I hoped you all had a wonderful, spiritual, happy and warm Christmas like I did. Last week was SOOOO hot. Extremely hot outside, but on Christmas eve it cooled a bit so that was nice. So much happened last week it was crazy. I'll just try to go with the Christmas highlights. On the 23rd, we had invited 4 other hermanas to come over and stay the night with us because there was a conference early in the morning the next day. I told them all to come at 8:00pm, and we would try to go caroling. Caroling doesn't really exist here, but we tried it anyway. It turned out so good! At first it was really awkward, but as the night went some people cried as we sang to them, some people took videos of us, and it was just so great. I felt the spirit of Christmas so strongly. I really loved caroling and now I like all the Christmas songs better in Spanish. Singing in Spanish is really fun.
So there were 6 hermans in our little pench made perfectly for 2 hermanas. We got our beds and dragged them to the kitchen and we all slept super squished and close together. It was awesome haha. We got up early and we all went to Rosario on Christmas eve morning and had a giant conference with all the missionaries in our half of the mission. It was so fun. I loved seeing tons of old friends and it was nice to hear our president testify of his love for Christ.
We came home (just hna Tourtillott and I) back to Funes, and at this point it was 6 in the tarde. How they celebrate Christmas here is that they all have their parties on Christmas eve until midnight and then go crazy at midnight and that's when they open presents and everything (I always thought growing up I was impatient waking my parents up at 5 in the morning to open presents, turns out Argentina waits only seconds after midnight to do so, they got me beat!). We had made arrangements to go visit Samanta and Gisela, but they went to their party early...so we were lookin' like losers who were far, far, far away from home on Christmas eve. We stood in the street and pondered on what we should do, and then we remembered a man who had just moved here to Funes who was also away from his family for Christmas. He is a little odd, but a good guy. We called him up, grabbed some American candy that hna Tourtillotts family sent her, and shared it with him as we sat in a park and talked. It felt good to cheer up a lonely man on Christmas eve. That's why we are here! We then bought some soda(i hardly ever drink soda, actually never, but Christmas eve only seemed appropriate) and we went home and sat on our porch and watched the fireworks going off like crazy, sipping soda, talking about life. I think few people really enjoyed Christmas eve as much as I did.
We slept again in the kitchen, just us two though, and woke up Christmas morning and opened presents. We had already decided that it would be too hard for either one of us to really give the other a gift, since we can't really leave each others sight, so we just wrapped stuff we already owned. She wrapped my name tag, some food we already bought together, and some of my books. I wrapped her clothes and a few of her other things. So we still opened gifts that morning too :-)
Church was only an hour, and right after Church our ward mission leader invited us over to eat with his family. It was SUCH a nice meal, I could tell they went to a lot of effort to make it special. I felt honored too that they invited us over for their Christmas dinner, that was super nice. Then I called the COOLEST people EVER!!! Talking to the family was so good. Just hearing my mom yell "hilly!!!" was like as though I had not been away for as long as I have. I don't know if that makes sense, but it was so good.
One of my favorite parts of the call was with Carson :
c: hey hilly, I know how to juggle
me: dude that's awesome! I cant wait to see you do it when I'm home
c: ...I really wanna do it now. Can you just listen to me juggle?
me: uh, sure thing
(silent moment of him juggling)
c: I sound really good at it huh?
hahah I got such a good laugh out of it. I feel like there are so many more stories I want to hear from you, and so many more that I need to tell as well. 4 months!!!
After we called home, we went to Miguels aunts house and got to hang out with all of his family. Once again, I thought it was SOO nice that they let us spend time with them on such a family oriented special day. I feel like they are my family away from home. We had a very tender conversation about the plan of salvation. I hope so much his family keeps progressing!!!
That was Christmas. Now today we are going to go bowling with some elders in my district. I am doing great, I found myself getting slightly homesick earlier in the week, but I'm a lot better now, esp after talking to my family. I heard New Years is CRAZY over here. I will let you know, but not for a while. I have p-day once again this Saturday, but not next Monday (on the 2nd).
les quiero muchisimo, pero UN MONTON
feliz fiestas
hermana collins
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