"It Really Strengthened My Testimony..."

Email received on December 17, 2012.

He hasn't received his Christmas package.

I REALLY hope it gets there by Christmas! 

HEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Everything's pretty good here!!!!!!!!!! I'm getting pretty excited about changes!!!!!!!!!!! I love this area a lot but it will be good to have a change.  It was kind of sad in church yesterday. First of all we had none of our investigators show up which was SUPER frustrating...We're probably not going to have any baptisms this change even though we had a TON of really good investigators at the beginning of the change. But it's alright. But anyways, at church they had all the missionaries go up and bare our testimonies and then Elder De Jesus (Elder Barrie's companion) gave a talk. But anyways it was kind of sad saying bye to everyone because I've been here for 4 months but it was pretty cool because everyone came up to me afterwards and told me how impressed they were with how much my spanish has improved since I first got there. So that was good to hear!!!!!!! But yeah there were 2 families that it was pretty hard to say goodbye to. The Torrentes and the Rios. But it was cool I'll come visit them before I leave Panama. 

It was SUPER cool last week for P-day!!!!! We went to the temple!!!!!!!!! It was SUPER good because like I've been telling you this change has been really stressful and frustrating and it was REALLY GOOD to be able to go to the temple and feel the spirit in the temple. And It was REALLY cool because Panama is RIDICULOUSLY noisy and spastic (sorry that's the only word I can think of to describe it) and it was SUPER cool to sit in the Celestial room and just feel completely at peace and recieve some personal revelation and just feel the spirit. I honestly didn't want to leave the peace and then go into the craziness of Panama. It really strengthened my testimony about how the temple really is the closest place to heaven you can get to while still being on this earth. And how I really took advantage of having a temple so close to me in Provo. And now that there's going to be 2 it's going to be even easier. For example we had to get up at 4 am to get to the 8 am session. And we were talking to hermana caballero (a lady in our ward) and she was saying that before the panama and guatamalen temple were built they used to have to take a bus to Arizona to go to the temple. Pretty nuts right?!?!?!?!?! But yeah it was SUPER good to go to the temple!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyways another thing that's been kind of crazy is we've been living without power for about 2 weeks now. Ha ha it's a LONG story but something about how they're switching the owners of the house and the bill is all messed up but anyways we haven't had power for 2 weeks. But the owner of the house who lives next to us gave us a cord from his house that we plugged a power strip and a ton of extention cords into and he gave us one light. So we have at least one light and we have everything we need plugged in plugged in. But it's pretty funny!!!! I'll upload a picture of it. It's pretty ridiculous!!!!!! Ha ha also, we have a cat that pretty much lives in our house now. We always come home and he's just sitting there and I'm pretty sure he sleeps in our house too. Anyways, we named him paul.

Anyways, I still don't know what the deal is about christmas. I'm not sure if I'm going to call or if I'm going to skype yet. President ward said that if I'm with a comp that can't skype then he wants us to just call so we don't make our comps feel bad but I don't know who my  new comp is going to be yet so I'll let you know as soon as I know!!!!!  But anyways I'm getting SUPER excited about it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Anyways, I'll let you know as soon as I can!!!!!!!! I love and miss you guys SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!