I pray that you are all well at this special time of year!

Hey everyone, I hope you all had a wonderful week this week! Our week went pretty well although it was quite a busy week full of lots of traveling back and forth. This week we were able to enjoy teaching and sharing our gospel message with investigators and others. I am super excited right now because it is the Christmas Season and we have a great new initiative to share with everyone. Our investigators are doing pretty well. We have been working hard with them to keep their commitments and come to church. It is a big challenge. None of our investigators came to church with us yesterday, but Enrique did accompany us to the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. I was excited that he came with us (it took us quite a bit of convincing in his front door) and I feel like he was able to feel of the Spirit as he listened. Afterwards we had a refreshment of Atole (it is a hot drink made usually with flour, or corn meal (masa) and a flavor of some sort, this time chocolate) and cookies and lemon leaf tea (it isn't against the word of wisdom I promise). It was a fun and Enrique seemed to feel comfortable with the members there as we visited. We really hope that this helps him to have more confidence in attending with us next week at church! Please keep praying for our investigators to attend! All of our other investigators are doing okay. The Ramirez family is doing pretty good. We had a great lesson with them last week about the Plan of Salvation and they have lots of interest and questions. The hardest part is that they are torn between their catholic roots (the dad who died a few years back was a catholic priest) and their uncle is very pentocostal. We have only been teaching them a short time though and I hope that we can help them attend church and decide to be baptized. All of the other investigators aren't really progressing much so we are working to decide what more we can do to help them! We went to Guadalajara on Wednesday afternoon so that on Thursday morning I could go sign and renew my visa. It was really pretty quick signing and being fingerprinted. After that we got a chance to see just a little snippet of downtown Guadalajara (it is part of the other mission so we don't get to see it regularly). It was quite fun and made me want to see more of Guadalajara more in-depth one day! It was also fun getting to see some of the Elders I haven't seen since I got here in the field! On Friday we had our Zone Meeting. It went well and we learned a lot about our new Christmas initiative called #ASaviorIsBorn or better said in Spanish #HaNacidoUnSalvador. It is a new website that the church has designed just for Christmas that has two beautiful videos one called A Savior is Born and another Why We Need a Savior. I hope that all of you will go visit the page at www.christmas.mormon.org so that you can see the videos, explore the page, and share it with all of your friends, neigbors, and family members! It is a beautiful video that helps us to remember the reason for Christmas and it is a great way to share our beliefs in Jesus Christ. I just want to say that I know that Jesus Christ lives. A Savior is Born, and He came to Earth for each and every single one of us so that we might become better! I know that it is through Jesus Christ the Savior that we can repent of our sins and become clean once more! I love the Gospel of Jesus Christ and I am so thankful that Christ came in such humble circumstances that we might have everlasting life one day in the presence of God the Eternal Father. I love this time of year and I believe the greatest gift of all is Him. I am so thankful for Jesus Christ and I love Him. I love each and every one of you. I pray that you are well and that at this special time of year you can feel the very special Spirit in the air that comes only throught the Prince of Peace! Merry Christmas! Take Care! Have a wonderful week! Love, Elder Mitchell J Condie