Hello Everyone y Feliz Navidad!!!!!

I hope you have all had a lovely Christmas season up until now! What have you all done? I'd love to know, I really miss you all and I wish you all a Merry Merry Christmas because I love you all!!! Basically, here in Ecuador, the people have a really cool tradition where they all put out their nativity scenes an wait until Christma Eve, And then prepare for a giant party. When it comes to be 12am, midnight, the first hour of Christmas day, they put all their baby Jesuses in their nativity scenes and start partying! They don't eat anything basically the day before, but at thid party, they have a HUGE dinner, with turkey and bread and epanadas and EVERYTHING!!! They sing and put on Christmas music and have so much fun! And my district leader told me there's basically no rules on Christmas day! Haha, just kidding. There's still rules. After comes the New Year! And they burn cardboard statues called monigotes, which are in the form of basically anything, like Spiderman, Ironman, Sid the Sloth from Ice Age, Bugs Bunny, Anything Disney, and so much more. It's so cool because it's like anarchy with everyone setting fire to all their monigotes (safely), and they do it right in front of our house too!!! So excited!!!! Hna Purnell and I moved out our beds to the window overlooking the balcony, so we can see all the festivities! I've been so happy here in Duran Sur de Ecuador, the people are lovely and we meet new ones every day. A couple of them (Elen, Katherine) have run up to us and asked us to pass by. We're going to be working with their families this week as well as the family Salizar! We hope they have their wedding soon, we're going to make the cake!!! I hope you all have a very very Feliz Navidad, and I hope you all check out this video! It's about Jesus, the real gift of Christmas, and the most important gift of all. I love you all! Les amamos! Tengan una Feliz Navidad, y amen a sus familias, recuerden Jesucristo, porque estos son los regalos màs importantes de la Navidad que Padre Celestial nos ha dado!!! Love, Hermana Avalon Johnson