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