¡Hola mi familia y mis amigos!
¡Feliz año nuevo a todos! Thanks for sending me pictures of your San Francisco trip, it looked like you had a ton of fun! I think its really great that the family could have had a trip with the daughters only, I bet it was at least a little different than the others we've had! I'm glad you traveled to San Francisco, because I don't think I missed out on as much as if you had gone to a different place, like Cancun or something, because San Francisco is so similar to Viña del Mar.
For the New Years celebration in Viña del Mar, they have this gigantic firework show every year where they shoot off fireworks all the way from the bottom tip of Valparaíso up and around the bay to Quintero. They also shoot off fireworks from ships that are anchored in the bay. It's a show that lasts for 25 minutes of pure colors, and they have different fireworks every year!
My new years party here was pretty fun! We ended up going to Elsa and Gabriel's house and helping them cook dinner, which was a good old-fashioned Chilean barbeque feast, chock full of meat. We had a fun time with them as we waited for the new year to begin, and then we walked outside of their block to watch what fireworks we were able to see from where they live in the hills. Unfortunately, from where they live we could only barely see the fireworks that got shot off from the very bottom tip of Valparaíso, but they were still very pretty and it was fun to be in good company. We had plans to go with a family of members to the lookout spot over Recreo where you can see the entire bay from Valparaíso to Quintero in order to see the entire firework show, but Elder Diaz saw the fireworks last year and didn't want to go, so we decided to spend it with Elsa and Gabriel instead.
It was pretty comical to see all the drunken Chileans the next day, some sleeping on the sides of the street, some wandering through bushes and whatnot. We had church at 10 for one hour only, and only 40 people showed up, but of those 40, 5 were investigators! This family of 3 that we found a couple weeks ago is so cool, I love them so much. They, Paula and Marcos and their 10-year-old genius for a kid Lucas, committed to coming to church the past 2 Sundays and said that no matter what they were going to come, but ended up not showing up. Then, the Sunday when they told us they weren't going to be able to come, they showed up out of nowhere and surprised us twice as much, it being New Years Day when not even the members showed up. It was very exciting to see them there, and they absolutely loved it and want to keep coming, and are excited to come on Sundays when we have the full 3 hours.
So the big news for the next 6 week transfer: I'm staying in Nueva Aurora with Elder Diaz!! That means that I will have spent 4 changes in my first area, which I am totally stoked about! Believe me, there is still so much that I want to do here and I'm so excited to keep helping the work progress here were I have seen so much already. It also means that I am the first of Elder Diaz's 14 companions that he has had for more than 1 transfer!
There are 7 companionships in our zone, Viña del Mar Oeste, and of those 14 missionaries, only 2 are leaving! One of our zone leaders, Elder Wall, finished his mission and went home to Walla Walla, Washington, and one of the sister missionaries is getting transferred. That means we will virtually have the same zone for this transfer that we had for the last!
I opened up the precious Peanut Butter M&M's last week so that I could share with Elder Diaz just in case I had to leave for this next transfer, and I gave him a handful, but he didn't even like them!!! I was completely shocked, and I still think he's lying! After that I hid them away so that I'm not tempted to eat them up too fast! Someday I think I'll have to visit chocolate heaven in San Francisco, too...
I made new year's resolutions and it is fun to ask other people what they have in mind for their next year, too. In my contacts on the street, I have been asking people about what they want to do differently this next year and then applying it to baptism or the restored gospel, and I think we've found some pretty good people that way. I heard a funny response from this one guy that I asked; he said his new year's resolution was to move to the United States so that he could find a beautiful white American woman to marry, so I told him to move to Utah where he can find all the gorgeous Mormon women who are looking to get married!! Haha, I love you all!
Love, Elder Kimball
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