There is a baptism on Saturday!

Hey, I made it to St. Maarten safely but I had a series of unfortunate events happen along the way. First, as expected, my big bag got left in Miami. My flight was delayed leaving Dallas so I barely made the flight out of Miami. Then when I got out of the long line at the lost luggage counter in St. Maarten, no one was there to pick me up. I tried calling all of the missionaries and no one would answer! Luckily I knew the number for Jeffrey (one of the members) and he was able to come and get me. We drove to the Dutch side apartment and spent about 30 minutes calling the cell phones, the house phone and just yelling into the open windows and no one woke up! Since Jeffrey was hungry we decided to go and get some food before going to the Stevens house (our senior couple). Luckily we were able to wake the Stevens up so I stayed the first night with them. They knew that I was coming but apparently they were originally told that my flight was supposed to come in on Tuesday. My new companion’s flight got pushed back a day and they assumed that mine did as well. That's where the problem happened. They were very surprised when they came out to the balcony and saw us standing there! I was pretty much in a terrible mood by then.

Things have definitely gotten better since my first day back. My luggage showed up sometime on Friday afternoon so I have everything. I am not with Elder Daines like I thought I was going to be. Instead I am with Elder Damm (pronounced just like your first impression of the word). He is 2 transfers behind me and we are getting along pretty well so far. We spent our first few nights in the French apartment and as of today we are back in the Dutch apartment where I spent 7 months last year. There are 6 missionaries on the Dutch side now, but 2 are going home at the end of this transfer (January 20th). So we'll be back to 4 then. We are getting 2 new apartments over here because the one we are in is getting old and a bit run down. I can't wait!

The other Elders left us no investigators so we have spent a lot of time tracting the last couple of days. We are pretty sick of that! Luckily I know where most of the members in our area live so we have been able to visit them. Some were really surprised when they saw me! It was fun.

Not too much has happened here yet. There is a baptism on Saturday of a guy that I used to teach about a year ago. I am excited for that! Another person to add to my "other fruits" list. He has his interview on Thursday and then he will be ready to go. He's getting baptized on the 26th at like 7 in the morning in Great Bay. I'll take some pictures and send them to you next week.

I found a few remnants of my Christmas packages in the French apartment. I only found 2 boxes though and I think you said that you sent 3. I am hoping that the last one might still be on its way! The package with all of the little gifts already arrived. The missionaries went through everything and ate most of it... what bums! Oh well. I stole back what I could find! I did get all the scripture references but I haven’t had time to go through them yet.

For Christmas we have permission to use skype to call just like we did on Mother’s Day. We have a pretty full morning because we are going to do a service project, then eat lunch and watch A Christmas Story. I don't know who got that approved but I'm excited to watch it. I will have the computer at 7 o’clock our time so I should be able to call you sometime around 4 o'clock your time. Hopefully that works for you. Talk to you on Friday!