Wow it's good to be in Chile!

Well first of all i think you all want to know about the birthday so i will talk about this first! after much anticipation the morning of December 6th finally came! and yes it was like Christmas morning and i woke up at 6:30! i just kind of sat around with a smile on my face then i rememberd i had a package from Allie and opened that! then i mad some pankakes for the other missionaries and myself! then i studied! then for lunch we went to the Bishops house and he had a Lasagna that was SOOOOO good! and a really good cake! then we went and worked it was kind of a bummer because a lot of our visits fell through, but we still talked to lots of people and worked really hard! All in All it was a great day doing what i Love to do!!! Work!!!

       second there is an elder in my zone! in fact he is one of the the Zone leaders! and he lives in Dalton's mission and this week he leaves for home so he is going to bring a letter to dalton for me this week im really excited about that! he was always such a good example to me and a great leader! 

       This week i got asked to prepare two musical numbers for our ward Christmas activity. that means two weeks to do two special numbers! 

       We have a family in the ward with the name of Salgado. they are going through a SUPER hard time right now. the dad of the family is in the hospital with cancer... and the rest of the family is doing everything they can to stay postive! almost all of them are members but the two youngest that are 14 and 15 are not. so right now we are teaching those two and trying to get them ready for baptism. but the family is giving up on the church and it is so sad to see them let go of the only hope they have for happiness in a time like this. the more they let go the more sadness we see in their lives and the more problems they feel. We are doing everything we can to help them come back to Christ but it is SOOO hard. 

       on the bright side of things! we have a Less active member named Felipe that had his rights suspended but this week he had an interview with the stake president and now has his goals to come back! we had a lesson with him and his wife and it was the most spirtitual thing to hear him bear testimony of how much he wants to help our bishop in this time when our ward is lacking priesthood bretheren. he is so excited to come back to the ward and help!! 

It was a great week we finally hit our goal of 20 lessons and 6 divisions for the first time on my mission!!! we are so excited that we were able to finally do it! and we are going to try again to do it!  

         Love Elder Ethan Groen!