I'm trying to send you photos to make up for not giving you the decent package update you deserved. This computer is just being really slow. To be fair, I realized well before your email (Thursday, to be precise) that is was very possible that I had forgotten to give you a definitive update on the wonderful packages you sent me. Yes, I have. Yes, I have already decorated our room (I will send you pictures a different week - for some reason, I have not taken them yet). So you'll only get zero total pictures in this email. Sorry, my bad. Anyways, Merry Christmas to all! We just had our annual Christmas Conference, where president told us to get good desires, the hermana Leyva made hand puppets to convince us to be obedient (they worked!), and we learned about the work of Salvation. Do you have that in Minnesota? It seems pretty cool. It essentially means that members do a lot more work now, which I am so excited to do after the miss. Minnesota won't know what hit it.
We also played basketball (our zone placed second despite being the shortest) and broke piñatas. It was a good Christmas Conference, though I wish Pres would've let us watch a good 'ole Christmas movie. Seriously, would, "It's a Wonderful Life" really damage our spirituality? That's probably why he's the President and I'm not. This week in total was fun, if not as productive as I would have wanted, though that wasn't necessarily our fault. We did divisions on Tuesday (I went to Ocotlan with Elder Ramos, the shortest missionary in the missionary who happéns to be from, get ready for it, Oaxaca! Go figure!), which is like an hour away. Lots of travel time. We went to the temple on Wednesday. Did I ever tell you that temple trips are becoming a neccesity for me? Cuz they are. Gosh I love that place. But that's two hours away, so more time lost. Then, the Christmas conference, also two hours away. To top it all off, I got sick on Sunday (I'm better now), so we didn't work too much. Luckily, this week looks pretty clear, so we'll get some good work in.
Honestly, all we've got on the schedule is a baptism and a family home evening night for the branch, and they both occur on Saturday. José is finally getting baptized. His work occasionally gets in the way, but we had a super cool lesson with him on Friday. He's heard all the lessons, so we were struggling to think up what to teach him. We finally decided on lesson five, generally taught after baptism. We were going to teach the temple and family history part of that lesson. Right after we said the prayer, his phone rang. It was his wife, who he is separated from. Apparently they didn't have a happy relationship due to some bad decisions-making by him, which is something he is and has changed. Anyways, ever since he starting taking the gospel seriously, things have been getting better with his wife. This instance was such a case. After the phone call, he told us, "She never calls me in the afternoon." Then he got this super huge smile and said, "I love it when she calls me." Let's hear it for the Gospel blessing families! Looks like Christ is the answer! Hooray! Anyways, he's super stoked for his baptism, as is the branch, and he's also super stoked for family history, and he makes me super stoked too. It's a good thing we've got going.
By the way, we are changing the phone call to 7pm on the 24th. We will be doing skype. We have already found an internet cafe with skype that will be open on the 24th. HOpe that works.
I'm going to write Taggart and Colton their own special emails. I need to go, but have a wonderful Christmas! I'll write Tyrel next week too (is he really going to be nineteen? And how old is Aubrey, I can't seem to remember anymore). Love you all! See you in a year!
Love,
Elder Johnson
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