My Dear Family,

This week has seemed so fast with all the holiday excitement.

I`m glad that Mom and Dad are staying busy to start this New Year, and Mom good luck with the season of ward conference!

I`m glad you have your plans all set for 2015, Dad. I think I`m starting to realize the importance of a long term plan. One of the tips in Preach my Gospel for connecting the long term and short term actions is to have a type of self accountability. For example this year I set a goal to try and memorize 100 scriptures in Spanish so I figured out that it`s two scriptures a week, and the last week is three. To keep myself accountable I made a little chart with 100 spots and the dates. I can see how it fills up throughout the year. =)

The work was a little slow this week because a lot of people left town to visit family. New Years is a much bigger celebration than Christmas and there are a couple of fun things that Ecuadorians do. The coolest is they make these giant dolls called monegotes. They come in all sizes and are usually American cartoon characters or superheroes, and I even saw one that was 3 stories tall! and then at midnight they burn them to represent starting the New Year from scratch and improving for the next. Very cool!

We had our P-day on Thursday because no one was home, working, or awake until 6 pm anyways, so our president had us work on Monday instead. It was a really fun start to the year, and we played basketball at the church. (Our team plan was to pass the ball to Elder Ryldulch haha) 

I`m glad everyone enjoyed the holiday season, and that everything keeps going well at home! That`s so incredible that you`re all having missionary experiences. I know that everyone can find great joy in the service of the Lord! 

Lots of love,

Elder Hales. =)

PS. I have a lot of pictures to send you all, but I`m still having trouble because only a couple of computers can send them. But don`t worry I will try to send them as soon as I can! =)

This is a picture I found online of a monegote