Back to the Motherland: Traditions (January 5, 2015)

Hola familia y amigos!

Happy 2015! We finished the holiday season and celebrated a new year! It was all really good. We saw blessings, but I'm not going to lie, I'm glad that the holidays are over. It made things harder in trying to find people at home and with lots of people going on vacations. So now things are going to start to get back to normal.

As for Christmas, we had a really good time. With a lot of Hispanics, they actually celebrate more on the 24th than on the 25th. Hna. Ekonomo said that all growing up, she never knew if Christmas was on the 24th or 25th.So it was like having 2 Christmases! And the tradition is to stay up til midnight on the 24th and then open your gifts then. So we woke up at 12 and opened most of our gifts and drank some sparkling cider. Then after that excitement, we crashed. Very different than the United States tradition to go to bed early and wake up early to open gifts. Christmas itself didn't really feel like Christmas. It seemed like another normal day. We had breakfast, lunch, and dinner appointments that day and still visited people that we had appointments with. Then we called home at the house of a family we're teaching. They are super awesome!

New years isn't too different, tradition-wise. Stay up until midnight. Party. All that fun stuff. The ward had a dance for New Years that started at 8, so we didn't go at all. Plus, we'd just have to sit there in torture and leave early. We had to be home at normal time on Christmas AND New Years. Not any later or any earlier.

If you don't already know, we are currently living in an apartment with two other sisters. They're in English. But having them around for the holidays was really fun and we celebrated together. Nothing too crazy, obviously. Just lots of sparkling cider. :)

We've had a bunch of really off days these last 2 weeks. With people being on vacation and both of us getting sick at one time or another. We got into a real funk. But then one day we decided that we were getting out of that. We were tired of it and we needed to get back on track. So, even though we were tired, we decided to work super hard and just finish the week and then rest up on p-day. With the change in perspective, things have been really awesome. We've seen miracles and Heavenly Father's hand in it. Really, we can apply that to anything. When we're down or have a problem, when we leave it to the Lord, He WILL help us. If we just need more energy or motivation to do what's right. If we need comfort in hard times. If we need to feel our burden of guilt lifted off our shoulders. All of these things and so much more. He's truly there for us. It's awesome!

Hope you all have an amazing week!

Con amor,

Hermana Shirley

Mirror struggles (the mirror we had in our apartment for awhile. $5 Walmart mirrors. That's what we get)