WEEK #72 Merry Christmas!

Well I hope you all have been having a wonderful holiday season and that you have been enjoying the company of each other and the Love that's in the air.  I hope your all enjoying the mountain of snow that's been falling and been having fun in it!  For me there's no better time than the Holiday Seasons and more than anything I just love how people just seem to be more friendly and filled with the spirit of Christmas!  One cool thing about the word Christmas that I saw this year and that Ive heard before but had long forgotten is that you can seperate the word Christ and Mas the word mas in Spanish means more so what we are really kind of saying is More Christ and with more Christ in our lives I think that's exactly why we tend to be happier around this time of the year!  As we are serving and helping others around us and doing what Christ would do if he were here, we will have his spirit more with us and because Christ is a jolly, happy person when we have his spirit we too will feel the same!  So I hope you all can take time to give a helping hand even if its the littlest thing and that you can take President Monson's invitation to just take a couple silent moments to think about the Savior and his birth and just to feel of his warmth.

This last week was pretty crazy to be honest and we found lots of cool new people.  Had some good progress with a couple of our investigators and it was a good week for sure!!  Hard to remember exactly what happened.  Funny thing is that we had about 10 people that were telling us without a doubt they would be coming to church this Sunday and everyone of them had an excuse the day of.  So kind of a bummer there but just glad to have been able to find some pretty cool people this week including 1 girl that is just sooo ready!!  She basically baptism challenged herself at the end of the lesson and got choked up crying feeling the spirit as we were watching the Christmas videos.  I really hope she and the others will be able to progress.  Just kind of hard with Christmas and everyone leaving to their Villiage in the south from where they are from.  Almost all of Choloma is from a Village from the South and they all leave to go there for Christmas to spend it with their family!  So hopefully everything will turn out great when they all get back!  

I'm pretty excited about all the food we are going to be eating this week!!  We'll see if we can beat the Tamale record from last year when we ended up getting like 30 tamales in total!  My stomach is finally ready for some more but it took me like a year to be craving these things again!!  Went a little overload last year!!  But will see what new food we get to try this year!!

This Sunday was my comps birthday and we surprised him for sure!!  Ended up throwing like 3 surprise parties in the end!! 2 on Sunday and 1 on Monday and he had no idea!!  For my Birthday here in the mish I got one cake a couple days after my Birthday and he got 3!!  Made sure to spoil him with the members for his Birthday!  It was a memorable one for sure!!  He was super happy and felt so special.  Soo that was pretty cool!! Ill make sure to send some pics next week!

Soo ya!  Hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and that you can think about Christ more and reach out to others in small acts of kindness!  I sure love every single one of you and miss you all tons!!  Gonna enjoy my last Christmas here in Honduras in the 90ish degree weather, (its been super hot lately) and for me I'm just grateful to be a missionary serving the Lord and helping others the best I can!  I'm grateful to be closer to Christ than I ever have and to feel of his warmth and love for me.  I've felt great joy in being able to serve others this Christmas and helping to give people a Christmas that they've never had!  I know that God lives.  I know that he loves us.  I know that because of his love for us he sent his son about 2000 years ago to the earth to save us and redeem us and to make us more than we can be by ourselves.  The baby that was born in Bethlehem changed the world for forever and offers us all hope and a new life.  I know that Christ lives and that he directs this church today through his prophet.  May we all strive to put Christ in the center of our lives and strive to be more like him every day!!

I love you all soo much!  Merry Christmas!!

Love Elder Haden