HORSES ARE MADE FOR RIDING AND NOT EATING. I HOPE THAT YOU ALL MADE PLENTY OF GOALS TO GROW CLOSER TO YOUR LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST THIS YEAR

Hola querida familia y amigos,

Yay the holidays are over!!!! Haha here in Chile the holidays are so bad for the work. Everyone and their dog leaves for the campo or the rio which is in the campo after Christmas and after New Years. New Years wasn´t too exciting. It was very hard to work and we spent New Year's Eve in a member's house eating dinner and stuff (holidays are the only times they have dinner ever) until 11 and then we went back home. My companion fell asleep promptly at 1130 so we had fun waking him up with the party poppers you sent me at midnight. We also had fun with the glow sticks haha you´ll see what I did with those in the next sd card I send home (yes i finally sent the first one home today).

New years day Los Ángeles was a ghost town until like 6 in the afternoon. Everyone was either inside sleeping off a hangover or at one of the 5 or so rivers or the waterfall somewhat close to the city. So we weren´t able to do too much except divisions with the zone leaders. As far as the work went, this last week was not very eventful at all. Almost all of our investigators (except the Uruguayo who comes home this week) have either ¨died¨ or at least are not going to get baptized this cambio because they´ve taken off for the summer. So this next week we are going to work hard to keep the ones we still have and work hard on finding as well. It's been really tough losing people, especially when you know how much they need what we have to offer them in their lives but what can you do? You feel sad but then you got to brush it off and press on to find those who are ready to listen, learn, progress, change and get baptized.

The mission actually as a whole right now is changing its culture slowly. It used to baptize a ridiculous amount of people but activity wasn´t all that great. Now we are not baptizing nearly as many but retention has gone through the roof. There are a lot of innactives in Chile and so we´ve taken alot of time now that the work has slowed down with investigators in reactivation and I think we are going to see some sucess with that pretty soon.

So anyways, this P-day was pretty fun. My companion and I and the zone leaders went to the Salto de Laja, which is this huge waterfall in this nice forresty area and that was a lot of fun. I tried Charqui, which is jerky of horse meat, and it was not good. Horses are made for riding and not eating I decided and I hope Izzie isn't too disgusted that I tried horse meat, haha sorry Iz! But I got some good pictures, if I have time I´ll try to email you guys a few of them. As far as my spanish is coming, it's coming but I still have a long way to go until fluency. I can say pretty much anything I want to now but a lot of times it's with choppy grammar. But the point is is that I´m getting there. I´m learning a lot of chileno as well haha. Its' kind of funny actually because I know more chilenismos then my companion and he´s been in the mission for 9 months and he's latino. But I guess that's what happens after almost 3 months in a flaite sector of the mission. Now he´s trying to ¨fix¨ my spanish haha. Pero na´ que ver, mi castellano e´ bien po! Tal vez e´ chanta pal resto de mundo pero a los chilenos les gusta, ellos creen que es bacán. Yo soy ma´ chileno que los porrotos ahora les digo. Y ma´ encima hay que embrecer la cultura po! Entonce´ mi compañero e´ medio enfermo del mate si el cree que yo necesito corregir mi español.

Well I´ve got a lot of goals for this new year and they aren´t exactly easy to reach but hey goals aren´t supposed to be easy to reach and I´m excited to get going on them al tiro (right away). I hope that all of you had a great new year and that you all made plenty of goals to grow closer to your lord and savior Jesus Christ this year. Well I got to go pero les quiero muchos, a todos pero especialmente mi familia, y también FELIZ AÑO NUEVO!!! Ya listo, chao!


Con amor, Élder Harper :)