Lesson Learned

Hi Family and Friends,

I learned a valuable lesson, just because you end p-day early to write another day doesn't mean it's going to be easy to find time to get a letter in. So, here's a really short and quick letter, and hopefully things will go better this next p-day so I can write a better letter.

I was intrigued in one of Trent's recent letters where he wrote about going by an unspoken rule of "if your English is better than my Chinese, then we speak English." So, I decided to watch and see how that affects what we do. For us, primarily it's if you are under 30 and you've lived in the states for the last 5 or more years, we speak in English, after that then it's almost completely in Spanish. Little kids tend towards wanting to speak English, but I love hearing them speak Spanish, so I try to keep speaking to them in Spanish to see if they'll switch over. The Bishop in the ward I serve in is very adamant about trying to get families to stick to their heritage and speak Spanish at home, so often the kids in these families speak very good Spanish, which I'm told is not always the case.

We finally managed to get a Christmas tree, which my companion and I are very excited about. It's a cardboard cut out of a tree that was left over from a preschool program that was held in the church last Thursday, and it works perfectly, we've taped it up on the wall and we're pretty happy to have it and our apartment looks quite festive.

Christmas is such a fun time to be a missionary, I'm really enjoying getting out and working with people and being with the ward members and our investigators. People seem to stop and listen just a little longer to our message and to find out a little more about what we have to say. It's nice, and we're teaching some really wonderful people. The weather here feels like summer, and so it doesn't really feel like Christmas, and I always laugh seeing light up snowmen here because they look so out of place. We had the great opportunity to go caroling with the Youth this week, and it was so fun to pass by and visit some of the people we are teaching and sing carols for them.

Well, we've got to run. Hopefully this p-day we'll work everything out and the place we normally go for e-mailing will be open so we don't run into problems.

Lots of love!

Hermana Okeson