December 16, 2013

I thought freezing rain was an expression.....evidently, its real. It snowed like crazy over the weekend. I spent over an hour shoveling out our driveway sunday morning before church. if you dont do it right away it gets very wet and rainy/snowy (combined...not just either one). as a result, anything thats snowy and looks like marshmallows are harder than ice. we were getting mounds of snow off of someones car and i decided to be smart and use my elbow to push off the snow because my gloves were in the car. i used my momentum of course.....and almost broke my arm!

I HAD to start out my letter talking about the weather because thats all anyone talks about here. not only do we talk about the weather, but we talk about how we talk about the weather so much. its quite ridiculous. but it goes to show that you can bring up anything dumb like the weather to start talking to people and its very readily accepted. "Did you know its snowing? did you also know that there are living prophets on the earth today??" it flows in quite nicely if you think about it.

We are staying very busy despite the fact that our teaching pool is getting SMALLER. We have amazing relationships with our ward leaders and they keep us so busy that we scheduled an interview with president this week to talk to him about getting another set of missionaries here. We cover 2 wards and friends are starting to catch on to the reality of the blessings they receive when they invite their friends to meet with the missionaries. with double the ward counsels, double the meetings and 6 hours of church each week on top of the fact that we do exchanges with sisters....its gettin pretty busy. we really hope we get another set - now is the perfect time to do it while sister crane is still here who has spent the past 6 months developing all these relationships.

I've never been so loved and so hated in my entire life. I know its a life principle but its more directly here because people are so straightforward with their feelings. We got reamed into one minute and then 2 seconds later someone approached us saying theyve never trusted missionaries more. Dont worry - the next minute someone hates again. People are very funny creatures. Moral of the story is you just have to be perfect. When you dont have time for that, you just decide to take everything with a smile.

at the end of a very long day this week, heavenly father gave me a very spiritual experience that i couldnt have been more grateful for at that time. at one of the ward christmas parties they had a small live nativity set up in a classroom. it was very simple - a sheet over the chalkboard, mary (who looks like ashley.(so gorgeous and the perfect mary), joseph and their baby, soft music in the background, and the lights were off with flashlights taped to the wall to create a spotlight. I went in with low expectations thinking it would be very "sweet". I was never so wrong. i was glad the lights were off because we went in there and the spirit was so so strong. I looked at "baby jesus" and was swept over with emotion. It was so real. And I thought, "This is what its all about." In the room next door was santa clause, but the little kids were more attracted to this reverent scene than jolly santa. I felt a strong sense of love for the simplicity of the savior's birth and all that he sacrificed, not only the atonement, but in ever way that he lived his life. What became an even more tender experience was that a nonmember family was there and they had a 6 yr old daughter who wanted to see it. we offered to take her over there. She didn't have a huge background on the true importance of the savior im sure but when she walked in that room she KNEW it was something special. She leaned over and looked at baby jesus and her FIRST response: she turned to us and said, "I have to go show my friend". She darted out of the room and brought in more friends that reverently were in aw as they looked at baby jesus. Sister Crane and I talked about it later how funny it was that her first response was to share the joy with others. She was sharing the gospel! We have a testimony and are in awe at the beauty of the real truth that the gospel provides.  i hope and pray that we follow the example of the 6 year old who isn't even a member and have the same first reaction "to go show our friends".

Get to go to the temple this week for our missionary christmas day! we are so excited!! Love you all! Thanks for all the love youve sent my way!

Sister Bell