One week down and plenty to report

iMi familia!
Yo debo escribir mi carta solamente en espanol, pero no tengo mucho tiempo...entonces...

Ok-Happy belated Thanksgiving! I'm so happy to hear that everything went so well! The festivities sounded awesome! Brined turkey huh? I bet that was good! How fun that so many people could be there-and that Meg and Rob could party it up too.

Ok-so la familia Castro was the family that fed us for Thanksgiving. I was surprised with how normal of a thanksgiving dinner we had! We had turkey, stuffing, yummy rice, and this purple potato salad (I think because it had beets in it). And then jamiaca. Look it up-its pretty good. Theirs was pretty strong so it took me a minute to get used to it. However, we had a great conversation about our blessings and what we were grateful for and their family friend was there too who asked many questions about the church so we (more like Hna. Noyes) taught pieces of the 1st lesson. It was a good way to spend Thanksgiving though.

Then, the following Sunday we invited them and they came to watch 17 Miracles at the church! They're moving along-I'm so excited to see where la familia Castro goes with meeting with us. It took us a while to get to this point, but now that we're finally to the teaching phase I'm pretty excited.

another family also came to the movie...Nazaria, Juan, and their kids (plus the friends of Victor, Nazaria's son). we had an appointment with them Monday night and...(drumroll) we set a date! I'm so crazy excited! We have a little over a month to prepare both Nazaria and Juan for baptism, but its going to be great. They really understand the importance of baptism and the Holy Ghost, and are willing to do what is necessary to prepare for it. They're so awesome. I left there smiling my face off. (*For the history books-first baptism date set for 1/7/11 on 11/28/11)

We have another investigator praying for what date she could be baptized and another family that we knocked into this last week that seem pretty golden: Teresa and her 2 daughters. So I'm sure there will be more on that soon.


Compliments: I really do feel like I've been blessed with the language. I still have so much to learn-for instance I have no idea how to use subjunctive yet...however, I know I'm a lot farther off than lots of missionaries when they come out into the field and so I'm very grateful. Members of the branch tease that I have the gift of tongues (el don de languas). I understand about 90% of 80% of the people now and so I'm definitely progressing there...I just have less confidence in actually speaking up in lessons for some reason. In our lesson with Juan and Nazaria they spent 10 minutes talking how impressed they were "Hace dos meses solamente! De verdad? Ezekeial...isolo hace does meses que hermana ha hablado espanol!"

Embarassments: A. We went to met presidente of the branch...I still have to get used to the whole taking on and off the boots thing...and to not do it on the carpet...B. I should remember next time when I have to introduce myself into a new branch to not forget my name tag at home. C. I shouldn't offer to play songs for the stake nativity festival thing when I don't know how to play them. We'll see how that goes...maybe the one sister who sings really loud will drown out my bad playing.

So needy: So, nativity cd, Christmas decorations?...or apartment looks a little bahumbug, the warm hand warmer things...Hna. Noyes has tons! I don't want to lessen her stock...so those would be great. Also, I could always use more sweater/long sleeve shirt/thermal stuff. I don't expect you to get everything...we get to shop a little, I just know you were asking.

Love you so so much! Good luck with the holiday prep. My thoughts are always with ya'll and thinking about how all the holiday stuff is for you! I'll be getting snow soon, this weekend. So we will be in the heart of the cold. It will be weird to imagine ya'll with just one layer of warmth in the good 'ole AZ/CA.

Les Amo!
Hermanita Moffat