Merry Christmas to All!‏

Hello once again to all of my wonderful family and friends at this wonderful time of year! I'm still waiting for the snow to come here, but I guess my "White Christmas" will have to be satisfied through the baptismal font, if you know what I mean.

This week has been so so, but with a memorable trip that I won't ever forget. We had our Zone Conference this Thursday, so we got up at the butt crack of dawn, about 4 a.m. to catch the first bus from here to Tegucigalpa. It was a Multi-Zone Conference with all of the pueblos with a special Christmas theme. It was really awesome because I got to see every single companion I have had in the mission so far and talk to them about converts and all of that, plus like 6 of the gringos from my district in the MTC! All of the zones performed a drama in front of everybody to get in the Christmas spirit, and we performed the Tree of Life story in 1 Nephi 8 with a Christmas twist to it. I must say it was terrible, but hey what can you expect from the district MOST farthest from Tegucigalpa, and since all of the areas around here are really far from each other, we only had the opportunity to practice 1 time for about 15 minutes. But hey it turned out alright I guess.

Afterwords we enjoyed a great meal, and Christmas message from Pres. Flores. It ended at about 4:30, and the last bus that comes out here left at 5, so we tried to book it to the bus station but there wasn't a single taxi that wanted to take us over there. So we luckily ran in to Pres. Flores and Hma. Flores driving out and we asked him for a ride, so all 13 of us jumped in his van, with me laying on top of about 5 elders, it was very uncomfortable. OH! and by the way I was carrying about 5 packages with me too! THANK YOU SO MUCH EVERYONE! All of my presents are just absolutely amazing! I'm overjoyed and extremely thankful to all of you. I definitely received by far the most in the entire conference. The only bad part about it was getting all of that stuff back to the house, yikes. But yeah anyways, we had everyone in the car, and didn't make the bus. So that night we ended up going to stay in the house of the Assistants, along with almost the entire conference! HAHA! About 35 of the Elders all missed their buses, so with about 8 beds and 2 couches we tried to fit everyone there that night, without clothes or anything to change into, eat, or any of that. It was quite the hilarious experience. So the next day we woke up about 4 a.m. AGAIN to catch an early bus outta there. We finally arrived in Juticalpa about 11:30 Friday afternoon. Whew what a time that was.

Other than that, the rest of the week has been work work work. It is quite difficult here in Juticalpa, because there is the rule in the mission that you can't enter the house of women when they are by themselves without a man above 18 years old. And since men do not exist here in Juticalpa, because they are either in the US, Tegucigalpa, or the mountains working all day. So...we have quite a bit of trouble getting a lot of lessons in, but were doing the best we can. With all of your prayers, I know I can find a family around here where the dad is around or at least wants to listen. We did find a family where about 23 people live in the house. So who knows, everyone pray for that and we might see a baptism of 20 plus!

This last Sunday we had the Christmas program at church, and it was all singing. The branch president selected a few families to sing for the program, and of course he wanted us too. So I played the piano while we sang ¨Cantan Santos Angeles¨ (umm... oh Angels We Have Heard on High...haha that's what it is in English). It turned out alright, but now my piano playing skills have been revealed to everyone here, so consequently I am playing the piano for the Branch Christmas Dinner on Tuesday, with no time to practice anything. We´ll see how that goes.

Anyways, that's all I've got for you guys this week. I'm looking forward to talking to a few of you guys this Friday! Until then! Vaya Pues! Take care of yourselves!

Elder Tinkham