E-mail dated 1/1/18

kamusta kamo?

Happy new year to all of you!! Its crazy to think 2017 is over. I am excited for 2018. 

I will start out by saying that it was so great to skype you guys last week. You all sound great and it was the highlight of my Christmas! I felt so much joy as i talked to you guys and now I am ready to share that joy with others and before you know it, it will be mothers day. It was great to hear that all the christmas traditions are still the same, it was very different for me, being the first christmas away from home, but it was great and I feel that this is where I am suppose to be. 

This weeks has been a little crazy so I will just tell you the best thing that happened to me. This week we recieved a referral and it turned out to be a great new investigator. She is a super nice grandma that has 3 of her grandchildern living with her. We taught her only one time this week, but wow the spirit was so strong and she has a lot of potential. During the lesson wejust got to know her so we could better teach her. She opened up to us and said that she is catholic, but she said that it doesn't feel like it helps her, she is still searching for the truth. We testified that this gospel can be a huge help in her life and we gave her a book of mormon. The spirit was so strong and some tears were shed, I can't wait to teach her again. This is a great work and I am blessed to be an instrument in the Lord's hands. 

1. Did you do anything to celebrate the new year?  Do people stay up until Midnight and bang pots and pans out on their front steps like we do hear?  for our new years eve pres cruz said we had to be in our apartment by 5pm for our safety. so we relaxed at the apartment and luckily our branch president delivered a lot of food to us. so the four of us had a nice feast and even had sparkling cider, it was a great meal. I feel like such an old man for this next part, we went to bed at the usual 10 and at 12 when everyone was outside blowin horns and yelling I wanted to yell hey im tryin to sleep, but i didn't. 
2. Are transfers coming soon?  Are your 12 weeks of training about done? So my training was done on the 17th of dec but i am still with Elder salamatin, so my trainer and follow up trainer are the same person. The next transfer day is jan 30. 
3. Did you witness any new Christmas traditions? Not really, Christmas is basically the same idea here, except there are a lot of neighborhood parties, instead of family stuff. 
4. How are your new converts doing?  Do you teach them at all after they are baptized? yes we have been teaching them a lot to help them remain active and help them resolve any concerns that they might have. Right now we are teaching jinelle toledo, who was not interested at firsr when we taught and baptized his mom and his siblings, but now he has been coming to church a lot and has a baptismal date for jan. 13.

Thank you all for the constant love and support you give me! I love you all and hope you have a great week! 

Elder Degen