Week 72: Merry Christmas from Tenerife!

Merry Christmas from Elder Hendrix.

Elder Hendrix and his district.

A family in Tenerife shared dinner with the missionaries.

I hope you all had a great Christmas! It's weird to think that I'll be home for next year's. Time is flying by so quick. It seems like just yesterday I was opening presents that my family had sent me last year. Christmas here was fun! My companion and I woke up and opened our presents that we received in the mail. And then we had church. There were a ton of tourists in sacrament meeting. Some from England, Finland, Sweden, Ireland, Scotland. Our little chapel was packed full. Tenerife is a popular place to be during the Christmas season. There's a Finnish family that came that offered to buy us dinner one day this week before they go home. After church, we went to eat lunch with some members. They made us a giant paella, so that was cool. And then we got to Skype home! Skype is so weird. I feel like I was just with my family yesterday. Next time I Skype, I'll only have like 2 months left. It's scary :-) 

Well, transfers are today and I'M TRAINING! I'VE BEEN PATIENTLY WAITING FOR THIS MOMENT FOR OVER A YEAR. I'm so excited!! Elder Knaphus is headed to Madrid. My hijo will get here on Thursday morning. So that'll be super cool! I've been wanting to train forever! Wish me luck! Updates to come.

I don't have a lot of time to write, so I'll just add a few of the highlights from this week. We have an investigator named Maria and she invited us over for paella on Christmas Eve. I love her, she's awesome. We got to meet her family as well. She has two boys that are 7 and 17 and they're really fun! We ate lunch and played UNO together for a while. They're an awesome family! Another cool experience we had this week was meeting with Alexandra! She's another investigator and she's a champ. I think I wrote a little bit about her a few weeks ago. She's the one that we have been trying to contact for months. We finally got a hold of her a few weeks ago, but then she went on vacation for two weeks. Well she came back this week and we got to meet with her! We had a great lesson! She has been reading the Book of Mormon and has told us that she knows it is true. We invited her to be baptized and she accepted! So that was a huge miracle we saw this week! I'm excited to continue teaching her.

Anyway, this week should be really interesting having a greenie. I'm a bit nervous to take over the area now that Elder Knaphus is leaving. I'm still learning where everything is and where everyone lives. But it'll be a fun experience. We have a lot of stuff to do this transfer. I see a lot of potential in the people that we're currently teaching, so it will be cool to see the progress we make in the next few weeks! I'm excited for my hijo too. This is a great place to start the mission. The people are awesome and the weather is amazing. 

Oh here's another story real quick... So Friday morning we woke up and it was pouring rain outside. It was so weird. It's sunny here every day usually. But that morning it was like an Arizona summer monsoon. It was like a flood here. I was honestly kinda nervous. Elder Knaphus and I were considering staying inside and just doing a lot of work in our area book. But we felt that we needed to get outside. It sounded crazy because the weather was just absolutely ridiculous, but we headed out. It was crazy wet outside, but we saw so many miracles that morning! We were able visit a few inactive members and pass by a few homes of old investigators. So because of our decision to leave that morning, we found a few more people to start teaching again! The Lord blesses us when we make a constant effort to be diligent and strive.

I love each of you and I hope you all have a great new year! Until next week!

Elder Hendrix