Happy Birthday to ZANE !

Hola amigos y familia!! Sorry I wasnt able to send a email last Tuesday we were really busy. These past two weeks have been great though!

Christmas time on the mish is the best! It's crazy that Christmas is already next week. It was super cool that I was able to go to the temple this morning and feel the spirit super strong. It was a great way to start off my birthday! Today we just did some shopping and kind of just hung out which is always great. Yesterday we had our Christmas Zone conference which was super fun! We did a lot of fun activities like a gift exchange, room escape, & other fun stuff. For the gift exchange I got stuck with this Hannah Montana clock thing haha. My companion gave his departing testimony which was pretty sad. I only have like 2 weeks left with him. Its sad this mission is losing him because he's such a great missionary. He has helped me so much be the missionary I want to be.

This past Saturday the whole mission was able to do service at this charity event called Santa's Anonymous. It's when people donate toys and stuff & one day a bunch of volunteers take bags of these donations to people in need. The whole time we just directed traffic pretty much. It was lots of fun even though the wind that day was super freezing! One of my favorite things to do at night is go caroling. It's super fun and it's a great way to spread Christmas cheer. It also comes with a lot of funny and awesome experiences. Something we've recently tried is flash mob caroling on the train! It was super fun and it turned out way better than we thought it would. It's also a great way to help people focus on the true meaning of Christmas. 

These past couple weeks we were able to go to a couple Christmas parties and bring investigators to them. One of the people we are teaching, Luis, has left for Bolivia till January but he is still doing great. We are going to try to continue working towards baptism when he gets back. We are teaching a new couple named Angelica and Marko and they are really interested in the Plan of Salvation because their daughter recently passed away. They are super nice and we are hoping for them to get baptized soon. 

Anyways, I hope I didn't forget to write too much stuff. Overall it has been lots of fun! I'm excited for Christmas & my pday will be on Monday next week. Oh & if you were all wondering it's actually not even that cold right now. I hope you all have a fantastic week! 

Picture explanations: 1. & 4. Cool pictures in front graffiti we found 2. & 6. Pictures of our district caroling 3. My zone 5. My district 7. Eating pizza that my mom bought for me for my Bday 

Elder Rowbotham

“After all that has been said, the greatest and most important duty is to preach the Gospel” - Joseph Smith