December 21, 2009

Hello,

I can’t believe Christmas is coming so soon. I will be calling around 1 I think but I can’t be on the phone forever so everyone’s got to be there. I want to talk to everyone and don’t want to wait for a long time. Lots of missionaries will talk for hours but we're supposed to keep it reasonable so if you can try to get everyone there at one time at least by 1:30 .Well this week has been fast, It flew right by. I honestly don’t even know what I did. Our baptismal commit Gomez didn’t go through. He was doing so well and then got all sketchy. We just had a weird feeling about him. We went over to check up on him and he had been smoking. He told us how he stopped smoking after the word of wisdom lesson but started up again due to many problems he is facing. His autistic kid in Puerto Rico is in the hospital and he has no job and no money. He can’t go back or the gangs will kill him. He’s thinking about suicide and is really depressed so he turned to smoking again; It’s terrible. We tried to help him, gave him a blessing, and did all we could. He wants to get baptized so badly but is struggling right now. It’s frustrating but its life I guess. We had the ward Christmas party on Friday, it was so cool. We had a few investigators there and they loved it. We had a huge dinner like always with Hispanics, and then the primary kids acted out the nativity scene. After that Santa came. Yeah no joke he came to our wards activity crazy huh? He had 2 snowman helpers instead of elves and they gave wrapped gifts to all the children there. Even the ones that never come to church, only the activities. I hate that by the way. There are always so many people at the activities that are never seen at church. Its only cause there's free food. So I’m pretty sure you’ve all heard about the snow here in the east. Oh boy it’s been fun to do missionary work in. Saturday it snowed all day. We got about 2 feet by Sunday morning. I got a call at 1130 Friday night from a counselor in the bishopric saying church was cancelled. Isn’t that weird? First time in my life I didn’t go to church and I wasn’t sick. It was so weird though, just another day doing missionary work. We were able to visit lots of people so it was really nice. It has been so cold and my feet have been wet for the past couple days but I’m too lazy to carry boots around and I don’t think snow storms are too frequent. It’s not bad after a couple days; most of it starts to melt. I got your package this week. The office elders drove it over to me thankfully. But thanks so much for all the gifts. I loved them; I couldn’t wait to open them. Just kidding, I haven’t opened any yet; I’m waiting till Christmas so I have something to open. We have a mission conference this Thursday which will be fun. Friday I have no idea what to do. It’ll definitely be a weird day but its ok life goes on. It’s the only holiday that I haven’t been gone for, besides new years.I’m kinda bummed out I don’t get to go snowmobiling though. I hate being in the snow now all day and not snowboarding or snowmobiling. It’s hard, but this is the last winter. I got everyone’s Christmas cards this week. Thanks so much everyone. Its nice getting mail again ha-ha. Everything is going well with the work. We're still working hard and trying to get a few of our good investigators to make the leap towards baptism. There are a couple really close ones. It stinks we didn’t have church cuz a couple investigators that needed to come were going to but its ok there’s always this week. Even though Christmas will be different not being home and all but I know I’m doing what needs to be done.I’m celebrating the real meaning of Christmas sharing the story of Christ's birth.

I love you all and hope you have a great Christmas.

Elder Breinholt