Merry Christmas! (12/22/2009)

So I am in Yakima now and I am really enjoying it. It was hard to leave Toppenish but it was a good change at the same time. There are a ton of Hispanics here and it is nice to be in a normal-size city again. Their branch is a good size and seems to be fully functioning. They are a lot of fun and very nice.

On Saturday they had a branch Christmas party. They had good fun, a piñata, dancing and Santa Claus....well kind of. The Branch President came up to me and said the guy that normally is Santa Claus, could no longer fit in the suit. Since he asked if I could do it, I was like why not. So I left, put on the suit and came out. It wasn't how you would normally think Santa Claus to be. They just had me come out and dance around then I sat in this chair where the kids came up and I just handed them bags with candy in it. It was super fun. I have many pictures and a video that I will be sending. At the end when they announced I was leaving...this one little girl ran up and gave me a big hug and then gave me two pieces of candy she got from the piñata.

The work here is going well. We still are trying to get a handle on things. There are a lot of investigators that are progressing but have their own set of difficulties. They do have a bunch though. Our days are packed with people to teach. It is really fun in that aspect of the work. Elder Cavaness is super fun and so are the other two that cover the branch. It is weird that I went from five units to two and a half. I am enjoying it here though.

I really don't know what else to say. We have done a bunch but it seems as though it has gone too fast. We are still pretty confused too so that may be a reason that I can't think of much to say.

I did get your package. I am excited to open it on Friday. Speaking of which, we still don't know what time we are going to call on Friday but we will be calling on Thursday to give you a time for Friday. We do have a lot of meals lined up so don't worry. We get fed here every night and if one of our dinners cancels, we can just go with the other elders so essentially we have 2 dinners lined up every night. We have had good meals so far but the funniest must have been Sunday. We just had left church because it starts at 12:30 so we just went to our dinners right after. Well we were sitting there for a few minutes when one of their daughters left. A few minutes later she comes back with 2 pizzas. So only in a Spanish branch would you be fed a pizza from the store on the Sabbath. It was pretty funny.

Well that’s about all I have. Things are going great. I will talk to you on Friday then we will have a lot more to talk about!!