¡Feliz Navidad!

Hola hola,

It is Christmas Eve! The weather for Plantation, FL is 82 degrees and in Rancagua, Chile it is 85 degrees, so this is a typical Christmas Eve for me. Meanwhile, my companion from Vermont and most of the other Americans are wondering where the snow is at.

Next Tuesday we have changes, and I will be staying in the office and staying in Recreo for the 6th change in a row (the members are starting to wonder why I have been there for so long). But I will be getting a new companion, Elder Villegas from Colombia. I lived with him in my first change in Recreo, so I already know him well and we are excited to be working together. Also I will be the district leader of the office, which is kind of a new thing. President Harris wants us 6 office missionaries to be able to get out to our sectors more and share the gospel more with others, so I am supposed to help in that effort. I am excited and I know that we will be able to see a lot of success!

This week a ton of my time got involved with helping a missionary who leaves next Tuesday get himself legal to be able to leave the country. Yeah, that was not exactly fun. We had to travel down to Curico three different times (once in Presidents car, once by bus, and once in the van) to wait forever in government offices and get things resolved. We are pretty sure that everything got done and he will be able to leave. This all stemmed from him not changing his address when he changed sectors (or rather, not knowing that he had to) and the police figured that out and decided to fine him. Oh brother. We ended up waiting forever to get it done on Friday and unfortunately were not able to make it back to sing in the prison yesterday.

Yesterday we did have a cool event in our ward. The Relief Society made a cool homemade Christmas play depicting the Nativity, and it turned out really great. Me and my companions were Roman soldiers who announced the census from Rome where all would have to return to the city of their birth. Everyone loved our coordinated marching in and out. (picture below)

Have a great week and a very Merry Christmas!

Elder Richards


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