Christmas in Coruña

Hey,

It's starting to look a lot like Christmas here! Zone conference was awesome. It looks like you saw some pictures of the caroling. I can't remember exactly what your post said, but I thought I would mention that we made the front page of the newspaper with that activity. It was a big newspaper, too. La Voz de Galicia (The Voice of Galicia) is really popular all over northern Spain. We only had a 3 hour pday because we had to practice for it, but it was totally worth it. People were completely dumbfounded. I was the one that broke off from the group to go talk to people again, and all of the old people just kept saying they had never seen anything like that in their lives. We had a huge crowd and we even had a bunch of people jump in to sing with us.

I think one of the worst/best parts of the weekend will make you laugh. We stayed in the Marriott AC hotel on Thursday night, and I think that made me more homesick than anything yet. There isn't much that is similar to home here in Zamora, but Marriott never changes. We were in the exact same room me and dad always stay in. It was like I was home. Weird right? (and yeah, I know I sound spoiled right now) Friday we finally had the conference. It was only a few hours long so we could have a Christmas party, but it was really good. We basically studied a talk given by Tad R. Callister that he gave in the provo mtc. It was really good.

The Christmas party was pretty good. The senior couple from up north really took care of us. They cooked an awesome dinner; ham, turkey, mashed potatoes, tons of vegetables, actual rolls, tons of dessert. It was awesome. Then we played minute to win it games and had some Christmas trivia games. The white elephant was actually pretty good too. I got Danish battleship. As far as I can tell it's the same. Since we had both zones it was pretty chaotic though. We had 50+ presents in the pile. After that we opened our letters from the first presidency and our presents from you guys and the Packs.

It was pretty cool having a pile of 3 packages there for me. I set up the tree from the ward in our piso and put all of the wrapped gifts under it. I'm thinking I will wait until Christmas to open anything unless there is something I will want beforehand. Just let me know if there is and how to figure out which one it is. Me and Elder Tribett had fun going through all of the ornaments and reading everything from the ward. And I loved all the letters from the cousins. Oh yeah, since I've been talking about Christmas this whole time, I should let you know. We have been working on the plans for the Skype call. We will have access to the chapel in Benavente and we can use their wifi, or we may go down to Salamanca so we can hang out with the district. If that's the case we would probably call from a members house or burger King.

Quick update on the area. The baptism didn't happen Saturday. We haven't taught her in 2 weeks. It's hard to even text her at this point. We haven't found a new investigator in 4 or 5 weeks. Feels like forever. Every day that we were in Zamora this week we went out and knocked doors or talked to people on the street for 6+ hours straight. That's all I've got for this week. Zamora is tough right now. 

As far as other news goes. I put a bunch of new photos in the Google drive. Hopefully they worked. I went and bought my coat today. It's pretty sweet. I should be warm this winter. It snowed in Zamora while we were up north. It's crazy how cold it got. The week before we left we didn't see the sun at all because it was so foggy. It didn't even get above 30°. I think I will call the guy for the Real Madrid jersey soon. I'm pretty excited for that.

That's all for this week. Love you guys,

Elder Johnson