West is Best: week 8: Feliz navidad y nuevo ano

Hola everyone y feliz navidad! I hope everyone had a great Christmas with their family and friends. This week was pretty good!

Most of last Monday was chill. We went and played soccer and volleyball with our district y the zone leaders and then went to get some bomb tacos for my bday dinner. Then we had a REALLY awesome lesson with one of our investigators Rachel. She's 15 and absolutely loves learning about the gospel and even told us that she wants to go on a mission too and she hasn't even been baptized yet! But anyway all week I was praying that for my bday I could see a miracle. The day was pretty chill and honestly I kinda forgot to look for the miracle that day to begin with oops. But we finished our pday stuff and went to Rachel's and taught her about the plan of salvation and we were telling her that all of it was able to happen because of Jesus Christ and his atonement. Without his sacrifice and love we wouldn't have any of it. And when i saw how happy she was when we were teaching her I just realized that this gospel is a miracle! Jesus Christ is our miracle and through him we're able to have the greatest gift of all, which is eternal life.

On Tuesday We did some service for this less active lady in our ward by helping her clean out her basement. Then we went to a recent converts Miguel's house and then had a lesson with the little 9 year old girl that hasn't been baptized for some reason. We went and got to talking and since I'm still not the best at Spanish I didn't really get everything they were saying. Then we went on to the lesson and taught about the plan of salvation again and then left because we had to get home! It turns out that what my companion and her parents were talking about was that her dad was excommunicated for some reason and he was trying to get back on the right track so that he could baptize her. So now we are going to be teaching him the lessons with his daughter!

Wednesday was pretty good. Then we went to some other recent converts house (basement room actually) to teach them. They are so sweet. They are straight from Venezuela and seriously have almost nothing. They don't have a car and walk everywhere and they have 4 people living in 1 bedroom of someone in the ward. They somehow found out that it was my birthday and they bought me a whole large pizza and put some candles in it and sang to me. Seriously these people are the sweetest.

Thursday was really slow. Almost everything we had that day fell through and when we tried to go visit people nobody was home! So annoying. But anyway then we went to dinner and they forgot about us and the wife wasn't even home... so we were like oh it's fine we can just go eat somewhere else! But the husband made us stay and to,d us that it would only take him 10 min to cook. Lol. It took him 30 min so we had to eat really fast. He also made us this beef stuff with fried eggs that were all runny and liquidy. I'm like super not a fan of those so when he gave us the food I was just thinking okay, I can do this. I'll just eat the egg first and get it over with. So I did, and then as soon as he finished he put another one on my plate! Yeah. That dinner was a struggle but it's okay. After we went and visited with some less actives that work a lot so they can't get to church very often but they're super awesome! And they fed us some really yummy tostadas. Sooo good.

Friday morning I got a surprise visit from my aunt and cousins that live near by! That was really nice. Then we had our first district meeting of the transfer and it was really good! We talked about why it was necessary to have a savior and what it would be like if the world didn't have one! Not something I'd like to live with. Then again, everyone cancelled. We were supposed to have 2 lessons with some awesome people and then go caroling with some other elders and then go to temple square. Sooo we had like all day to fill basically. So since it was Christmas time there were tons of members giving us food and candy and stuff. So we taped a few pieces of candy together with Christmas notes and dropped them in the mailboxes of people in the ward and other that we visit. Then our dinner forgot about us again that night and they didn't make us stay so that they could cook for us. So we just went out and got food! Then we went caroling with the elders and sang to some really nice people. This one lady even cried it was so cute. I love the people here!

Saturday! Christmas Eve! Apparently they call it noche buena instead of Christmas Eve, and the red Christmas poinsettia flowers are called noche buenas. Haha. Anyway it was another slow day. Lots of people cancelled and nobody was home. So we finished dropping off the candies and then visited our fav recent convert Miguel for a little bit. He's great. Then we had dinner with what we thought was just a family at the church building. Turns out it was just a family but add all of the aunts and uncles and cousins too! Sooooo many people. They were so fun though. They set up a photo booth and a bunch of tables and had games and stuff. Latino people go all out for Christmas Eve! They were all from Ecuador so the food was amazing too. One of the lady's that was in our ward, hermana Briones, was so cute and she invited us over for lunch the next day. Then after dinner we went home and watched 17 miracles with our roommate upstairs! It was a great time.

Sunday was Christmas and it was great! It was a pretty chill day. It was actually a white Christmas and by the end of the day we had about 2 feet of snow. Craaazzzzyy. I've never seen so much snow in my life! So they cancelled church because everyone was having a hard time getting around because the snow plows didn't come since it was Christmas... so me and our roommate Anna went out to shovel the driveway because she had to go to work that day. Then this really nice man with a snow blower( turns out that's a thing. It's like a leaf blower but for snow haha) came to help us out! He was so nice and he did everyone's driveway in the cul de sac for them. Great example of Christlike service, especially on Christmas Day! Then we kinda just chilled in our house for a while and watched a movie about the nativity. Then we Skyped our families! That was really great. I've missed them. And then we went to lunch at the Briones and the food was amazing again. Then we came home and watched another movie called War Room. It was sooooo good, everyone needs to watch it! Then we went to Christmas dinner with some people in the ward from Peru/Japan. Interesting mix! But it was cool and they were really nice. Then we had a little zone activity and hung out with our zone, ate some more food, and watched it's a wonderful life! Overall it was a great day. Even though we didn't do much i wouldn't rather be anywhere else. Being a missionary is honestly such a blessing and I'm so grateful for this opportunity y'all. I hope everyone has a great new year!

Con amor,

Hermana Anderson