Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Email letter dated Dec 12, 2012 "Packages, letters and Christmas Party"

 
December 12, 2012

On Monday I got 2 packages from home and 3 letters from Nikelle! Jackpot!!!!! I opened the packages from home and saw all the goodies that you sent me. Thank you!!!! Elder Chalas says thanks too. He really likes the yo-yo and all the other things you sent him. We will definitely build that gingerbread house.

So yesterday we had multiple zone conference with 2 other zones and Sister Douglas went nuts making tons of food. It was basically a thanksgiving dinner with turkey and pork and stuffing and fruit and of course rice. You wouldn´t think rice would appear at thanksgiving but we are in the D.R. where there are some people that if they don´t eat any rice during the day for whatever reason have to cook and eat rice before they go to sleep. It´s a weird mental Dominican thing that makes me laugh but it is true of some people. Needless to say it was an amazing meal. After which we had an amazing meeting with a short talk by President Douglas about Testimonies and then we had an incredible testimony meeting where nearly everyone, including me and my comp, bore their testimonies. It was awesome. After the meeting we watch Ben-Hur. I´ve never seen the whole movie and it looks like I may never see it all the way through because we had to stop and prepare for the Christmas Program that we had that some members attended. One elder gave the narration of the Christmas story from the scriptures and we sang teh Christmas hymns as the program progressed. I wish I had had my voice recorder to record it because it was so good! The conference was in La Vega which is quite the drive from Cotui so we stayed the night with some of the Elders in La Vega. It was a fun night with lots of talking, laughing, and making banana shakes. yumm......
As we left to make the long car ride back to good ol Cotui we accidentally left our house keys in the other elder´s house.....so we got home a few hours ago and didn´t have the keys to get in the house.....I got pretty car sick on the ride back and was not super thrilled at the thought of making that trip again. Fortunately we worked out a plan for the Elders in La Vega to send the keys in a small package with a taxi driver that was coming to Cotui anyway. So we are currently waiting for the taxi to arrive so we can get in the house, I can shower because I am really sweaty and stink and finally have a chance to relax for a minute or two.
Unfortunately we´ve not been back to teach Rafi and Rocío because she is in the U.S. and he has a tricky schedule.....same story with Eliosel, we´ve tried a couple times to get in contact with him this week but have come out empty handed.He lives far away and we have to take a car to get to his house so if he´s not there or we aren´t sure that he´s there then we don´t go because we can´t waste tons of time traveling. We´ll see what happens. Samuel and Magalis and thier two little boys: samuel and Isaac came to church on Sunday and the cool thing about smaller towns out in the country is that nearly everyone knows each other and as they were there everyone was saying hi and making them feel welcome.
It´s really hard when members go inactive due to a local leader in the church. It is really dificult for me to understand and even more difficult for me to understand how to help them overcome the stumbling block and come unto christ again.....
Life is good and Christmas is on the way. I plan to run out of ducks before the year runs out and in doing so put some smiles on some little domnincan faces.

Feliz Navidad

Elder Robinson

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