger children. there are not very many people
that believe in marriage so they just do whatever here. the rest of
the people we are teaching are menos activo families that we are
trying so hard to reactivate and we visit them all at least once a
week. we are waiting for the miracles to happen in our ward. there
are a few families that wont come to church because there are drunks
or drug addicts that smoke right outside of their homes and they are
too scared to leave with their young families. we dont blame them and
we are trying hard to help them get to church safely every week
because we know the importance of attending and taking the santa cena
cada domingo. there were a few people that we had to stop teaching
last week because they had lots of problems and they dont want to
progress. we found out this week that some women we were teaching
were actually prostitutes and they dont want to change their lifestyle
because they dont think they can support their children in the
dominican republic without the money theyre making. i was not
expecting anything like that because they were so normal and did not
look like they would ever do anything like that. but apparently,
their business here is too good to give up... other than that,
everything here is going great. no mud this week. it is very cold in
the mornings and then in the afternoon the sun is very hot but all the
cold wind makes for a nice balance. e´ escobar and i are finally
going to climb cerro chenque today. the other elders in my zone are
bums and they dont want to make the effort today but we know it will
be awesome. on top of the hill, i am going to take some pictures to
show you guys where i have been serving. it is really windy today so
hopefully you will be able to see all the sand blowing across the
land. i dont know why there is so much sand everywhere. the beaches
dont have sand but they have big ol´ rocks. fun. i found out the
lobos marinos are pretty close so my comp and i will have to get some
pictures with those too. someday... well, i am so excited to talk to
you guys and i will work on figuring out how to talk to you. i may be
able to use skype... but i dont know. i love you all! ¡Feliz Navidad!
Con mucho amor y ánimo,
Elder Summers