Last Monday we went Nica and made a life sized doll. Every New Year's Eve it´s tradicion to made an old man (hombre viejo) and stuff it with no sé que and fireworks. So we made una misionera vieja

The ward missionaries are finally waking up.  The ward is waking up too. I feel good because we are working with members.

7 January 2013

Highlights... One of our investigators, Carlos Garay who is more than 70 years old preached to a bus with the help of our ward mission leader.  When he told us it was hilarious.  Our ward mission leader, Mauricio told him, " Don´t tell the hermanas, because I think that it´s against the protocol to preach in a bus."  y cabal.  As Carlos was telling us the story, Mauricio passes by... "buenas!"  And Carlos says, "ay hermano... ya les dije... ay disculpe."   hahahahaha.  The best part is that they both said they felt really good preaching in the bus. And Mauricio shared a little of the experience in Fast and Testimony meeting. 

Henry is going to church.  We had an awesome lesson with him.  

We made a misionera vieja ,,., ya les explico.  

Write me a note. 

Love you all.  Wow Andrew looks super different.  Thanks for forwarding Dale´s email. 

hna tew 

Hey family,

  Mom, thanks for the letter.  Hna Bunting was in the internet place with me and her mom wrote her that you all have been talking.  Yeah, we´re in the same district and we go to the same church building.  She´s a really good missionary.  Thanks for the update.  I hope all your medical checkup stuff ... goes well?  is exciting?  ends quickly?    Sounds like you all are excited to serve a mission.   Also I really liked the Christmas letter and pictures.  

    Dad, thanks for the letter.  Hope you are doing well.  Sounds like you are busy with work.  I hope everything goes well.  Only two months more as stake president.  Will I be the last missionary that you release?   That´s great that there are a lot of missionaries.  Tell everyone that applies congratulations for me.  It seems like it would be better to quit earlier than later even though there are a lot of projects.  I´m only going to have two months with you because school starts in April.  So it would be nice to have more time with you in the house.  Congratulations with weight loss. It sounds like you are doing great.  Felicidades! 

   Kevin, hope your classes are going well.  I hope you enjoy teaching and that you enjoy the people you work with.  Where is your office and where do you teach?  What are you teaching?   

   Cheryl, that´s exciting that you are quitting!  Yeah!  I hope you can find a house and that everything goes well in the move.  Thanks for the letter.  Tell Kevin to write me about his new job. 

    Kyle, hope you´re enjoying MBA school.  Sounds like fun.  

   Doug, hello. write me a note... 

   Dani, hello thanks for the letter. I am excited to get to know David. 

   Pablito lindo, hello.  Good luck with the surgery I´ll be think of and praying for you! :)

   So we had a good week.  The ward missionaries are finally waking up.  The ward is waking up too.  I feel good because we are working with members.  We are inviting ourselves to have a family home evening in their houses with their nonmember friends.  We had a really good one last night with the Blandón family.  They helped us teach the lesson (we gave them a pamphlet of the restoration and assigned them parts to teach).   It was spiritual, but it´s kind of weird to teach in such a big group.  We´ll have to practice a bit more.  But it went really well.  

   Last Monday we went Nica and made a life sized doll.  Every New Year's Eve it´s tradicion to made an old man (hombre viejo)  and stuff it with no sé que and fireworks.  So we made una misionera vieja with one of my blouses that has a hole and with a sleeveless shirt that we converted into a skirt.  She has a name tag that says Hermana 2012.  We made so many jokes it was ridiculous.  We joked around with our district leader too:  "Elder Batz, my companion refused to leave the house!  I had to leave her there alone and go work."  "Elder Batz, we´re in a threesome now."  "Elder Batz, my companion won´t get out of bed.  I think she´s pretending not to hear me."  We also took pictures of us planning together.  She has a planner, pencil, the area book and the cell phone.  Anyone, the tradition is to burn the hombre viejo, and we were about to do it. I even had the flame.  But I just looked at hna de Leon and told her.  es que... me da pesar quemarla.  And she said that she felt the same.  So we decided to leave her there for a while longer. We´ll probably burn her on my last night.  Is that an apostate tradition?  

   Henry is understanding more.  He wants an answer from the Bible.  We kind of macheted him with some Moroni 7 and told him to have faith.  but we are excited that he is going to church and is reading from his Book of Mormon.  I hope he can keep progressing.  

  We are trying to reactivate recent converts because the retention is terrible.  They get baptized and go inactive.  But things will get better.

Love you all, 

hna tew