December 26

The letter did find me well. I dont really know exactly what that means but yeah. It was so good to talk to everyone yesterday afternoon! I loved to see what everyone got even though I cant believe marly got an iPhone!!! That is still trippin me out. I am super excited to see how far technology will be when I get home. My christmas here was good, but interesting. It was definitely nothing like a christmas at home.

Christmas here starts on the 24th and the people stay up till midnight and celebrate christmas like the minute it starts. Almost like the new year. They eat dinner as a family at around 11pm and then they do fireworks (SO MANY FIREWORKS) at midnight and then they eat pan dulce (sweet bread) and stuff. Its interesting to celebrate it a different way. So we got invited to go to a recent converts house for dinner on the 24th and they wanted to help us have a good christmas since we were away from our families. So we went over there at like 730 pm and at dinner. But since they dont eat till like 11 they just served us food and watched us eat. It was awkward and they would ask us if it was good after almost every bite. The food was pretty good though. Even if it was a bit wierd. The people here dont really eat vegetables at all. On almost every plate of food you get from a native it has lots of green pepper and onion though. So its still good. So after we ate at that house, we went to our 2nd dinner appointment with the Bishop at around 9. At his house he had his whole family and then the stake president and his family with them too. And they had so much food! They had turkey that they made just for the elders. They dont like it too much but they knew that americans liked it. Then they had barbacoa and some other type of beef steak meat that was really good. A really common side dish here in Paraguay is called Sopa Paraguaya and almost everyone has it with every meal. The closest thing i can relate it to is Corn Bread but it isnt sweet and it has onions and queso paraguayo in it and I am not a big fan of it. But i eat it because it would be rude not to. So we ate with the bishop and his family and they had the best Guarana soda that i have ever had here! I didnt know what guarana was before i came to paraguay but if you find it there in america, try it! I loooooooooove it. And they had the chuchi pepsi brand. Pepsi just got brought back to Paraguay, but they dont have diet (sorry mom). 

So then after we ate there it was past 930 and we had to run home on a full stomach of 2 dinners and it was tough haha. But then Sunday morning we woke up and had a baptism! It was pretty cool to have a baptism on Christmas day. What better gift can you give to the Lord? So after that we had our 1 hour of sacrament meeting and then us elders (4 of us live in the same ward) made a christmas meal for ourselves at the other elders house because it is bigger. We made Spaghetti, Garlic Bread, Fruit Salad (paraguay style), peach cobbler and we went big and bought real sprite. Real sprite is pretty chuchi around here. But it was worth it. The whole meal came out to around 68,000 guarani. Which in American dollars is like 18 dollars hahahaha. Split between 4 people it was a pretty good meal for not too much money. We get 750,000 guarani per month for food and such. 

So that was my Christmas and it wasnt like normal but we made it fun. I hope everyone else had a great christmas and tell Derek I said happy birthday! 

Les Quiero!!!!

Vance

Christmas Day Baptism

Christmas gift to themselves, a trip to McDonalds

Must have been a rainy day