THEY WERE OVERJOYED TO SEE US AS WERE WE TO SEE THEM

Hey familia,

Well well well Thanksgiving has passed and Christmas time is officially on, Christmas music, lights, the whole shabang! Haha slightly jealous of that since nobody has lights and barely anyone has a tree here but oh well. This is my second one here so I'm already used to it. But anyways I'm glad that you guys enjoyed your holiday back in the states. I would have probably forgotten once again all about Thanksgiving but we had entrevistas with the president in Temuco that day so some other gringos reminded me about it and president bought us all Pizza Hut for lunch to commemorate. Jaja it might not sound like much but the only Pizza Hut in the mission is in Temuco and it's basically the only American restaraunt there besides McDonalds so it was a delicacy for us. My interview was good but short, nothing really too exciting to report on there. But since we are so far away that took up the whole day. Then on Friday we went to Pitrufquén to do a baptismal interview which was good but there were bus problems so that once again took up basically the whole day. Saturday we worked but spent most of the afternoon and evening helping a less active member with cancer paint her house and we gave her a blessing. Even though I just wanted to be out teaching or tracting or something, it still felt really good to serve and help her out and it must have had an impact on her because she came to church on Sunday so we were pretty happy about that.

But since we were so busy with other stuff during the week, we unfortunately didn't have much time to find new investigators and to help our current ones progress but the little 9 year old girl, Victoria, came with her member Dad to church on Sunday in a dress and everything (that's rare to see) so we were stoked about that. And we seem to be gaining more confidence with her and her Dad, so she is starting to progress along a little more towards baptism. She is really good but just timid and her Dad isn't that supportive, makes me so frustrated at times. But thats ok because we are going to put a specific baptismal fecha with her this week, who knows, maybe we´ll even have a white Christmas. I would absolutely love that =). Besides her none of our other investigators have progressed. Victor is still kind of bogged down and not progressing and we have another investigator who is awesome and says she´ll get baptized when she gets an answer to her prayers but she went to Santiago for a week so hopefully she will still be good when she gets back. It was kind of frustrating not having to much time to work and finding no new investigators last week but discouragement doesn't help anything so I'm not letting it get me down.

Anyways after church on Sunday me and the other leaders from our zone made the four hour trip up from Loncoche to Los Ángeles for the consejo de líderes ( mission council) on Monday. It was good seeing most of my buddies and all my past senior comps up there and then it was of course awesome hearing from the President, I love President Swenson, that man is just inspiring. He made me just so stoked to leave that conference and go back to tear it up in Loncoche. Then after conference it was once again back on a bus until Temuco and another night sleeping away from the house. But I rode on the bus all the way to Temuco with Elder Vincent, my comp from the MTC, and it was great to catch up with him because we don't cross paths very often here in the mission. Anyways that's about all that I got for this week, just lots of hours spent on a bus traveling. Fun stuff jaja. Well we have no meetings or anything for this week so it will just be a lot of unimpeded working our tails off to find new people to teach and baptize. We are looking for the Lords elect so.. it should be a good week. My next letter should be a lot more interesting than this one. 

Oh how could I forget! After the consejo, Elder Terrazas and I went to go visit Marcos y Marcela, and Victor, our converts in Galvarino. It was cool walking the streets of Galvarino again with Elder Terrazas (who finishes the mission this cambio) and visiting our converts. They were overjoyed to see us as were we to see them. It was a great experience and of course raised my mood up even more, they are awesome. Well now I will get going but I love you all very much, enjoy the week and the holiday season. CHAU!!!!

con amor, Élder Harper =)