Feliz Ano Nuevo sent Jan. 3, 2011

I hope everyone had a Happy New Year! We sure did. The Des Moines Zone went to the Jergensens (Mission President) to play games and it was really fun. We were allowed to stay up til 12 but we still has to wake up at 6:30, so we decided to not do that. I've got the rest of my life to stay up til midnight, for crying out loud I need my sleep!

Our weather has been really crazy here too but it's been a great blessing. On Thursday we only could use 8 miles on the car so we had to walk and use bikes to whole day...but oh it was such a beautiful day at 53 degrees. Since all the snow had melted, it was super muddy so by the end of the day, WE were really muddy. We were so glad we had our boots! We reached the New Year and have lots of miles now and the weather is TERRIBLE. Lots of wind and it makes it a million times worse, but it's okay because we're safe in the warmth of our car.

We've been teaching the COOLEST people!!! I think I told the story about how we were singing Christmas Eve and somebody came out to listen...well that somebody was Raul and he's soaking up everything we're teaching him. His dad passed away 6 months ago and he's still really sad about it. We taught him the Plan of Salvationa and the Spirit was definately strong there. We gave him an assignment and when we came back the next day he had read Alma 40 and up to Nephi 7. We're also teaching Maria and I think I've talked about here too. We found her in a random way but I know it wasn't by accident. We watched the Restoration movie with her and when we testified afterwards the Spirit was so strong again. It's so awesome, it makes me so happy just thinking about it. We are still teaching Gladis and Eder, and Eder started reading in the Book of Mormon and even bought highlighters so that he could mark the stuff that he likes. He also told us they would come to church...but we were sadly disappointed. We thought they would because church changed to 1 so they would be off work. I really felt like crying and Magdalena, a less active who said she would start coming back in the New Year...didn't come either. So many disappointments but I've learned that if there were no bad, there could be no good and we wouldn't realize how great things are if we didn't ever feel bad. So we're just gonna keep working hard to find the people who are looking for the truth.
Love
Hermana Hepworth