Look for me in the Newspaper!

Familia!

Ah I love those pics! I didn’t think the whole family was up in Idaho! Everyone’s looking old.. haha. Yeah they celebrate New Years here.. they say it’s even bigger than Christmas... so. :) I also heard they light human size dolls on fire in the streets so yeah I guess I’ll let you know how that goes next week :) 

So tell me more about Christmas? How was it? What are your plans for New Years?  Talking to you guys was great :) Made me realize how much I missed you! haha  Also.. the Latinos LOVED talking to Kenzie... They thought she was absolutely BEAUTIFUL. And now my new name is "cuñado" aka brother-in-law.  haha very funny.  I’m a little bummed I couldn’t talk with Cody and Ty and Kenz but I guess that’s alright.  It was the best present to talk to you guys :) Speaking of presents, THANK YOU for the tan pants! I’m serious! I was so excited. I was jumping around the room like a little boy on Christmas morning :) I still haven’t opened the others.. but I will soon. I’m just waiting for my companion to get his package so we can open them together. :)

We went to the beach again last p day and had a great time. I mean nothing beats a warm day at the beach with some friends, right? :) We played soccer and found some caves that we explored in! I’ll send pics. There was also a ton of crabs! Not kidding like 200 on the beach when we showed up. We scooped them up and put them in a bag.. don’t ask me why.  We’re just teens. 

Also this week we broke the record for the most people in a van. 24! So yeah wow that’s great news! Look for me in the newspaper!

Tuesday I went on exchanges with Elder Merrell. He’s new to the mission so as you can imagine it was a little tough for us 2 gringos.  But hey, we made it work :) 

Christmas Eve was well....... we made what we could with it :) We had dinner at the Echeandias house. They didn’t have a lot of food and they seriously gave almost all of it to us. It sure made me grateful.  I get a pit in my stomach every time that happens. But we had a great Chrismtas dinner :)  I felt like I was sitting at the table with my own family :) 

Later that night we went to the Plaza in the Talara.  We had a missionary dress up as Santa and he took pics with all the little niños :)   While they took pics, the other missionaries went around talking and handing out cards/pamphlets/liahonas.. EVERYTHING we had.  I’m not kidding, we literally BLEW UP Talara with the Gospel. Such an amazing feeling.

Christmas morning we had a show with our zone. You better believe that my band performed :) And yes, I have videos. :)   Later that night, we had literally like 5 dinners with different families. I about threw up. I cannot eat anymore panaton. eh. We also got a new tie from our pension :) 

I really did have a great Christmas. It was hard being away from you guys, but I’ll NEVER forget this Christmas. This year I feel like I found the TRUE meaning of Christmas. Haha I’ll also never take another one for granted :)

Saturday we had the service of a lifetime.  Our whole zone cleaned the whole plaza in Talara. It took us like 4 hours but we got it done :)  That night I also read a talk that Cody sent me about Becoming a Consecrated Missionary. It’s all I’ve been thinking about the last couple days.. so if you have some time, go read it! 

Sunday was great. Not many people came because everyone is hung over from the parties but it was great. :)  We had a little problem..... the building didn’t have any water...... aka no sacrament.  We freaked out a little bit so we ran to get some water bottles and made it back just in time for the meeting to start :) 

Anyways.. that’s about all I got this week. I loved talking to you, and I hope you’re doing well.

Enjoy the New Year!

Love and miss you!

-Elder Harris IV