Christmas Miracles!

Hi Mom,

This week was great! It was one of the most successful weeks of my mission, I would say, which helped make Christmas great! I am grateful for the Christmas miracles that we saw this week!

I have to start telling y'all about this week on last Saturday, when I volunteered to give the lesson in Church yesterday. So throughout the week I was thinking of different things that I could teach on. On preparation day last week, the weather was great! It was over 60 degrees, so we played some ultimate Frisbee to enjoy one of the last warm days of the year.

On Christmas eve, we went to our Bishop's house, and we ate a lot of tamales, and then afterwards we went to one of our investigators/recent convert's house where they were having a fire. We talked with them for a while, and then we went back to the apartment. Christmas is when things started to get crazy. We started off the day with the zone for a zone meeting, and a Christmas breakfast. I brought the ping-pong table, so we had the opportunity to play ping-pong also. That was a lot of fun.

After the meeting we drove over to the Arevalo's house where we were able to skype y'all, and eat some really good tortas! When we finished up with that, we saw our first miracle of the day. On Monday, we had contacted someone in the parking lot in Walmart as we were doing our shopping. We talked to Marta and she seemed interested. We went over to her house on Christmas to share a message with her, and she kept crying and telling us how much she wanted to stop drinking, and how much she wanted God in her life. This lesson went very well, and we hope to see here progress in the future.

After the lesson, we had dinner with another family in the ward. It was nice to get to know them, because they moved in recently. After dinner with them, we went out and started working. We knocked doors and were able to teach 3 more lessons finding several new investigators. It was so great, and one of the best days of my mission. Christmas definitely isn't the same without family, but it was fun this year.

We continued finding people and teaching more lessons throughout the week, and we were able to find some good people. On Saturday there was a baptism for someone in the ward, and they asked us to prepare a message that we could share while they were getting dressed, so we helped them with that, and we may have found a new investigator for the Sister missionaries from it, so that was great. Saturday morning, I also found out that I was giving a talk in church the next day, so I then had to prepare for the talk and lesson.

Sunday morning I got up at 5:00 so that I could study for my talk and for the lesson. I spoke on the gift that we can give Jesus Christ which is a broken heart and a Contrite spirit, and then I related it to those who are investigating the church, recent converts, all members, and leaders of the Church, and how we all need to be receptive to the will of God, and then we have to do it. During the sacrament meeting we finished the Sacrament with about 40 to 45 minutes left in the meeting, and there were only two of us speaking, so I thought I would have to make up some time. My companion says I spoke for 25 minutes, so I guess it wasn't too big of a problem. I am pretty sure it was less than 20 though.

Then came the lesson, and I learned that I would much rather give a talk then share a lesson. But it went well. After I was done with all of that, and after translating for Andrew in the last class, I crashed. I was so tired and so out of energy, but we kept working until the end of the night. It was a really long day, but very rewarding. I really like speaking in Church, and the Lord helped me out so much. Spanish wasn't even a problem for me, which was surprising, because I usually don't have a lot of confidence in Spanish. Heavenly Father really does help us out as we rely on him, and do our part.

It was a very busy and great week! I loved it so much, and I am so grateful to be able to serve. I hope y'all have a great week, and a happy new year. Since it is the time for setting goals I would invite you to ask your selves what more you can do to accept the will of the Lord. Whether it be daily scripture study, weekly family home evening, or serving in church. Try to give Christ your Broken Heart and Contrite Spirit.

Love, Kyle