It Isn't Snowing Here, But We'll Have A White Christmas!!!

Merry Christmas Everyone!  I haven't posted in a week or two.  Sorry!  I have been an emotional Mom...I miss these children of mine so very much and I so want the very best for them now and when they come home...so hard to be patient, but I will keep trying.  Best Christmas present ever was talking to these two and spending time with our Jared. I am going to make one more Mom plea before I post letters and pictures.  Please keep Christopher and Isabella in your prayers.  For many reasons, they are both coming to the end of their missions, they are grieving the ending and anticipating the future with many concerns also we just learned that the Peace Corps has pulled out of Honduras due to increased violence in the country.  Truth be known, Chris and Isabel have sacrificed a great deal in their lives to serve the Lord including their physical well being.  However, I know that they are safe because they are in the Lord's hands and he has and will continue to protect them, but our asking never hurts!  Happy New Year to each of you and my the Lord continue to bless each of you in the the new year!

Christopher's Letters and Pictures

Buenas!

So, we had a baptism this week! Oh... And we had emergency changes. Oh... And I´m training again. And he had his first baptism! Yeah! I´m having lots of fun. The 31st we are going to baptize a family of seven! And this week we are going to try to baptize a family of two! Yeah! Or at least that´s our plan.

 

My companion is Elder Castro, from Honduras, a missionary who received his call to serve in Mexico; however, he has yet to finalize the papers to leave Honduras. So, in two weeks and a half, he will Be in Mexico. And I will have a new companion again. Now I´ve had companions from Guatemala, From El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua. I only need to have two companions, one from Panama and one from Costa Rica to complete the Central American puzzle... of companions.

Today we cleaned the house in the morning and it´s really, really clean. And my clothes are soaking in laundry soap to wash them by hand. And... yeah. My life is a lot more calm.

Thank you for the money! This mission costs a lot more than $400 a month, right? Right. I don´t
think I´ll be able to pay you back $10,000, with... $5,000 extra that you have spent on me. I could
have gone to school with that amount of money. This is a lot like school, but better.

I don´t really know what to say, today... I am happy. I miss you all. I miss Isabel. But I don´t really feel it much. I haven´t forgotten about you. The Lord blesses us a lot in that aspect. We miss you, but we don´t literally feel it. 

I love you! Merry Christmas!

Today's Letter

I don´t know what to say. I wish that I would have listened more than talked on the phone.
But I love you all so much. I feel far away from you all. I know that you love me. This
Christmas has been quite beautiful. Gustavo is going to get baptized and the life of him
and his family will never be the same. In one year, they´ll be able to go to the temple.
And that makes me happy. I define happiness differently than I used to.

We had emergency changes again. My compaion Elder Castro went to Mexico today,
My new companion is FROM Mexico, Elder Juarez. He´s 23 and I like him. We get a long well at least for
now. Now I have from Mexico to Nicaragua (without Belize). Haha. I haven´t received
my packages yet. The sad thing is that my companion doesn´t know how to make mexican
food! He told me lots about the food there, and he doesn´t know how to make it. Haha.

I will send you pictues of the baptism next week. Send me pictures of the baptism of Troy.
It makes me so happy that you are having missionary experiences. I hope that you can
have more of them and that you might search for people for the missionaries to teach.
It is the only thing that will make us happier. Serving each other with charity and missionary work.

I´ll see you soon. Feliz año nuevo. We´ll see what 2012 has to say.

With love,
elder hill

Isabella's Letters and Pictures

sorry again im short on time we had three baptisms this weekend and i spent money sorry, on cake and xmas presents these kids are all alone and well i would have none of that, please call the 24 at 12 my time if thats okay! talk to you soon!
hna florido

Today's Letter

This Christmas was very fun we played white elephant, with the elders which really are like kids with name tags sometimes, and we went to the plaza and sang, these are pictures my comp took but the others of us singing and throwing cake at eachother are in my camera. i got to talk to everyone and i will admit that makes me responsible for talking on the phone like two hours when i was only supposed to use 40 min. hay y ahora? they cant send me home but i still feel some guilt... but not too much i spoke to natalie, it was so nice to talk to mom and see she is still the same and dad responded like he always does, jonathan was chill and cool and joeson talked about his job and the mish and made fun of how i talk now and janice about cake, chris about his testimony which was very special and about us, chris your spanish is great, david your spanish is way way good going to the spanish ward has helped. when we went to sucre to spend time together as missionaries with the president, we had to do a skit and i had the idea of being mini missionaries and having a christmas dinner and we could have certain roles like the dear john who received his letter, the teachers pet, the gringo who still was learning the language, the emotional sister and the indiferent sister with attitude and a rule keeper and it was really funny the president was laughing really hard and elder murphy who played the teachers pet who badly wanted to be assistent was told at the end by the president elder you will never move up, so funny and i was the emotional sister and the skit was about a dinner that we couldnt eat, pig! and we threw it out of the window but the window was closed, we had fun then we also saw the 17 miracles a great movie. watch it. take care

hna florido

 

Prayer Answered!

