We finally were able to do a Skype video conference call with Kyle.  We had thought that call would be this coming Monday.  I woke up Tuesday morning to an email from Kyle stating that his mission president, Presidente Peterson told him to try and set it up for that morning 8:30am since he had meetings in Esquel (pronounced Eskel) that ended at that time.  Esquel is the town about 30 minutes away from Trevelin that have computers Kyle can use for Skype calls.  We hurriedly made calls to grandparents to see who we could gather together.  Wendy’s parents were able but sadly, Mom and George were not.

I connected everything to our TV for the big effect and we all waited for that call to come.  It was kind of neat having Skype open and being able to see Kyle log in before the call.  Everyone quickly gathered around the TV and seconds later, this is what we got.  🙂

We had a wonderful talk with our Elder Hudgins.  He has a full on farmer’s tan.  He said his feet were shredded the first few weeks because he was not used to the walking.  The people of Trevelin are very friendly though not necessarily interested in hearing about the Gospel.  The weather goes to the extremes being very hot one day and the next it is snowing in the mountains.  I found out I have been pronouncing Trevelin incorrectly.  It is pronounced “Tray-vay-lean” with a emphasis on the second syllable. He shared with us his appointment book for the day and it looked like he was in the middle of a busy day, appointments every hour.  All in all, it was a wonderful Christmas call with Kyle.

If I get some time, I will put together a quick video of the call highlights as I recorded the full call which I will add to this post. (jh)

From: Kyle Hudgins <kyle.hudgins@myldsmail.net>
Subject: Re: Is it working on your companions computer? Merry Christmas!
Date: December 26, 2011 1:36:39 PM MST

Well, this week we were supposed to have a Skype video conference call with Kyle.  Sadly that didn’t work out for him as he had one computer that had a bad mic and a second computer that had a bad camera.  All the other computers were in use so an email is all we were able to get.  By the time the kid in the cyber cafe gave up on trying to fix things, Kyle’s time was done.  We are hoping that Kyle will be able to do a Skype call to us next week.  Missionaries are allowed two phone calls or Skype calls per year home to parents.  Anyway here is a very quick email he gave us this week.  It’s a bit jumbled because he was rushed but still a nice one to share with us this last week he has had in Trevelin.  (jh)

Ok this is my email for the week. Sorry nothing worked out but I will talk to you guys next week.

I´m really frustrated right now so my thoughts are all a little jumbled but I´ll do my best to sum up the week. So this week hasn´t been too bad. Things are a little slow. We don´t have the best numbers but we are still working hard. We had a lesson with Tania. She is the granddaughter of Posperina, who was the women we confirmed on my first sunday. She seemed really ready and Elder Clark and I thought we wouln´t have too much trouble with her. But we asked if she was willing to do the things so that she could find an answer and she said she didn´t really want to do that in this point of her life. That kinda sucked to hear. She still wants to listen to our lessons so hopefully that will still work out. We still haven´t been able to find David. Which is really a bummer. I really think we can help him in his situation but he is never at his house. Its been tought trying to find some people to teach. Nobody lets us in their house and nobody is interesting in our message when we street contact. I really hope we will find someone this week.

This week i was able to go out on divisions with our district leader Elder Sharp and spend the day in Esquel. He is a pretty awesome guy and a really good missionary. He had six baptisms in six week with his last companion here in Esquel. We really didn´t have much success that day but the weird thing was the it was freezing. It actually snowed that night in the mountians. It was pretty funny how it was so hot last week then i had to wear long sleeves 3 days this week, and now today it is really hot again.

Christmas was pretty good in Trevelin. We spent the evening with the Familia Nicklitcheck (I don´t know how to spell their last name). We watched the Christmas devotional and had dinner with them on Christmas eve. Here in Argentina Christmas eve is the big day. They have party all evening and then they open their presents at midnight. President allowed us to stay out till 11 and stay up till 12:30. So of course we took advantage of the Argentina tradition we opened our presents at midnight. Thank you so much for all the presents. I really wanted some ties and i sure got a lot of them so thank you everyone. On Christmas we went to church and their was only about 8 people there so not a very good turn our but i guess i kind of expected that with the tradition here. But after church we went to Esquel because they have a huge pension here and we did an asado. It was pretty good but im sure we didn´t do it right. It was tough but turned out good. We then played monopoly like all day so that was fun. Just a nice laid back day.

Well I hope all you had a wonderfull christmas I will talk to you all next week (