MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Merry Christmas!

Things are good in the great North state! We’ve had a fun week and we’re looking forward to Christmas. Christmas time is a great time to be a missionary because Christ is on people’s mind more this time of year. It’s always a great way to start a conversation!

Like I said before, we’ve had a really fun week! We’re meeting lots of people and that always makes missionaries happy. We’ve recently been challenged by our mission president to strive to talk to 10 people a day per PERSON (not companionship, but person!) So we’ve been bundling up and walking and searching more and more trying to find people to listen to us. We’ve had a couple good stories as a result that I thought you’d enjoy!

Story 1: This story actually happened last week here in the library as I was finishing up emailing! I had like 15 minutes left but the guy next to me started talking to me so I just kind of stopped paying attention to emails (sorry guys, it’s not like I won’t be seeing ya’ll in two days anyways!) and asking more questions about missionaries and the church. He mentioned he’s been going from church to church and trying to find something he liked and felt was true. Cool part to was when we asked him where he lived he’s in our ward boundaries! We exchanged numbers and we’ve been able to talk to him over the phone a couple times, he wasn’t able to make it to church yesterday, but he does want to meet with us so hopefully this story continues to be awesome! His name in "M"- so stay tuned!

Story 2: This one was kind of funny actually, I was in the post office line last week mailing the package home and so I just started talking to the lady in front of me asking her if she was excited for Christmas. She told me she feels overwhelmed and then made the comment, “YOU seem excited for Christmas though!” And so I just told her I loved Christmastime because everyone is thinking more of Christ and trying to be like Him. She just rolled her eyes and said, “I’m sure glad I’m atheist!” haha I was sure to wish her Merry Christmas one more time before she left the post office, and she smiled a little back. Hopefully she’ll think more about Jesus this week!

Story 3: So this story actually started back on Thanksgiving! We were trying to contact a less active member and we just said hi and started talking to a guy that was going into the same apartment complex and he was super friendly but told us he wasn’t interested so we just gave him our number and asked him to give us a call if he knew anyone who could use any help. So, this past week we were up in a neighborhood walking around because there are usually quite a few people out and guess who we ran into! The same guy! He waved us over and started talking to us and said, “well why didn’t you invite me to church?!” So we invited him and he called us Saturday and left a message telling us he would be there, at least that’s what we thought he said (he’s Pilipino, so it’s hard to understand him especially over the phone)- but we didn’t see him L so we’ll have to give him a call back again.

His name is "O"!

"B" is on date to be baptized January 25! She’s doing great! She’s dyslexic, so we got her the Book of Mormon reader to help her to read and she’s just loved it. She’s read up to the vision of the tree of life and she was just telling us how she just has a hunger to learn more! She went to church yesterday (in a different ward, but we were glad she went!) and we’ll be seeing her Wednesday afternoon. As for now, she’s just taken off and is doing great though!

I think we mentioned M & R before, "M" is scheduled to be baptized January 10, but we haven’t been able to see her since last Monday and have been struggling to get a hold of her… Hopefully we will be able to soon. We had an awesome lesson last Monday. The spirit was strong and "M" mentioned how she wanted to change some things, so we’ll let you know more next week!

"S.S"! Anyone remember her?? Black lady that is Pentecostal and we served food at her church event? I was teaching her in my first area, even though she lived in the Inlet View ward boundaries because all of the ladies that were fellowshipping her lived in Rabbit Creek!

So I got her number and we visited her and it like made my whole week.

Poor Sister Dill had to hear how excited I was to see her like every five minutes! We’ll be seeing her again tomorrow! I like cried when I saw her I love her so much…

"J" & "L" had us over a couple times this past week and had friends so that was a cool way to introduce more people to the gospel!

We talked to both families about what we do and gave them a Mormon.org card with our number on it. It will be interesting to see if anything comes from it! It’s difficult to know what direction to go because they’re not really progressing so hopefully we’ll be able to help them to see the importance of the invitations we leave with them. The elders were teaching them but handed them off to us to see if that would help them progress. We’ll see where things go though.

We watched the restoration with "W" this week and the spirit was strong. She kept the DVD and wanted to watch it again. I definitely felt like it was the most spiritual lesson we’ve had with her so far.

We’re trying to help her progress as well. She told us this is the first time she’s actually wanted to keep commitments, so now it’s just a matter of her actually doing it…

Kind of crazy, I was on an exchange with Sister Claspell clear back in August and we stopped by a part-member family’s home and the wife started taking the lessons after we made that first contact! Well we contacted them this week and I didn’t realize it was the same family until we got up to the door and then I was like… wait a second- I’ve been here before! So that was fun to see them again! That’s happened a couple times with people here in Inlet View that I’d met already!

Did I talk about Sister Lawson before? We just love her so much. She take such good care of us. We’ll be spending most of our day today over there with her baking stuff for our investigators and people we see a lot. Sister Lawson is actually a convert herself and is returning but has been less active. She is just a sweetheart. She is a huge Seahawks fan so unfortunately their games are about the same time as church these next few weeks L lame…

Well Merry Christmas! Continue looking for those searching for the light of Christ and share His light with others this Christmas season!

Love you all so so so so much! I’ll talk to you in two days!

Love,

Sister Hedelius