Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!! So this is my first and last in the mission, awesome! The truth is, Christmas in Costa Rica is really boring. We just ate a bunch of tamales, and that's it. I'll get a little more into it in a second. Questions first.

Dinner appointments? Yeah, they wen't well, we ate really good food. Chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, rice, etc. And somebody gave us a gift, cordial cherries =) Yeah, they're pretty good. Also, a different house, rice with chicken, ice cream, etc. And yeah, so that was Christmas. What did I get in my gift exchange? I got a 3D puzzle, a car. A first knitting set to make an owl, and a minions slap on watch. Have I been writting in my journal? ...

So this last week went alright. With Christmas and everything things were a little slow, but we were still able to find some new investigators, and have 21 lessons, so I would say that it was a success. There's not really much to talk about.Tuesday we called our families, Wednesday we celebrated Christmas. Thursday was a slow day. Friday we went on divisions and I stayed here with my ZL, Elder Brackett. We had several lessons and found a new person, and then played soccer, it was a good day. Then on Saturday we had another good day. We found another investigator, we placed a baptismal date with Byron (a new investigator) and we went to a members house who made hot dogs for us. And thenSunday we only had one investigator go to church =( And we walked a lot... all of our plans fell through =( But, we were able to find a new person that we think will get baptized very soon =) 

So yeah, that was my week. Something interesting that they do here is all this week that do things with bulls. Mostly, they just have people go into the arena and run away from the bull, several people got hit, it's pretty funny. They have bull rides too. But yeah, that's about all they do here.

Love you all, talk to you next week!

-- Elder Black

   Elder Hunter Black   

                                                                                                               

                                                                                                              

 Costa Rica San José   

                                                                                                               

                                                                                                                                

sdfas2013-20142014

So this week went pretty well, I had some cool experiences. Oh, and Merry Christmas to everyone! Basically Christmas already passed for me since I already recieved my packages, so I keep forgetting that it's almost Christmas. Anyways, questions and answers first.

No, I never bought a Christmas tree, and yes, I like what you gave me for Christmas =)

I'm just going to start with the bad news, Claudia, has decided that she no longer wants to get baptized =( She has started to make bad decisions so we decided to drop her...

On Tuesday, we went and had a lesson with Juana and Alondra, they are new investigators. The lesson went... in my opinion, horrible, but they accepted baptismal dates! That was basically the highlight of Tuesday. And also, I contacted somebody (Walter) then afterwards my comp said, "yeah, he's not interested", but we placed an appointment for Friday at 3 with his girlfriend and he said that he would be there. Then on Friday we went on divisions, I stayed with my DL, Elder Torres, in my area. Basically the whole week before Friday we only had like 2 lessons a day. Well, with Elder Torres, we had 8 lessons! And one of those lessons was with Walter, the guy I had contacted. He was a little hesitant at first, but he is willing to keep learning. He motivated his girlfriend, who had been listening to us more or less, to keep listening to us and now she acts more interested, they both accepted baptismal dates! And then yesterday we were able to visit several people including a contact that I had last week. Basically, I learned that I just need to open my mouth. I still get really nervous doing it, but all the people that I talked to this last week accepted to visit with us so we were able to get several new investigators. So yeah, we had a pretty good week. We were able to have 3 investigators go to church too. One of them works at night, so he works all night, sleeps 2 hours, then goes to church. He's pretty good, we just need to be able to teach him more (Alejandro).

And then today we went and bought gifts, we are doing the same thing in my zone that we do at home, we all drew a name and we had to buy a gift. I let you know what I did next week. And yes, today we played soccer again. It was fun. Anyway, love you all, Merry Christmas!

Hasta Pronto,

-- Elder Black

   Elder Hunter Black   

                                                                                                               

                                                                                                              

 Costa Rica San José   

                                                                                                               

                                                                                                                                

sdfas2013-20142014

Changes Week

Well, another changes week has passed here, so I hope you're all ready to hear what happened, kind of crazy things happened so here you go...

