Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Officially in the Holiday Spirit!

Hello Dad! It was good to hear from you. I love Mom and everything but I like getting multiple perspectives on things as well. The Gary Powers U2 incident sounds like it was fun. I didn't expect that you would have success recreating it without some kind of missile guidance system (not even the Soviets were that good of shots). But it sounds like you and Ethan have been having a lot of fun together and building memories. I've made a long list of things that Ethan and I will do when I get back, so you'd better not get used to monopolizing all his time.

Work in Villalba continues to go well. We
've actually had a rough past couple days but I know it's just a minor setback. Monday was especially challenging as all of our visits fell through, it began to snow quite hard, and there was a Real Madrid vs Barcelona soccer match going on which means that NO ONE was on the street (they were all at home or in bars watching the game.) Yesterday was also a bit difficult. But today is looking great! We have a lot of good visits scheduled and a lot of solid plans on how we are going to help these people.

Alicia continues to progress very well. Her bigg
est challenge currently is that she is VERY smart and is greatly enjoying the Book of Mormon on an intellectual level, but needs to come to know with her mind and her heart that it's true. Other than that, she eats up everything and is very concerned about applying the gospel of Jesus Christ to her personal, everyday life.

Luchi's family is also doing well. They came to church this last Sunday. Getting people to come to church Sunday morning is of
ten quite difficult, as sleep and laziness usually impede them from doing so. To counteract this, we came up with a new idea for helping our investigators get to church: eat breakfast with them beforehand! We tried this first with some investigators, but it didn't work because the main investigator wasn't home and his wife was very willing to eat our pancakes... but not so willing to go to church. :S However, the second time, we were met with success! We made crepes for Luchi's family and took them to them an hour before church started. We had a fun breakfast with them, then all went together to church. It was especially good because last Sunday was the primary program, and Alvaro, one of Luchi's sons, participated in the singing! (he'd come for the previous two Sundays so he'd been in the rehearsals). It was a great experience for them and it really strengthened their testimonies. Today we'll be meeting and teaching an overview of the commandments, along with watching the Restoration movie. We're planning on bringing popcorn to keep Roger, the 5-year-old son, occupied and behaved (which is a challenge sometimes). They're all really great, especially Alejandro and Alvaro, the 12 and 11-year-old sons, and we're very confident that they will make their date.

Elder Holub and I are officially in the Holiday Spirit! Last Thursday, we were a bit sad because it looked like we weren't going to be able to do anything even remotely traditional for Thanksgiving, and we had visits planned all day, so we were just ready to forget about it. But an "anonymous" member left
us a fantastic surprise bag of American treats and goodies, and a less-active member later invited us over for a delicious Dominican Republic-style Thanksgiving, with real turkey and everything! It was a great day. The people here are so nice! Elder Holub's mom sent him a package with a nice nativity set and a little Christmas tree with all of the fixings to deck it with. We've started playing our Christmas CDs without restraint, and today we're planning on buying a leg of Jamon (basically a big, cured pig leg. Mmmm! P:) I'll take pictures.

By the way, a shout out to Elder Holub's mother: Your son is one of the greatest missionaries I have ever met. He has been raised well and he has a very strong work ethic and an even stronger testimony. He is really grateful to you for the decisions you've made that have affected his upbringing and knowledge. You really are his heroine.

Well, that's all the time I have today. Thanks so much for everything! I'm still going on those four boxes of cereal you sent me. I calculate that I have about enough left for another week-and-a-half of Post and General Mills bliss, then it's back to the Spanish regimen. I love you all!

-Elder Knorr