Feliz Navidad

Querido familia,
Estamos muy animados por la navidad esta semana. Vamos a comer en la casa de una familia española que tenemos en nuestro barrio. Espero que ellos cocinen un montón de comida para nosotros.
How is Canada! It sounds freezing. It´s been pretty cold here the past couple of days, but it´s not as bad as -5 degrees farenheit! That´s crazy. My nice spanish jacket is keeping me very warm, and so is the scarf I have. The cold makes it hard to make contacts in the street, because the people don´t really want to stop! It´s okay though, the work will go on! So this past week I bought a pair of sweatpants in the mall here, and they are probably the best. I think being on the mission has made me appreciate things so much more. When we get home at night and it´s been a cold day in the street, I just love putting on sweatpants. The mission has made the small things about life so much more enjoyable. Who would have thought that sweatpants could make a 20 year old boy so happy. The mission really is the greatest. You learn so much and it´s just great. I also bought this ball for 95 centimos, and you can bounce it and it doesn´t make a loud noise. Remember mom when you used to get so mad about me bouncing a ball in the house? This ball is perfect, and I´m always bouncing it in piso. Fun stuff. Well enough about the worldly stuff, now to the stuff that really matters!
This past week we had a lot of people stand us up. We have been meeting with this guy named Nixon, and he continues to progress. We found out that he is married to someone else, and so is the woman he is living with, so in order for them to be baptized, they both need to get divorced from their separate partners, and they both need to get married. That just sounds complicated in words, and actually doing it is pretty much impossible, especially when you aren´t EXACTLY legally allowed to be living in Spain. We are still teaching them, but they have really complicated their lives. They love the reading, and Nixon is getting a lot better with his anger problems. Putting off the natural man and all. His little daughter, who is 3, was so sick the other night, and had a really bad fever, and so we gave her a priesthood blessing. What a blessing it is to have the "Sacerdocio del Melquisedec." That´s way too hard to spell in English! My English skills are slowly degenerating! But really, it´s such a blessing to have priesthood blessings. We gave quite a few this week, and it´s always such a blessing. The priesthood is really there for us to serve our fellow beings.
So another woman that we are teaching is this woman Wanda. She is letting a few members of our ward, Maikel and Jenny live with them. Maikel and Jenny are Dominicanos, and so is Wanda, and boy do I love Dominicanos. They have just another way of living. Maikel told me that it´s in Dominicanos blood to just LOVE women and to LOVE alcohol. He said it was so hard for him to put that stuff off, but once he did, he felt absolutely liberated. And now he has the blessings of it, because he has a beautiful wife and two absolutely adorable children. Maikel is probably my hero, and I will definitely visit him in La Republica Dominicana later on in life. This woman Wanda just had a baby with a man that has 3 other children with 3 other women. It´s a crazy world that we live in. She didn´t do her reading for two visits in a row, and we were kind of strong with her and told her that she needed to do her reading. We told her to read 3 Nephi 11 and imagine herself there. We came back the next time, and she LOVED it. She learned so much and she loved it. She could probably be baptized, but she is not married, and that´s a huge problem. We´re going to continue working with her.
This past week, we did a lot of eating. We had this dish from Ecuador called Encebollada twice, and boy is it so good. It´s a soup with onion and tuna, and it is incredible. José Antonio Luque also told me that he got dad´s email a while ago, and it was Italian or something. Made me laugh. The members are all so good here. Speaking of members, we had our ward party this past week, and it was an absolute blast. If there is time, I´ll put on a picture. All the different auxiliaries did skits and things, and we did a skit, and it was the day in the life of a missionary. We did it with music in Spanish that all the young people here gave us. It was really good. We did waking up, excercising, getting ready, proselyting and getting rejected, falling asleep during studies, fights with the spanish youth, hard moments on the mission (getting transfered, getting stood up, gettting a dear john) and then we did success. It was a hit, and everyone loved it. I have a video of it, but it´s 7 minutes long, so I guess in 2012 I´ll have to show it to you. It was really good, and all the members and non members loved it. We had a blast doing it, and it really made us realize all the different aspects of missonary work, and how it all comes together. All of these different experiences are going to help us later on in life. It´s wonderful.
It´s wonderful being able to serve the Lord in this time of year. Ít´s a special feeling, and some elders get homesick, but we´re all in this together. This week in our lessons we´re really going to focus on Jesus Christ, and exactly what our message to the world is. Our message to the world is not that we´re just a different church with a good message, but we´re the church that Christ recognizes on the earth. Jeffrery R Holland said that in order for people to have a conversion experience, we have to get people to the Sacred Grove first, but ultimately to Gethsemane and Calvary. What Christ did for us is incredible. I know that He suffered for us, He suffered for everyone. Everyone we see, He knows and loves. Everyone knew Christ in the premortal life. Everyone will know Him after. I love that assurance. He´s our Savior, and it´s a joy and a privilege to serve Him. Thanks for that story about the ant dad. Sometimes, I´m not going to lie, I ask myself why we have to be in the street when it´s frigid cold outside, and no one wants to talk to us, and we can´t get in anywhere to teach, and we could probably be back in our apartment, where it´s not too warm but a little warmer, and we could be eating hot chocolate and studying the Book of Mormon. It´s because Heavenly Father wants us to be out in the street, He wants us to do all we can to find the people that will accept our message, and come unto Christ, and be perfected in Him. It´s not easy, not one bit, but it´s so enjoyable, and I´m so thankful for the opportunity I have to serve a mission.
Merry Christmas to the family and to everyone!
Love,
Elder Pericle
P.s. The other day, I went on intercambios with my Dominican friend Miakel, and I met his friend named Spanky, who used to be a boxer and train boxers, and we talked for 2 hours about working out, and he reminded me of Nonno, except he was black and from Africa and only spoke Spanish. He got me on the floor working out and doing push ups and stretching a ton. This morning, Elder Hansen and I went to the park at 7 in the morning, and were the only ones there, and we ran stairs and did pushups and curls, and I thought I was going to throw up. We decided that if our bodies are our temples, we´re going to make them nice temples. It was a great way to start out the preparation day today. It reminded me of the old days, working out with Brett and Will and all my boys at the local YMCA. Tell them I miss them and think about them often!