Merry Christmas and Happy New year!!
Of course, the high light of this week was getting to talk to my family on Skype! I love my family so much!!!
I want to thank everyone who sent me Christmas wishes through packages, letters, and emails. This was such a great Christmas! Spending the Lord's day in His service is quite honestly the best way to spend Christmas. I hope everyone else had a great Christmas and had the chance to serve others #LighttheWorld. There was a great talk given yesterday in Sacrament meeting on how we should continue to live the Light the World initiative all through the next year. I think that is a great idea so I wanted to invite all of you to try to continue serving others through 2017! New Year's Resolution!!
So this week didn't provide many teaching opportunities however we were able to go out and carol to/ serve people for Christmas. We went out with the ward to deliver meals and carol, we went out with a few families, and we also got to go with some investigators. We had so many people cry and thank us, saying that we were the first people to ever carol to them!
So we had a talent show for the missionaries in my zone, McMinnville, and Forest Grove zone on Tuesday. There were some really spiritual performances and some...not so spiritual haha. Some of them were really hilarious and I wish I had the whole thing recorded. My district sang the song "I am Here" by the Bonner family. It was pretty bad, but I will let you be the judge of that since I am going to send the video of it. We each had a solo and mine was at the end so of course I was freaked out the whole time. We made everyone laugh thought, so I guess that's what matters. They fed us when we were there and that was delicious. But since I have had ham everyday this week, it has started to lose its appeal.
Okay, so Adrian. He is our investigator that we are really trying to work with right now. He has been meeting with missionaries for a long time and we know that he is more than ready to be baptized. He is really scared of making that commitment though so we have been praying so hard, trying to figure out how to help him. We took him to the Portland temple visitor's center and we got a tour. The Spirit was incredibly powerful and it definitely helped him. The elders tried to get him to do a temple trip a few months ago, but he chickened out so we were thrilled that he actually came. We asked him if he would prepare to be baptized on January 7, 2017. He is thinking and praying about it so hopefully tonight, when we meet with him again we will get his answer. Please keep him in your prayers.
Christmas Eve and Day were pretty laid back days because we were encouraged to spend time with our investigators and less active members. It was fun spending time with them, getting in the Christmas spirit. We ate so many times this weekend though because we were just jumping from one celebration to the next haha.
We spent the most time with the Gipsons (ward mission leader and his wife). They are definitely our family away from home. We were at their house for dinner Christmas eve. They invited some other families over, along with Adrian, and we sang Christmas hymns and read scriptures together. That was an incredible night. I think it really helped Adrian.
Sister Hartvigsen and I pulled our mattresses out into the living room and slept under our tree. We opened presents first thing in the morning. Then we went to the Gipsons for breakfast, in our pajamas :) We went to church with them and then went back to their house and watched Mr. Krueger's Christmas. Sis. Hartvigsen and I ended up falling asleep so they let us take a nap there haha. (I've noticed that, as missionaries, you just get comfortable with everyone. You make their home yours and you even feel fine getting in cars with people you haven't known very long...I think the Lord watches over us more than we know haha.) We went over the Bishop Cooper's house after that to have dinner/ for me to call my family!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!! And then we went back to the Gipsons to eat more food and spend time with the Dyers, who were over for dinner. Sis. Hartvigsen called her family while we were there.
"The precious gift of God's Son invites each of us to find 'peace in this life and eternal life in the world to come.' Peace may seem elusive in a world where conflict and division are intensifying. But that peace is exactly what our loving Father and His Son offer to each of us, if we will only receive it."
by Douglas D. Holmes
No comments:
Post a Comment