January 3

Hola familia!
Everything is going great here. I found out at the end of last week that I would be training the new elder coming into the spanish program. He lives in Toronto, but is from Argentina. I haven't met him yet, but he could possibly not speak much spanish at all. President really isn't sure how long he's been here in Canada. I'm excited to have a native companion that will be able to help me with SPanish even more. He's not able to leave the country because of immigrant laws and so he'll be coming straight here from Toronto. It'll probably be interesting because he won't have the MTC training that others have, but it should be fun. We are going to the mission home tonight to meet him and for a little testimony meeting with all the new elders. I'm goign to be staying in this area to train him as well.
We've seen quite a few neat miracles as I'm sure the Lord has helped us prepare the area for the new elder.
We had a goal all this month to reach the standard of excellence of one investigator from our own finding efforts. This past Tuesday, we were able to begin teaching Milagro. She's from Cuba and just arrived for a 3 month vacation to visit some of her family members. We taught her twice this past week and she has such a strong desire to soak up any religous knowledge that she can find because of some of the restrictions that still exist in Cuba. On Thursday, she told us that she knows everything we taught her about the Restoration and Book of Mormon is true and that she'll get baptized next time she returns to Calgary to visit. She is reading in the Book of Mormon and hopefully as she continues learning, her desire will continue to grow to follow the Savior.
We also started teaching a lady from Nicaragua that had been taught twice in the past, but they've been out of town for the holidays. We tried to ask her questions about how she felt and she really opened up and told us that she didn't think that the church was right for her and that baptism wasn't her goal. We felt our hearts sink a little, but tried hard to listen to the spirit to determine what she needed to hear. After more questions, we foudn out that she was really just upset because she had given her mother in law a bag of coffee and a cross for Christmas and was offended that she didn't accept or like the present. After explainging the word of wisdom and why we dont use crosses, she opened up even more and we both shared our testimonies and conversions. By the time we left, she said that she wanted to continue learning and that it was like they teach people on sesame street- you can't say that you don't like a food until you actually try it. We left humbled because we really knew that listening to her and then the spirit had really helped open up her heart. It's something that I've really tried to develop more recently and we've seen a big difference in our teaching.
I thought I'd send you a picture of our truck that I get to drive just in case it makes you jealous.
Everything else is good, we have stake conference and then branch conference the coming two weekends which is kind of a bummer. I really enjoy them, but it's hard to get investigators to come when everything is in english. I hope that you all enjoyed the holidays!
Con Amor,
Elder Dunlap