7 More Weeks in Villa Cuahutemoc!

Hey mom!

So I will be in my area for this next cambio and I will be able to finish training Elder Lopez! I am super excited but after this I think I will be super ready for a change haha. I love it here and all but after a while you have been to the same houses and walked to same streets and talked to the same taxi drivers a bit too much. This past transfer was only 5 weeks and the coming one is 7 for Christmas. The church doesn't like transfers very close to christmas. So I will be here till February 2nd. I am hoping I will be here for the baptisms of Karen and Naydalin, more members of the Ponce family. We don't have anyone here in our area that is close to baptism, but we are hoping to find a family this transfer. I really hope Elder Lopez can have baptisms in his first area. It helps you love an area so much more but it is very hard right now in the area because we don't have much member support and everybody is working more because of Christmas. They say the work is always a lot harder in December because everyone works more.

This week was pretty good. We worked hard and got some good results! We are finding new investigators but also having to drop some that don't progress. We are focusing a lot on less actives because there are TONS! We taught 21 less actives this week. Unfortunately we are hearing lots of stories about passed elders who... didn't treat the area very well. They were lazy and disobedient and now the members that they visited are used to the missionaries just coming to chat and mess around and not to help them come back to the church and it is just very hard. There is such a lack of true conversion here and it is so hard because as missionaries we can only do so much, the rest is up to the agency of the people and they just don't make very good choices.

I am almost positive we will be able to Skype on christmas. I will call you guys as close to 1 as I can but just always have the computer ready haha. If I cant Skype, I will call you from one of the ward phones on your cell because its the only one I remember.

I am glad you liked our pictures this week haha :) we had fun decorating the ironing board but we had to take it down to... well, iron. I was thinking about buying a few things for Christmas presents for my converts from the lds.org store. I will put it on the southwest card and an extra english hymn book to share with my companions. They like learning the EFY songs better haha so I usually write out the lyrics and teach them how to pronounce it and its fun.

I am glad that Amanda is still doing so great! The best part of being a missionary is seeing how the gospel changes peoples lives, and you don't even have to be an ordained missionary to do that!
I am so proud of James and the rest of our missionaries leaving from our ward James will be a great missionary.
On the 24th we have a Christmas devotional with the other stakes here close in Tampico (I will get to see Elder Flores again :)) and on the 25th we are together with our zone and we get to play sports for a day! Next Monday is NOT P Day because the 25th will be P Day so don't expect a letter. Haha but you get something better so don't worry.
Thanks for all the pictures and the updates! Love you lots!
Elder Skalla