Christopher's Letter
I want you all to know that I love you a lot.

This has been a really hard week. We've had lots of succes this week. We had 8 investigadores in
the Sacrament Meeting, 3 families. But for me, it's been really hard. My companion and I have lots
of problems. I couldn't even begin to describe them. It's like living with someone that hates you,
which is tough. The good part is that God is rewarding us for our efforts. Tender mercies of the Lord.

I had a really special experience that I'd like to share with you. When I had just gotten to Country,
we had 0 investigators. Haha. Zero. When we had our first planning, we knelt down and I prayed
and I prayed for the Dominguez family. I didn't even know who they were, but we prayed for them
on a daily basis and asked everyone,"do you know where the Dominguez family lives?"

In that first week we received 3 to 5 references of families that we didn't know. One was called the Sambrano family.  We tried to visit them a few times, but we became busy with other families that were going to get baptized and so they were forgotten. In the last two weeks, we have been visiting with the Sambrano family finally. And here all families have two last names. This family is Sambrano Dominguez. I didn't know until now that I truly had received an answer to my prayers until this week. The wife of this family said, after having gone to church, "I will be honest with you... I have never liked any church before, but this one pleased me. I promise that you will have me in church again the next week."

I still don't know anything about the calls on Christmas. I would rather talk with you on the phone so
that we could talk with Isabel as well, but we'll see. I also haven't gotten my package, but that is okay.

Also, we are going to have another baptism to complete a family this week and we are going to a pueblo called Ojajona to marry them! Yay! So, if you want you can search for Ojajona, Honduras on Google and look at where we're going. It would be really excellent if you doposited money so that I could buy some things there for everyone. Sorry. I don't like asking for moeny. The money that you gave me went to paying bills.

I'm glad that Grandpa is better. Tell them I love them.
I love you all.
Chris

 

I so love and miss this boy!!!  No word from Isabel today.  I did hear that her family heard from her...so maybe next week!  Please pray for my kids!  That is what I want most for Christmas is for them to be Safe, Happy, Successful, and to Know that they are LOVED!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

Pancakes and Love!

Isabella's Letter

this pday we are going to the mine yay! its going to be pitch black and small. here in potosi they believe the mine has a god who they call el tio the uncle and its the devil they think he´s the owner of the mine. and so i will take pictures. this morning i woke up really early and went with my companion to make pancakes we were the heros of all the north American missionaries they turned out fantastic. because a sister was going home. sad. and we whipped cream and added canned strawberries. they were yummy. this week we worked so hard, this week was also week of transfers and i asked the president to keep my comp here and he agreed i am so glad. we get along very well and people sometimes think we are sisters and on mondays we clean the house and dance and laugh and our unity shows in our lessons and its so fun to just contact people on the street and give them correct principles to govern their lives and my comp has adopted many of the things i do very well and i have taken the things she does too. this week was a bit harsh, the bishop thinks the world of us and trusts us very much and i teach Sunday school for the teens and they laugh and cry and are ashamed at times and commit to read and share the gospel its truly edifying. what was harsh this week is that we met a great young man, alvaro who helped us teach his mother how to pray in quechua and accepted to be prepared to be baptized and then the next day wanted to avoid any contact with us it was very strange, then we had a young girl darla open up to us about the abuse in her house and then the next time her younger sister was sent by her mom to censor everything she said and then this same week we found that same little girl in the house of a witch in our area. very creepy. everytime we are to teach her something interrupts and chases the spirit away so we decided to read outloud the scriptures and to sing hymns and all that creepy stuff started to dissipate. and then the family we are working with asked for more time to be baptized. and we had no investigators in church this sunday. but! rocios father our recent convert who is less active had a nice sweater and took us in his taxi to church and was very easily persuaded to come in and the kids at the end just gave the best lesson, they began to say father you need to come every week now we loved having you there. that was very rewarding. and whats best is that we have the lord on our side and we just need more humility more obedience more faith and more prayer and eveything will turn out fine we found alvaros mom in the street and with the best hand gestures i told her i was sad alvaro didnt want to hear us anymore and she said she would talk to him. and her best friend is an old investigator of the elders and they speak quechua and spanish this wed im going to begin clases with them. whats nice about life is that its fixable everything has a solution and there is always tomorrow. and when there is no tomorrow then we are in heaven chilling and learning or repenting and Gods plan is that we progress. anyways take care

hna florido

 

Christopher's Letters

Love you!

 

Pictures from the last two weeks.  Weddings and Baptisms!

 

I want you to know that I love you.
This week has been a good week and a difficult week.
I cant say all of the reasons why. We have
had some really exciting experiences.

We have a new rule that we can
only write for 30 minutes, so I will
begin to write you by hand more
starting today. Sorry. Thats just
the way it is.

Right now, we dont have any information
if we can use skype.

I love you.
Elder Hill.

...

Te amo...