ITS MY BIRTHDAY TODAY!!!!!!!

Hi mom!

ITS MY BIRTHDAY TODAY!!!!!!! :) Thank you to everyone who sent me a letter! So, i kinda opened your pacakge early and i thought that you would have wrapped all of my presents like you did for Navidad, buuuuttt ya didnt. so, all i saw before this morning was my scarf (which glad i did cause i wore that for Luz's baptism!) but anyways, i hadnt gotten like ANY letter from anyone and i seriously was thinking "what the hecky people...i need cards for my birthday!!" cause the longer you've been out, people forget about you and stop writing so your letter intake reeaallyyyy starts to decrease after about 9 months, but i thought for sure it'd pick up for my birthday but none came! so, i was super bummed and thought..."i didnt get any dang cards, i deserve to open my pacakge." so...i did haha and there was 22 cards!!! It was a sigh of relief! i thought i'd been forgotten about completely! But...i wasnt! So, thank you for my package and cards and everyone who put a card in my package! I loved Jana's because it was in spanish :) But...my absolute favorite was the family one!!!  My absolute FAVORITE cards i got my ENTIRE birthday was.......LIAM AND KYLE! Liam because well that kid melts my heart and it was the cutest little drawn out "i love you" ive ever seen! Man...i miss him! He looks so grown up! Tell him i love him, OH! and i forgot to mention that in that package i sent home like 2 weeks ago, theres a little stuffed animal in there, it says "ft worth" and its wearing a orange hoody...thats for Liam. On his birthday, which is Feb 20th! (i remember) so please make sure to give that to him for me, i didnt have his address or i would have just sent it to him myself but please give that to him from me. Ok, and Kyle...i loved his card because it literally says "are you getting fat yet?" and the thing that makes me laugh about that is i think that little kyle is more concerened about my weight than i am! thats the second time he's asked me that hahaha! please reassure the kid that im not fat. Oh, and then he asked how many times i'd dropped my scriptures. I love how those are the two questions he wanted to ask me! Man, that kid is funny! And then he said he missed me and to come home soon (how cute is that huh?!) so, both Liam's and Kyle's card are in my scriptures and i carry them around with me! I loved the Rawlins girls and the Synder girls cards! make sure to tell them i say thank you and i miss them all! Pres B's card was funny. It said on the card "if you were any more perfect...you'd be ME!" but he crossed out "me" and wrote "translated" hahaha it made me laugh out loud, tell him i say thank you as well please! (well, can you just make a generic thanks to everyone else who sent me a card cause there are like 20 others that i havent mentioned, so tell all 20 i say thanks!" I loved Dahlenes card too ps. I thought it was so funny! And when i opened it i let the whole thing play and it slightly irritated my comp....so...me being well...me, i played it again hahaha so make sure to thank Dahlene specifically for me! So, for my birthday today we're gonna go bowling!!! just me and my comp and the spanish elders so its not a huge party but i over heard some people talking and tomorrow at zone training, theirs gonna be a PINATA FOR ME!!!! :) Umm what else? I think thats it for my birthday, the spanish elders and us are gonna go out to eat at this really yummy resturant called "Rosa's Cafe" and then bowl after and then i have 3 parties lined up for me this evening :) ok, so enough about my birthday.

LUZ GOT BAPTIZED THIS PAST SATURDAY!!! it was so awesome to see because when i was here 5 months ago, we had just found her and started teaching her and now i got to come back for her baptism!! It was so cool! she's a sweet lady. Has close to ZERO personality but shes really nice and i love her! She has a little boy named Favi and he is in a wheel chair cause he got in an accident when he was a baby and now he's paralyzed from the waist down but he is SO DANG CUTE!!!!!!! i think he is my favorite kid on my mission! I love that little boy, he's 3 and i say "okie dokie" all the time and he picked that up from me and now he says "dokie dokie" all the time when he sees me. hes so sweet!!! So a recent convert of the elders (she got baptized this saturday with luz) just brought me perfume to the library for my birthday! shes so awesome! her name is Vanessa and she is so awesome! she has a little girl with down syndrome and i just adore that little girl! This past week was good. We had a baptism and we had a ton of lessons again this week. I have had many cakes made for me and cookies as well and tonight im gonna have 3 more and chocolate covered strawberries too!

HEY!!! HOW IS ROXIE?! I did not get an update from her saying that she says happy birthday! SHE DID NOT DIE RIGHT??? SHE BETTER NOT BE DEAD AND YOU'RE JUST NOT TELLING ME CAUSE ITS MY BRITHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! she better be alive and happy mom! you take good care of my baby! IS SHE ALIVE? (like how this is all in caps because we both know how much my dog means to me!)

Con amor, Hermanita Powell