Almost Christmas! :)‏

Hey everyone!! How are you guys? Oh my goodness, I´ve spent almost all my time, again, looking at the pictures and videos you sent. Thank you so much!! It was awesome to see Carrie´s birthday party! I´m on the same computer as last week, just my luck, and it´s still slow, so I watched it as kind of a slide show rather than a video, but hopefully I can see it in real time soon. And I LOVED the 4 generation pictures! They turned out GREAT - I thought "My goodness, the women in my family are all beautiful!" :) Thanks so much for sending them.

I can´t believe it´s almost Christmas!! And even funnier, when I typed that sentence the first time, I said, "I can´t believe it´s almost Christmas there!" and then erased it when I realized it´s almost Christmas here too. It doesn´t feel like it at all! We´re singing Christmas hymns and even doing this program in our ward called Living Christmas Cards, where people tell us the addresses of friends they want to send a christmas card to, and we go sing to them (wearing Santa hats!) and share a message about the Savior...but it still feels like "pretend Christmas"! Katie asked about traditions and such, so let me think. They eat this cake/bread called panettone, which I haven´t tried yet but I think is like fruitcake. And...they have the same commercialized Santa tradition, as far as I can tell! S. Raphaela was telling me the traditional things they eat for Christmas dinner, and I don´t remember them all, but they were way different, lots of fruit and stuff, since it´s the middle of summer. Those are the only traditions I remember right now, but I´ll think of more!

As far as this week and how I´m doing, I´m doing well. The week was...ok. I think I told you how my companion kind of has the reputation of being a "hard companion", but she´s an amazing person and I really love her. But this week I kind of saw how things can be hard with her. She can get really depressed and discouraged, just emotionally fragile due to her life and experiences, so it´s sometimes hard to help someone like that, but for the most part she´s fine. But we didn´t really work much this week - our district goal is 30 lessons a week and this week we taught 20. But S. Raphaela told me when I was called to be her companion that I shouldn´t worry about numbers or anything, just about taking care of her, so that´s what I´m doing! She´s amazing and we get along really well, she just has some issues with thinking negatively due to the way she was raised and stuff. So I do my best to be her best friend and companion and help her stop thinking negatively and being discouraged. She´s amazing - she´s been teaching me songs and phrases in Spanish. And this week, she had her one year anniversary in the mission! So we ordered pizza and bought cake, and had a little party that night. It was amazing, I love her, and we´re actually doing good work too - we have 3 people who want to be baptized this month!

So everything´s going well - different than with my trainer, but still good! I heard from S. Raphaela by the way - when I went to the office today she had sent an envelope along with someone who came to our area, with chocolate, a collage of pictures of us and a little note congratulating me on 5 months in the mission:) She´s amazing as well! I´m meeting so many wonderful people here.

My time is up!! I hope you guys are doing great, drinking lots of hot chocolate for me, and not getting snowed in! I´m getting excited to call you on Christmas, I wrote mom about how I´m working out the details, and will send you the number to call and time next Monday. I love you all so much, thank you so much for supporting me on my mission. Thanks for being the best family anyone could ask for:) Til next week!!

Love always,

Heather