First of all, I'm going to answer the main question... no, we didn't have changes, I will be "killing" Elder Zelaya aka I'm his last comp of the mission. And the other question, no, we did not have any baptisms, that's one of the crazy things that happened. I can't go into much detail, but they just had a few issues and were not able to get baptized. Alis, we have confirmed that he does have to wait a year... =(  We're going to keep working with Claudia and Maria Jose, because they could get baptized this week, we are sure hoping that all works out. With Claudia we aren't quite sure what happened, all we know is that the day of her baptism, she was drunk... so needless to say, she didn't get baptized. Also, once again, we've had many appointments fall through, so we had very few lessons this week, the lowest in my mission actually, but we're trying to find more new people so that we can have more lessons.

And then today we had our mission christmas party, we went with half of the mission to an old people's home, sang hymns and talked with them. Afterwards we went to a church building, had lunch, sang more hymns, had a lesson from Pres. Wilkinson, they then gave us gifts (temple recommend holders with a picture of the temple here) and we just talked with people, it was fun. And he also gave us some good news... January 24... Elder Cook is coming to talk to us! It will be my first meeting with an apostle! I'm excited, it's going to be awesome.

Well, that was my week, love you all, talk to you later!

Oh, and P.S. thank you to the primary for the letters!

Con mucho amor(sh),

-- Elder Black

   Elder Hunter Black   

                                                                                                               

                                                                                                              

 Costa Rica San José   

                                                                                                               

                                                                                                                                

sdfas2013-20142014

Short Letter

So this week was pretty average. Sorry that I don't have much exciting.

Questions: Yes, Alis got married!!! =) And yes, I watched the devotional too.

So this week, I don't really know what happened. Our numbers were pretty low, we couldn't really find anyone to teach, we just had some issues this week. But, the good news, we had a baptismal interview with Claudia, and she passed! Also, Alis got married, and hopefully will be able to get baptized this week! Also, we have an investigator, Maria Jose, she's 14, but she's been going to seminary, YW mutual, etc. And she should be getting baptized this week too!! 3 baptisms this week!!! Anyways, that's about what happened this week.

Funny/sad thing: Everyone who went to the wedding ended up getting sick, something in the food...

Anyways, I'm a little pressed for time, so this is all that I can write for this week, talk to you later!

-- Elder Black

Another Week

So this week was kind of average, so sorry if you were looking for something interesting.

We spent a lot of the week doing service. We were helping Alis, who was going to be baptized, to set up a "soda" (sorry, I can't think of the word) or, a place where somebody sells food, kind of a fast food restaurant, just that it's not a fast food chain, just an indivdual (for his wife, Argentina). Anyways, we really wanted to spend a lot of time with him to get him ready for baptism. Good news = we finished the "soda" Bad news = He can't get baptized yet... He's awesome and has the desire, but because of some circumstances he can't get baptized quite yet =( But other good news, they opened up their soda and it's cheap so we can eat there often =) But yeah, basically we spent our week trying to get him ready for baptism. The good news is that we have some other people that should be getting baptized within the coming weeks, we are hoping to have at least 3 baptisms this month. But time is flying, I don't know that we'll have the time to get this people interested! That's one of the difficulties that we've been having... commitments, many times people don't realize why they should be doing the things that we ask them, so we have to try time and time again to get them to understand. We are working with a lot of new investigators, we realized that we needed to drop several of our current ones, so we are trying to get references to be able to work more. But that's about all we did this week, I would say that it was still a success, Alis is going to get married this Saturday even though he can't get baptized, they want to keep the commandments, so I'm happy about that. I'll talk to you all later!

¡A Cachete!

--Elder Black

Please pray for the following individuals:  Thanks!

Claudia and her kids - passing through hard times, but has gone to church and wants to be baptized.

Andrea - 19, a little crazy, has the desire to keep learning

Alberto - 17, is ready, but his mom won't give him permission

Maria Jose - 14, her friend is a member, already goes to seminary and does her Personal Progress 

   Elder Hunter Black   

                                                                                                               

                                                                                                              

 Costa Rica San José   

                                                                                                               

                                                                                                                                

sdfas2013-20142014