Hey Everyone..Happy New Year!!

Hey everyone!

Happy New Year!! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and enjoy the new year celebrations. Things here are going really well, like always : ) Christmas was incredible. We had such a wonderful time! We went with a bunch of other missionaries to Bishop Tingey’s house for breakfast and spent several hours over there and then went to the Anderson’s (the senior missionary couple) for another hour or so with several other missionaries. It’s so much fun to spend time with all of them; it was great to have a little missionary “family” while we were all here this year. After the Anderson’s, my companions and I went over to a cute older woman’s home for Christmas dinner. Her name is Sister Kennedy and she’s actually in the Montreal family ward, but she met us the other day and invited us over. It was so cute; we got there and she had little presents for each one of us. We were quite a bit late and had a difficult time finding her apartment (and then getting inside once we found it…we tried to ring the bell, but it didn’t work. Her phone was busy so we couldn’t call. The doorman kept running back and forth between his apartment and the door and finally opened it for us after about 10 minutes so we could actually get inside the apartment building…crazy.) but she didn’t seem to mind too much. We sat and talked with her and her 40 year old son, Paul, for a couple of hours and it was just so much fun. She is such a sweet woman; I’m so glad we got to go visit her.

Hmm, what else happened this week? We spent quite a bit of time trying to find people and went Christmas caroling in the metro for a couple of hours one evening with about 20 other missionaries, and that was wonderful. It definitely helped put everyone in the Christmas spirit : ) We also had several lessons, one with Theo which I think FINALLY got to him a little bit. We’ve been teaching him since I got here (so for at least 9 weeks now) and he just spends most of the time trying to pick holes in the things we teach and question everything. He says he doesn’t trust his feelings and won’t listen to them at all, but his brain always works rationally so that’s what he’s going with to determine whether the church is true or not. He has a point to a certain extent, but he doesn’t realize that generally when the Holy Ghost communicates with people it is through their feelings. It’s been SO frustrating. So we decided that we were going to either commit him to be baptized or frank him this week (meaning we’d tell him he can either be baptized or we can’t waste our time teaching him anymore…there are other people who are actually ready and willing to listen to the things we have to say), but we decided to watch “Finding Faith in Christ” first, and the lesson went SO well. We decided that we would give him the commitment at the beginning to pay attention to his feelings as he’s reading. We asked him what he thought faith was, how he thought the Holy Ghost communicates with us, and what importance all of that plays in our lives, and he answered everything perfectly. So then we watched the movie and we closed with a prayer as soon as it was over (we were a little concerned that if we started talking it might break the spirit in the room or he’d try to argue with us and we wanted the movie to be the last thing he remembered) and the Spirit was so strong during the movie. We’re not entirely sure what he thought of it, but I looked over towards the end and it looked like he was crying. I really hope that that was what he needed and he’ll actually develop the faith necessary to trust in the Lord and realize that he doesn’t need and answer for EVERYTHING right now. God’s plan is perfect; the holes that we find in it are ones that we develop because we can’t see everything or know everything that God knows. We’re in this world to walk by faith and trust in God’s plan, not to search for the problems in EVERY situation. I hope he realizes that soon.

Oh, and it was great! Yesterday, Sonny (real name = Kvaur) came to church. This was his 4th time there, which I just find amazing. Remember, he was the one in the metro that I met a couple of weeks back that wanted my phone number? Then we saw him in the metro about 2 weeks later and invited him and his friend to church, and they both came, and his friend is now taking the discussions? Well, we invited him to our ward Christmas dinner on Monday and he brought his girlfriend of one day with him. We taught them the first lesson, but they both seemed more interested in each other than they did in what we were teaching, so we decided that we needed to teach them separately. But then they smurfed us (didn’t show up for the appointments) the next 2 days in a row, so we were ready to give up (that’s like the 5th time Kvaur’s smurfed us). But then he came to church! Granted he slept through half of sacrament meeting, but he was there. After sacrament, Elder Cowley (one of the AP’s…I think I’ve mentioned him before) asked Kvaur when he was going to be baptized and Kvaur said he already had been. So Elder Cowley quickly explained that it had to be by immersion and since his wasn’t, he needed to do it over again, following the example of how Christ was baptized (by immersion, with the right authority). Kvaur wanted to know where we baptized people, so I took him and showed him the font and he was a bit scared about going ALL the way under water, so I told him it’d only be for like 2 seconds, and a man called of God, given His authority, would be there holding his arm with a hand behind his back, helping him the whole way. I also told him that it was ONLY through baptism by the correct authority that we can return and live with God again; without that, there is no possible way that we can live in his presence for eternity, and Kvaur responded with “I guess I can do that then…I’d probably have to wear swim trunks or something though…” It was so funny. I told him that we’d give him a little jumper to wear and he said “Well, how soon can I do this then?” and I told him that we had about 12 lessons that we would need to teach him, he’d have to make sure that he understood and believed everything, but if we met with him every day (stressing the importance of MEETING with him often…hopefully he won’t smurf us), he could be baptized in as little as 2 weeks. And he said ok and asked if we could meet tomorrow and then gave us his cell phone number which he hadn’t given to us before. It was so great : ) We’ll see how the appointment goes this evening…

And I think those are probably all of the really important things for this week…one of Elder Jest and Elder Laforney’s member made them a TON of Philippino food, so they gave us a bunch the other day. It was interesting to say the least. Then Sister Johnson invited us and the AP’s and a couple of other missionaries over for dinner yesterday and she made some BIZARRE food. We had goat, which wasn’t too bad, but then she made this smush stuff (that’s really the name of it) that consisted of mashed spicy beans and fish heads, and it was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever had. But Elder Cowley made me try it…yuck. Oh! And speaking of gross things…we had this incredible Christmas party at President and Sister McKinnon’s house on Christmas Eve and we had this white elephant gift exchange with inexpensive presents. (It was so fun…President McKinnon ended up with a Twilight poster and I know that deep down, Elder Udall really loved the Disney princess nightlight I gave him : ) ) Elder Karaka, an elder from Australia, brought vegemite as his gift, and it is so gross. Elder Cowley made me try it and it was disgusting…it’s a really strong, bitter, dark brown stuff that you’re supposed to put on toast and it just about made me sick. Sister McKinnon got after him for picking on “poor, innocent Sister Lindsey”…I love her : ) but my time is about up; I need to run. I hope you all have a wonderful week! Happy New Year!

Love, Sister Nicole Lindsey