Thoughts from Sister Hall

Guess who finished her first transfer! Hermana Hall, that´s who!

Monday we went to Central Santa Cruz to send Christmas packages to our
family! And... It was crazy. Allow me to explain. The addresses here
aren´t very exact, and that´s why if you want to send me a letter, you
have to send it to the mission home. And the only place I can send
letters from is Central Santa Cruz... So chances are, it´s going to be
mostly emails from me my whole mission...

But Central Santa Cruz is beautiful! Well... all of Santa Cruz is
beautiful, of course. But Central Santa Cruz has this huge plaza with
a big cathedral and they have Christmas lights up and just... so
pretty.

THEN CAMBIOS (transfers) HAPPENED.

Cambios work like this: Every night at 9 o´clock we have planning for
a half-hour. During this time we aren´t allowed to call other
missionaries, because they´re also planning. After that half-hour we
often receive calls from our sister leaders, our district leaders call
us in order for us to report our numbers, etc...

The week of cambios on Tuesday night we get a call from our district
leader to tell us where we´re going and then on Wednesday in the
morning, if you changed your area, you leave!

Anyway, most stressful planning ever as we´re waiting for 9:30 and
staring at the phone, praying we both stay and can have Christmas
together....

BUT we stayed together! Hermana Mejia is going to finish training me
and we´re going to have Christmas together! After we found out we were
staying together we pretty much just hugged and yelled "NAVIDAD!" like
20 times.

We´re not excited or anything.

Also, funny story... On Saturday we were eating with our pensionista
(Hermana Yulie) and she told me "I gave you a little piece of meat,
you´ll have to let me know if you like it."
Me: "Ooh, what is it?
Hermana Yulie: "Meat."

Later....

Yulie: "Do you like the meat?"
Me: "Yeah, it´s really good!"
Yulie´s Mother-in-law: "It´s tongue."
Yulie: "It´s ´meat.´"

Cool.

The rest of the week wasn´t anything crazy. Getting excited for
Navidad, working with Visiting Teachers and Relief Society, telling
people about the Plan of Salvation in Spanish... Ya know. Living in
Bolivia and whatnot.

I love you all and I hope your week is fantastic!