Happy New Year!

Dear Family and friends,

Merry Christmas! I hope y'all had a wonderful Christmas time to reflect on the Savior, his Atonement and resurrection. I spent a lot of time thinking about Mary and Joseph. I think she was an incredible woman and he was an incredible man. I was reading in Luke 2 in preparation for Christmas this past week and it just reaffirmed that.

Thank you all for the cards, and packages...I am thankful to have such a sweet family and wonderful friends.

We had a pretty slow week this week. Last Monday wasn't very eventful. My nasty cold came on with a vengeance so Sister Welch and I watched a bunch of Doctrine and Covenants videos. There are some really good stories on those...AND it has the Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration movie on it. We watched one clip (The John Tanner Story) that had one of the Koch boys in it. We were watching and then I was like, "Hey! That's my neighbor." Claim to fame.
We decided it might be best to stay in that night and just go to bed early which worked out really well because all of our appointments for the evening canceled.

Tuesday we went down to Beullaville and met with a girl named Kayla. Her stepson's grandparents are members and that is how we found her. She has gone through a lot of trials in her life...and she is only 25 years old. She feels like God doesn't care about her. She had a really serious trial a few years ago and she said that she felt like God didn't answer her prayers until several years had passed. We pointed out that he had answered her prayer, but that it just hadn't come when she had wanted it. I feel like that happens a lot. Sometimes we will pray and pray and pray, but nothing will happen. A lot of time can go by before we will receive answers to our prayers. I know Heavenly Father hears every prayer and that He is mindful of each of us though. He loves us and wants the very best for us. Sometimes that means we have to go through the refiner's fire (1 Nephi 10:20) to get the very best that he has in store for us. I've learned a lot about that lately. I know without a doubt that Heavenly Father loves us though. Sometimes it is hard to feel and understand, but he is there to help us if we will just humble ourselves, strive to fix the things that are wrong in our lives, give our all/do our very best, and exercise all the faith we have (which doesn't have to be anything more that a teeny little mustard seed...if that's all we've got.) She is interested in learning more. She was telling us about some of the crazy things that she had heard about Mormons. Her nephew told her that he heard from someone at school that Mormons don't eat peanut butter. I told Kayla that I would die without peanut butter. It is a primary staple of my diet.

Wednesday I lost my voice due to the nasty cold. We had district meeting and ironically, we had a few minutes to talk about health and safety. Elder Garrett (our new district leader) asked if we, the sisters had any input. Sister Welch said to stay away from your sick companion. I love her. She cracks me up. We learned a lot about using the how to begin teaching skills and then we role played. I learned (relearned would be more appropriate) the importance of asking inspired questions. Asking questions is how Jesus taught the people in the New Testament. I have loved seeing that as I have been reading the New Testament in my study time. Asking questions also allows the person to receive revelation for themselves and they can answer their own questions instead of having us just tell them an answer. We don't want to just give people a fish...we want to teach them how to go fishing for themselves. Questions are awesome. Sister W and were talking about how we could apply that to life after the mission. There are many applications...
As a sidenote, one of the elders a while back was talking about the importance of area books. He then related it to life after the mission and said that we should all make area books after the mission to use in our dating pursuits. He said we can have a "potentials" section, and a "new and other investigators" sections, and of course, a "former investigator" section. It was pretty hilarious. Later that evening we met with Claire and the Smith's home. Claire is very,very shy so this was a big deal for her. She was really nervous and the Smiths have tried having her over a few times before and she backed out at the last minute, but she came! We had dinner and a lesson. We talked about Samuel the Lamanite. Claire really enjoyed it and said she thankful we coaxed her into coming.

Thursday we drove out to Trenton and had a lesson with Matt and Regina (recent converts). They are getting ready to go to the temple! We got to teach them the last few lessons of temple prep and watched a bunch of really cheesy church movies with them. I think it's funny that those movies are sooo cheesy yet they get me everytime. I almost cried, but then I didn't. Sister Regina is a most excellent cook. She made us homemade peppermint/chamomile tea and snickerdoodle cookies. It was delicious. Afterwards, we went to the Turner residence (Jason, Tiffany, Austin, and Kaitlin). They are excited for Christmas! We read scriptures with them and talked about the importance of scriptures. They are struggling right now, but we know that they will be able to make it over all of their speed bumps in life.

Happy Christmas Adam! We met with Claire again on Friday and gave her a bunch of Christmas stuff. A lot of the people here don't have much. She was excited to meet with us and we had a good lesson with her. She is such a sweet person. She gave us these giant marshmallow things that Sister Welch and roasted over our gas heater when we got home that night. It was like eating a giant peep that had been roasted....mmm.

Happy Christmas Eve! Sister Nannie Mae invited us over for breakfast. I was full for the whole rest of the day. We had grits, sausage, eggs (gah), and biscuits. I was SO full. We did our weekly planning and then we went to dinner with an 84 year old lady and her family. It was very good. Her grandson (?) talked to us for a long time about his mission and all the pranks he pulled on the sister missionaries in his district. It was really funny. We would be so toast if we ever even thought about pulling the pranks that he did. Those sisters deserved it though....after we finished dinner at their home, we went over to Sister Adkins home and ate more dinner there. I do not like food anymore. Sister Adkins kept asking me if I wanted more. I felt bad for saying no so many times so I finally started saying yes and then I just felt sick.

Merry Christmas! We went to church in Albertson. We decided to snag a ride with a girl named Leeann in the ward because we are running low on miles. So, we did that. However, on the way home I was giving Sister W a hard time about how she always loses the keys (it's basically everyday). She then looked at me and said, "I don't have the keys in my bag!" We rummaged through her bag with no luck. We had locked the keys in our apartment. I was supposed to call home shortly after church got out so I was panicking. Nannie Mae wasn't home from church and we didn't know when she would be coming back. So we tried all the windows and finally found that the bathroom window had not been latched down. Sister W said that I should go through the tiny window because my skirt was more "flowy", and I was taller and therefore able to reach the window better. So, I went through the tiny window, got high-centered about halfway, but made it through after grabbing onto the bathroom door and pulling myself through the window. It hurt. I went and unlocked the door for Sister Welch and we sat and unpanicked ourselves. About 10 minutes after that, Nannie Mae came home. Sister Welch and I looked at each other and just laughed. We could have waited for her to get home, but of course, we panicked. It was sooooo good to hear from y'all! It made my day. :) We went to the mission leader, Brother Stroud's for lunch. It was a very large lunch. Sister Welch had requested something "light." To which Brother Stroud responded, "I know no such critter." We were very full. After talking with the Strouds, we went over to the Gray's and ate dinner with them, had orangeade...which is delicious, and Brother Will Gray took a bunch of pictures with his new iPad that made us look really funny.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and I hope you have a blessed 2012! Don't forget to set goals! President Cotterell suggested that we have spiritual goals for ourselves and physical health goals for this coming year.

I love you all so very much and I am so thankful for each of you. Thank you for all that you do.

Much love,

Sister J